Beautiful Bones Slot

Bonuses include an accumulative free spins game, stacked symbols, and a ‘Wild Spin Again’ feature, which all add much sought-after credits to your bankroll.

Theme and Game Play

This slot follows the theme of the festival of ‘Día de Muertos’, otherwise known in English as ‘The Day of the Dead’. This is a uniquely Mexican celebration stemming from their Aztec history in which they celebrate the after-life of loved ones who have passed on.

Traditionally, native Mexicans will paint their faces with black and white paint to mimic skulls, which are representative of those who’ve passed. The festival includes upbeat Mexican/Spanish music, bright bold colours, and lots and lots of skulls.

Although peculiar to the rest of the world, one will soon be engrossed in the festivities at hand, once the wins start rolling in. You too may see the lighter side of death in the midst of the reel rolls.

Game effects bring the theme to life with the rattle of bones evident during the reel spins. The soundtrack is distinctly Spanish, and does a wonderful job of convincing your brain that you are in Mexico.

The game symbols are true to the heart of the festival. Although the smaller symbols are only card deck symbols (9, 10, J, Q, K, and A), the way in which they are ornately articulated draws strong influence from the Mexican style. The high-end symbols are all female faces painted up in traditional masks, with different colour backgrounds (orange, red, and yellow). The medium symbols are that of two men with face masks on a blue and green background each. There is a Sugar Skull scatter symbol which helps you top up the free spins skull accumulator. The Wild symbol (red heart) will substitute for all symbols except the skull scatter icon.

Gameplay is pretty straight forward and user friendly. The game controls are presented neatly under the reels. Your bet can be adjusted to suit your liking by clicking on the up and down arrows. You can use the manual “SPIN” button to roll the reels each time, if you like being involved in every bit of the game action, or you can select Auto-play. Auto-play allows you to choose how many times you would like the machine to automatically spin for you before stopping (either 10x, 25x, 50x, or 100x). This feature allows you to step away from the game for a while, whilst it carries on bringing in the wins.

Special Features

These days, modern slot games can ill afford to offer no bonus features, or simply bad bonus features, as most contemporary gamblers look at the bonuses available before checking any of the other game stats. It is a good thing then that “Beautiful Bones” offers a few different varieties of extras.

Stacked Symbols

The three ‘lady’ high paying symbols can stack on reels 2,3, and 4 to produce decent combo wins.

Wild Spin Again Feature

Should you manage to roll 3 matching symbols either horizontally or vertically on the reels, you will be awarded with an extra spin of the reels, for free. The center symbol will turn wild for the spin to help complete potential winning combinations.

Free Spins Bonus Round

To the left-hand side of the reels, you will notice a ‘free spins’ accumulating meter. Each time you land a skull scatter, a skull token will be added to the meter. For every 10 skulls collected you will be able to either trigger the free spins feature, or choose to continue on to the next 10 and stand the chance of triggering more spins with a higher chance of multipliers. The highest amount of spins on the meter accumulates to 30 free games.

Below is a look at the various spin options decided by the number of skulls you accumulate:

• 10 Sugar skulls awards 10 free spins with a multiplier of 3x

• 20 Sugar skulls awards 15 free spins with a multiplier of 4x

• 30 Sugar skulls awards 18 free spins with a multiplier of 5x

In addition, the ‘Wild Spin Again’ feature is active during these spins.

TIP: When you are close to accumulating the desired number of skulls needed to trigger the free spins, toggle up your bet before you trigger the last skull. Don’t forget to do this, because all of your free spins will pay out in accordance with the bet at the time of triggering. You will kick yourself for triggering 30 free spins with the lowest bet denominator.

Payouts and Maximum Winnings

The RTP (return to player) is 96.55% on this slot, and the variance or volatility is extremely low, which means that although wins may come quite frequently, they will come in very low amounts. This slot will therefore not make you rich. Below is an indication of some of the wins you can expect.

• 5x Lady Symbols is the Jackpot, and pays out a mere 10x your bet.

• The highest wins you can realistically expect in total from the free spins bonus game are around 300x to 500x. Anything higher than that will surprise me.

• The suggested Max Win on the game is a maximum of 82 000 coins.

Final Verdict

If you are a keen lover of slots in this genre, then you need to add this Games Global slot to your portfolio, if for no other reason than to brag that you have played them all. The upside is, that because of the low volatility, you won’t stand to lose too much money too quickly, and who knows, the game may grow on you!

Should you want to play games from other top developers, along the same theme, but with different variance levels, then I recommend Play n Go’s Grim Muerto, which has a medium variance slot. This means that you will win larger yet less frequent wins. There is also IGT’s beautiful slot called Day of the Dead, which has a high variance and a potential for much bigger wins.