Game of the Week – The Bounty
It’s time to saddle up and head back to the old west. The Bounty is the latest Western-themed online pokie from Microgaming. The game both a free games feature and a jackpot bonus feature that can award up to five jackpot prizes.
Learn more about this game, including how you can trigger the free games feature and the jackpot bonus feature.
Old West Adventure With Reasonable Paytable
The Bounty is a 5-Reel, 15 payline pokie from Microgaming and Snowborn. You’re in the old west chasing bad guys and collecting bounties. The paytable for this game is fairly simple. For once, Royals actually make sense and are the low paying symbols.
The outlaw and the gold miner are the medium paying symbols. The female outlaw is a medium-high paying symbol while the Marshal is the top paying symbol, paying 100x your bet on 5 of a kind.
You’ll need to hit multi-line wins to turn a profit on most spins. Fortunately, there are a few features that can help you increase your winnings.
Deputy and Marshall Wilds
The Deputy and Marshall badges serve as the wild in this game. Wilds substitute for anything other than the scatter or the jackpot bonus symbol. The deputy wild is your standard wild. It also is a paying wild on three or more on a payline. For the Marshall wild, you get a 2x multiplier on any win.
The Deputy wilds were relatively frequent, but I only hit a winner with the Marshall wild twice. The game is tight enough without making the wilds sparse.
Ambush Bonus
The Ambush Bonus symbol is the primary scatter for this game. If you land the symbols on Reels 3, 4, and 5 during the same spin, you’ll trigger the Bonus feature. During the free spins game, you’ll get 8 free spins with a 2x multiplier. Land a bullet symbol on any reel to get one additional free spin. The dynamite symbol increases the multiplier during the bonus.
I was unable to trigger this feature. I only got close a couple of times.
Bounty Jackpot Bonus
The Bounty Jackpot Bonus symbols can appear at any point on Reel 5. If it covers all three reels, it triggers the Bounty Jackpot Bonus game. You’ll get 10 free spins and the Jackpot Poster collection feature will activate.
During the free spins, you will collect jackpot posters representing the Mini, Minor, Maxi, Major, and Grand Jackpots. Collect 6 matching posters to get a jackpot prize. There are also Golden Posters. If you collect a Golden Poster, it multiplies the jackpot. Jackpots can be multiplied to 4x.
I was not lucky enough to trigger this feature. There were a few near misses, and the game will fake you out by zooming on the area. That’s a bit annoying, to be honest.
The Bounty is Not Enough to Beat the Variance in This Pokie
When I saw that this game was put out by Microgaming and has a 96.08% RTP, I assumed that it would be a rootin, tootin good time. (For those that don’t speak cowboy, that means I thought it would be awesome.) However, what I found was a game that is incredibly tight and has some killer variance.
The free games and jackpot bonus features look great, but if you can never trigger them, all you’re going to do is feed the game. If you plan to try this game out, I recommend you play at lower stakes. Otherwise, you risk draining your bankroll quickly.
The Bounty is available at Wild Card City, King Johnnie Casino, and all Australian Online Casinos offering Microgaming pokies.