Bounty Hunter: Slot Overview
Westerns and money collection features might not be the most original slot ideas you’re going to bump into, but both converge in Pragmatic Play‘s frontier-themed slot Bounty Hunter. It’s not exactly the most imaginative game title either, so if wild creativity is what you live for, then you might be wondering how the game is going to dig its way out of this. On the promising side, Pragmatic Play has proven to be a dab hand at slot design on numerous occasions, possessing an ability to turn out the odd bit of gold dust. Will that be the case with Bounty Hunter, or is it going to get run out of town, tarred and feathered by angry folk?
The setting for Bounty Hunter is one that’s been used 1,001 times before, as if players have just moseyed bow-legged, weighed down by six shooters, into a creaky old town in the middle of nowhere. The sort of place where order is administered by whoever’s holding the biggest gun rather than a rule-abiding lawman. There is something amusing about the character symbols, though, as they sport big weapons and even bigger grins, adding to an atmosphere that is quite warm and bright. Well, warm and bright enough to mosey in further.
Set in a wooden frame and mounted on a wagon, Bounty Hunter plays out on a 5×3 reelset combined with 20 paylines, paying from left to right. It’s a highly volatile slot with a 96.51% RTP, and bets ranging from 20c to $/€240 per spin, with a couple of feature buys on the side. An ante bet, too, which costs 12x to land a collector on every spin.
Low pays in the game are bundles of dynamite, pistols, boots, and hats, awarding players 3x to 5x when a 5-of-a-kind winning combination lands. Next are high pay symbols, which consist of four characters, awarding 20x to 100x the bet for 5 OAK. Bounty Hunter ain’t got no wild pardner.
Bounty Hunter: Slot Features
Bounty Hunter’s piece shoots out a money collection feature, free spins, and a two-option feature buy.
Money Collection
The collector symbol may appear on the leftmost reel while the multiplier symbol appears only on the rightmost reel. During the base game or free spins, high-value symbols can land with random cash values attached, worth 0.5x to 100x the bet. Whenever a collector symbol hits, it expands to cover the entire leftmost reel, and it duels with each high-value symbol with a money value in view from left to right. If the duel is won, the amount is collected, and a multiplier is increased by x1 for the next collection. Lost duels collect nothing. After all duels have finished, the multiplier returns to x1.
Multiplier symbols land with a value of x10 to x100. When the collector and the multiplier are both present, the first duel happens with the multiplier. If the duel is won, the multiplier for future collections on the spin will be the value from the multiplier symbol, and it cannot increase with successful duels.
Free Spins
Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatters triggers 8, 12, or 16 free spins, respectively. During the feature, the multiplier achieved by duels is persistent between spins and does not reset till the end of the round. The maximum it can reach is x100. Players win an extra 8, 12, or 16 free spins should 3, 4, or 5 scatters, respectively, land.
Feature Buy
Players get two feature buy options. One is 80x to trigger free spins with 3-5 scatters, while the other costs 500x for super free spins triggered by 3-5 scatters, where one collector is present on the screen for every spin.
Bounty Hunter: Slot Verdict
The thought of trying out a money symbol collection game draped in cowboy boots was far from repellent, but it wasn’t an overly exciting proposition either. Both theme and mechanic have been done to death and then some, making it hard to get excited about seeing both of those things in one place. But, Prag is Prag, so giving the highly experienced studio the benefit of the doubt, we weaponed up to see what Bounty Hunter could fire from its barrels. And what’s here exceeded expectations. Not that they were sky high or anything like that, but Bounty Hunter’s vibe is genial, and despite a commonality to the visuals, some of the characters’ facial expressions could have come straight from Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun music video.
More persuasively, Bounty Hunter fired off a few decent hits, which helps make any game more likeable. Its collection action is similar in some ways to a certain group of Blueprint Gaming slots, such as D10S Maradona, The Goonies Hey You Guys, King Kong Cash Even Bigger Bananas, and so on. But here, the collection symbol does not get upgraded. It does one thing: shoot at high pay symbols and collect the bounty from defeated adversaries. Maybe two things: increase the collection multiplier, which benefits from that all-important persistent quality in free spins. At times, it actually worked surprisingly well, and a 10,000x win cap sits on top like a well-fitted Stetson.
Its partner Reel Kingdom might have cornered off large sections of the fish money symbol collection market, but Pragmatic Play shows it’s got the talent to do a spot of entertaining collecting of its own. Bounty Hunter might not blow away the fastest trigger fingers in the West, but it is actually quite quick on the draw.
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