Bonanza

Where do the new symbols come from after a win?

From two directions, and that is the detail worth knowing before you open the demo. Bonanza removes winning symbols and fills the gaps, as plenty of cascading slots do. What Big Time Gaming added is a second source of replacements. New symbols fall in from the top of the six main reels, and they also arrive from the right along a horizontal cart reel that sits above reels 2 to 5. The studio calls this Dual Reactions.

It matters because each refill can create another win, which clears more symbols, which brings in more replacements. In the free spins round, every one of those reactions adds 1 to a win multiplier that has no upper limit. The number of times the grid refreshes is therefore what decides how far a bonus can run.

The game was released on 7 December 2016 and is widely listed as Bonanza Megaways. Big Time Gaming, the studio behind it, is now part of Evolution.

The published sheet

What matters most, in order

These are ranked by how much each one shapes a session, starting with the feature that carries the most weight.

• The free spins multiplier. Every reaction during free spins adds 1 to the win multiplier, and the studio sets no cap on it. It is the only multiplier in the published feature list, so most of the bonus round’s potential sits here. A free spins round with few reactions will feel modest; one with a long chain of refills changes character quickly.
• Dual Reactions. This is the engine that feeds the multiplier. Because replacements come from the top and from the right, a single win can open space in two places at once. In the base game it simply means more chances for a follow-on win from the same spin.
• The cart reel. The horizontal reel above reels 2 to 5 adds extra symbols to those reels, which is part of how the ways count climbs. It is also where stacked scatters can appear during free spins, worth an extra 5 or 10 spins.
• GOLD scatters and extra spins. Free spins begin when the scatters spell GOLD, which awards 12 spins. Each scatter beyond those adds 5 more. Extra spins matter because each one is another chance to build reactions, and so to raise the multiplier.
• The Megaways count. Each reel shows between 2 and 7 symbols, and the number changes every spin, giving up to 117,649 ways. It is last on this list because the headline figure tells you little on its own. A spin with the full count and no follow-on reactions is still a single result.

Some versions sold outside the UK include a bonus buy. It is not offered in UK versions, so the only route into free spins is landing the scatters.

Two RTPs, a hit rate and a 26,000x top end

Big Time Gaming publishes two return figures. Its main game page gives 96.00%, and that is the figure most listings repeat. Its newer beta page gives 96.11%. The studio does not explain whether the higher number belongs to a different version of the game, so 96.00% is the one shown first in the table above.

In plain terms, RTP is a long-run average across an enormous number of spins. At 96.00%, every 100 virtual coins staked would return 96 on average over that very long run. A single session can finish well above or well below that, and the figure says nothing about the next spin.

The beta page also gives a hit frequency of 37.94%. That means a little under 4 spins in 10 produce a win of some size over the long run. A hit is not the same as a profit; many of those wins will be smaller than the stake.

The studio does not publish a formal volatility rating. Its beta page describes Bonanza as highly volatile, and that wording is recorded here as High. Expect long runs where the balance drifts down, with the larger results concentrated in the free spins round.

The ceiling is 26,000 times the bet, taken from the studio’s beta page. On a 1-coin stake that would be 26,000 virtual coins. Other sites quote a spread of different maximums, some much lower and one far higher, but the studio’s own figure is the one to rely on.

The ways count is simple arithmetic. If all six reels show 7 symbols, the ways multiply together: 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 gives 117,649. Fewer symbols on any reel means fewer ways on that spin.

Set against other SlotSpecs pages

Sweet Bonanza and Sweet Bonanza 1000 share part of the name, but they are separate games. They are worth trying side by side with this one if you like cascading wins and multipliers in a bonus round, because each handles the multiplier differently.

Buffalo King is a useful contrast. Its page describes a fixed grid with no cascades, so every spin is one result. Bonanza is the opposite: the shape of the grid and the number of refills both change from spin to spin.

Thunderstruck II and Buffalo Blitz suit players who prefer a free spins round with a more structured route in. Age of the Gods offers random progressive jackpots instead, which is a different idea entirely from a multiplier built by reactions.

Where we land on Bonanza

Bonanza is a game about chains. The ways count gets the attention, but the part that decides a bonus round is how many times the grid refills, because every reaction lifts a multiplier with no cap. The cart reel and the two-direction cascades are what make long chains possible.

The published numbers are clear enough: 96.00% on the studio’s main page, a hit rate just under 38%, a high-volatility description and a 26,000x ceiling. That combination suits players who are happy to watch a virtual balance shrink between bonuses in return for a free spins round that can grow sharply.

If you would rather see steady small results, this is not the best fit. If you want to understand why Megaways slots from this studio became so widely copied, the demo is a good place to watch Dual Reactions at work.