What Are Bonus Buy Slots and How Do They Work?
The Bonus Buy feature provides direct access to a slot’s bonus round, bypassing regular play. In other words, before or while playing the base game, players can purchase the Bonus Buy feature for a predetermined amount, thus gaining instant entry into the bonus round. The feature appeals to slot enthusiasts looking for fast action and immediate access to the game’s most enticing and rewarding feature.
While playing Pragmatic Play’s Sweet Bonanza, for instance, players can instantly access the Buy Feature by paying a value equal to 100x their total bet in the base game. So, a slot enthusiast staking the minimum base bet of $0.20 will gain instant access to the 10 free spins available in the bonus round for a total of $20.
Similarly, a player enjoying Money Train 2 by Relax Gaming can purchase the Money Cart Bonus Round and play for the max win of 50,000x without waiting for three or more scatters to appear in the base game to trigger the feature automatically. Instead, players can purchase the bonus round for 100x the base bet size.
Features and Mechanics
The Bonus Buy feature is an advanced game mechanic integrated into a slot’s architecture to provide players with immediate access to the bonus round. It is commonly available for 50x to 500x the base bet stake.
To give you a better idea of how this feature works, we played the demo version of the Big Juan slot by Pragmatic Play. The bonus round in this slot is triggered when three or more Pinata scatter symbols land on the reels. However, players can also buy access to the enticing bonus round that features four fixed jackpots. The cost to do so is 200x the base bet, and the purchase is applied to your credit before the start of the bonus round.
We entered the bonus round ourselves by “purchasing” the feature for 100x the current bet and spending 80 in fun money in total. During the bonus round, we managed to win the slot’s Minor, Major, and Grand jackpots and benefited from 8 extra spins, which significantly boosted our winning prospects. In the end, we won 2298 fun money, which clearly illustrates how advantageous purchasing a Bonus Buy feature is if you get lucky.
What’s the RTP for Bonus Buy Slots?
The theoretical Return to Player (RTP) ratio of a slot is recalibrated when the Bonus Buy feature is activated. For instance, if you play Extra Chilli Megaways by Big Time Gaming, you will notice that the RTP of the game when the Feature Drop is purchased is 96.82%. However, without buying Feature Drop the RTP is 96.41%.
Something similar applies to the Big Bad Wolf Megaways slot by Quickspin. The listed RTP for the slots is 96.05%. That means that, in theory, if players spend $100,000 playing the slot, it will return 96,050. However, when the Buy Feature is activated, the RTP of this slot increases to 96.44%. That means, for $100,000 spent with the feature activated, the slot will return 96,440.bir
Note that the RTP can follow the opposite trajectory too. For example, for the Big Juan slot we previously discussed, the theoretical RTP is 96.70%. However, when using the Buy Bonus feature, there is a slight drop to 96.53%. So, while in many situations the instant access to bonus multipliers and jackpots will also come with an increase in RTP, a slight decrease is a possibility too. This is due to the different payout structures of base games and bonus rounds which are unique for each game.
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