Bonus Buy Slots

The price tag

A bought bonus skips the wait. You pay a printed multiple of your stake, and the free spins start straight away instead of waiting on the scatters. The price moves with the stake, so a 100x round is $20 on a $0.20 stake and $100 on a $1 stake. The round you get is the round the scatters would have opened. You are paying for speed.

Now, look at the percentage before the price. The rules of most Olympus games print a figure for the bought round, and it sits within a hair of the game’s own. Gates of Olympus prints 96.50% for both, and Gates of Olympus 1000 prints 96.49% for the round against 96.50% for its spins. A bought bonus is the same percentage at a different speed. The money of 100 spins leaves in one click.

The gods who don’t sell

On Olympus the button says something about the god’s job. There’s usually nothing for sale when the gods open the round themselves. None of the 5 Rise of Olympus games sells its free spins, and in 4 of them the round starts from a grid cleared of symbols, with the 3 brothers helping to clear it. Take Olympus waits for its full cast of gods, and Betsoft lists no way round that. Those gods can’t be bought.

In most Gates of Olympus games Zeus’s face is only the scatter, and Pragmatic Play lets you pay past it. Gates of Olympus asks 100x, so the round costs $100 at $1 a spin. Zeus still sends his multipliers once the round is running. You skip his doorway, not his work.

The price list

Gates of Olympus 2500 has 4 prices on its menu, 100x, 250x, 500x and 1,250x, with 96.50% printed for every one. On a $0.20 stake the 4 come to $20, $50, $100 and $250, and each buys a named kind of round instead of a turn of the wheel. At $1 the dearest is $1,250, the money of 1,250 spins in one go.

Forge of Olympus also sells 4, at 100x, 200x, 400x and 500x, and the dearer ones start the round at a higher level. Every one of them prints above the 96.25% of the plain spins, with the 200x round on top at 96.70%. At $0.20 that round costs $40. It carries the best printed figure in the game.

Fortune of Olympus sells 2 rounds, both printed at 96.55%. The plain free spins cost 100x, and the super round costs 500x and keeps every multiplier at 5x or more. Gates of Olympus Super Scatter has the same pair of prices at 96.50% and 96.49%, and its super round starts each multiplier at 10x. At $2 a spin either 500x round is $1,000 in one click. The dearer round buys a higher starting multiplier, not a better percentage.

Cats of Olympuss prices its rounds by the number of bonus symbols, 60.3x for 3 and 110x for 4, with a random option at 109x. At $1 a spin that’s $60.30, $110 and $109, printed at 96.24%, 96.38% and 96.39%. Gates of Olympus Pachi asks 70x for its free spins and 300x for the super round, both at 96.04%. Power of Olympus charges 82x, which is $16.40 at $0.20, and puts 4 or more scatters on the bought spin.

The missing prices

Some games keep the price off the page. Olympus Trueways sells its free spins and its Coin Respin, and BGaming shows what they cost on the button alone, not in the rules. Vikings Go To Olympus offers a bought bonus in some markets, and Yggdrasil prints no price for it at all. Without a printed price there is nothing to set beside the percentage. A price on a button isn’t a price in the rules.

Some games sell nothing at all. Gates of Olympus POP has neither a button nor an ante, and Goals of Olympus BoltLock and Olympus Unleashed list no purchase either. Olympus 7s Dream Drop sells a dearer spin instead, the Mighty Spin at 20x the bet, and no round. Every feature in those games has to come from the reels.

The ante and the button don’t mix. In the Pragmatic Play games and in Cats of Olympuss the purchase switches off while the ante is on. You choose a dearer spin or a faster round, never both. The ante bet page covers the other half of that choice.

The regulars’ shortcut

On the slot floor nobody could buy a feature, so the regulars tried to hurry one along. They hit the spin button faster as closing time came, as though the machine might take the hint. The machine never took it. A bought bonus is the first shortcut that works, and the rules print exactly what it costs.

Every price and percentage on this page was read from the rules inside each game’s demo or from the studio’s page. The review of each game names its source and date, as How the Reviews Work describes.