BONE RADIERS

HOW TO PLAY BONE RAIDERS

If our introduction got you a bit excited, we’ll have to disappoint you at first. The base game is fairly standard as far as slot machines go, so bear with us as we cover these first steps.

Bone Raiders is played on a fairly common setup of 5 reels and 3 rows. It doesn’t really use fixed paylines, though – the goal is to hit 3 or more matching symbols on 3 or more adjacent reels, starting with the leftmost one. This adds up to a grand total of 243 ways to win. Nothing too crazy in this department.

That said, Relax Gaming threw in some free respins and increasing multipliers into the mix. Basically, every time you win, you get a free respin. This effect can be chained for as long as you keep winning, which can result in some impressive wins if you’re lucky enough to win a few times in a row. Moreover, every time you win, a win multiplier starts affecting any future wins during the same round. This multiplier is doubled for consecutive wins, resulting in exponential returns if you string together multiple wins.

Essentially, the first win has a 1x multiplier, the second one comes in with 2x, the third one moves up to 4x, then 8x – you get the picture.

It’s fun stuff, but nothing too unique yet. It’s time we got into the all-important bonus round.

Bone Raiders Bonus Game

IF you hit 3 Bonus symbols on reels 2, 3, and 4, you trigger the bonus round. We’re still on familiar ground.

Once you do, though, the game area transforms into a massive 7×7 grid. This is where things get interesting.

At the beginning, only the centre 3×3 area is active while the rest of the grid is covered in blockers. The bonus symbols that triggered the feature are turned into one of 4 possible feature symbols. Each of these has a unique effect, which immediately activates.

If the effect hits a blocker, the blocker is removed and the position frees up until the end of the round. If it hits an existing coin symbol, the symbol’s value is doubled. Keep this in mind as it will remain relevant until the end of the bonus round.

The game then turns into a sort of Hold & Win feature, only more interesting. Basically, there are no more reels, rows, or paylines. Only feature symbols can appear at this stage, activating more positions or increasing existing rewards.

You initially get 3 “spins”, or opportunities for feature symbols to appear. Whenever they do, they do their thing and then turn into a single coin symbol. These coins then tend to get doubled, quadrupled, and increased even further as the bonus round progresses.

The round ends once you go through 3 spins in a row with no new feature symbols. All of the coins on the grid are then added together and paid out as one big instant win.

Feature Symbols

As you may have gathered by now, the 4 feature symbols appearing in the bonus round are very important. Here’s what each of them does.

• The Cannon shoots at a random number of positions a random number of times.
• The Compass targets an entire vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line
• The Bomb affects its surrounding square-shaped area
• The Magic Staff repeatedly targets a single position

Interestingly, there’s no way of telling how big or effective any of these can be. We’ve seen Bombs literally cover the entire grid, and we’ve also seen Cannons only shoot once. You never know quite what you’re going to get. That said, the Compass seems to be the most consistent, while the Cannon and Magic Staff can be real wild cards.

Feature Buy

Another bit of good news – you can trigger the bonus round any time you want for 70x the bet. Just click the ‘Buy’ button in the lower right corner.

Casino Bloke Best tips for Bone Radiers Slot

• 1Removing 20 blockers gives you a +1 maximum spin before you end the bonus round. This maxes out at 4, when the entire board is cleared.
• 2The Magic Staff may initially seem a bit weak compared to something like the Bomb. However, remember the value of exponential growth. A single staff hitting the same place a few times can pretty much pay for the entire Feature Buy.
• 3The more blockers you unlock, the more likely you are to have the bonus last longer. However, the more coins are on the board, the smaller the chances of another feature symbol landing to extend the bonus round.
• 4Repeatedly buying the bonus round is not only a fun way to play Bone Raiders, but it’s also statistically optimal because it increases RTP to 96.50%

PAYOUTS & RTP

Base game payouts in Bone Raiders are as bog-standard as the gameplay. However, the symbol values are also nice an consistent, which we like seeing.

The card royals are the low-paying symbols, and they’re all pretty much the same in terms of value. They’ll pay 0.10x, 0.20x, or 0.30x for 3, 4, or 5 on a line, respectively.

The purple, green, and blue skeletons are mid-valued, but they still pay quite decently. They hit for 2x, 5x, or 10x for 3, 4, or 5 on a line. The big, vaguely sinister-looking red skeleton is the high-value target, quite impressively paying 10x, 25x, or 100x.

All in all it’s quite a nice math model, with decent payouts that kepyt us engaged. The low-value symbols are very low-value, though, which is something to keep in mind.

The RTP of Bone Raiders comes out to 96.10%, which is slightly above the industry average. Using the Feature Buy option bumps this up to 96.50%, which we liked a lot considering we mostly enjoy the game for its bonus round.

BONE RAIDERS BY  RELAX GAMING – CASINO BLOKE’S VERDICT

Our overall impression of Bone Raiders is that we only really remember the bonus round. The base game feels like an afterthought, so it’s a good thing that you can skip it entirely via the Feature Buy.

First of all, we have to note that the bonus round is not only completely unique, but it’s also quite clever. It may not sound like it on paper, but the dynamics of the minigame really come into their own once you actually start playing it. You’ll quickly learn the pros and cons of stacking up big multipliers on a single position versus unlocking as many new tiles as possible. This effectively means that no two rounds are ever the same, which makes us love it even more.

Not that you have any control over how the bonus round professes, of course. It’s still fun to watch it play out, though. We also appreciate the fact that 70x to trigger the bonus makes it quite accessible, and repeatedly doing so is viable even if you’re playing on a tight budget.

We highly recommend checking out Bone Raiders if you’re in the mood for something fresh, fun, and engaging.