Bone Raiders
By Relax Gaming
Bone Raiders by Relax Gaming is played on 5 reels and 3 rows for the base game and up to 7 reels and 7 rows for the bonus game, with a clever expanding grid mechanic. The RTP is 96.1% and the volatility is medium to high. If you’re really lucky, you might snag the max win of 10,000x your stake, but either way, if you make it to the bonus round you’ll unlock some powerful ‘feature’ symbols, shooting multipliers around like nobody’s business.
Game Name | Bone Raiders |
---|---|
Developer | Relax Gaming |
Theme(s) | Fantasy |
Release Date | 27.08.24 |
Rows | 3 |
Reels | 5 |
Paylines | 243 |
Volatility | Medium-High |
RTP Rate | 96.1% |
Max Win | 10,000x |
Min Bet | £0.10 |
Format | 5-Reel, Win Ways |
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Review Scorecard
What Our Reviewer Says …
A tough play but fun theme and doubling multipliers with re-spins are a good reason to give this one a spin!
What We Like
- Progressive multiplier doubles with every win
- Re-spins triggered with every win
- Nice fantasy game design with castle
- High values in paytable - up to 100x for 5 OAK
- Expanded grid in bonus round
What We Didn't Like
- Very volatile and streaky win distribution in testing
- Hard to unlock the bonus round
Theme and Design
Bone Raiders has a cuter design style than you might expect from the name alone! It’s played looking down onto a grid, which could be a kind of archaeological dig site or the entrance to a tomb. It’s a little ambiguous, but I suppose that’s part of the joy of excavating! A moat and dry stone walls surround the grid that’s made of sandstone.
Once the bonus round triggers you enter into what’s definitely some kind of tomb. The walls are lit by flickering torches and lava flows around the reels. Overall, it’s a beautifully executed design, that offers something a little different.
RTP and Variance
Bone Raiders has a pretty respectable RTP of 96.1% and medium to high volatility. If you’ve got a fairly generous bankroll then you should have no trouble weathering any dry spells, before hopefully landing some bigger wins.
Maximum Win
This slot has a pretty decent top payout of 10,000x your stake. Often max wins don’t seem achievable but there are some quite generous payouts just for five of a kind wins (up to 100x) so the 10,000x max win doesn’t feel out of reach.
Symbols and Paytable
Bone Raiders from Relax Gaming features a 5-reel, 3-row grid with 243 ways to win in the base game, while the bonus expands to a 3x3 grid that can grow up to 7x7. Wins are created by landing 3 or more identical symbols on adjacent reels starting from the leftmost reel.
The game includes 8 pay symbols plus a scatter. The low-value symbols are diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades, awarding 0.3x the bet for 5 of a kind. The premium symbols are four skeletal characters, paying between 10x and 100x the bet for 5 of the same symbol.
There are no wild symbols, but the game includes a respin feature with rising multipliers to boost winnings.
Features and Gameplay
Bone Raiders interestingly doesn’t feature a wild symbol, but it does have a couple of really interesting mechanics that it’s a good idea to take a look at.
Respin Multiplier
In the base game, whenever you make a win, it triggers a respin. With every respin, the win multiplier doubles. The respins continue until no new wins are made. Once the respins stop, the multiplier resets to 1x.
Note: All symbols drop off the reels before a respin, not just the ones from the win.
Bonus Game
If you land 3 scatter symbols on reels 2, 3, and 4 then it triggers the Bone Raiders bonus round. The grid expands to 7x7 with an active centre of 3x3, the remainder made up of blocked off squares. The scatter symbols that triggered the bonus game will then turn into feature symbols.
Feature symbols target other positions on the grid, depending on what their effect is. If the targeted position is a blocked off square then it becomes unlocked. If the targeted position has a coin then the coin’s value is doubled.
You always start the feature with 2 spins, which reset back to 2 whenever a feature symbol lands. Every time you destroy 20 blockers, you increase the value of the reset by 1 spin. The feature symbols work as shown below:
- Magic Staff: targets one symbol between three and seven times.
- Bomb: targets all symbols surrounding it once.
- Cannon: shoots at a random number of symbols (up to whole grid).
- Compass: targets a pattern of symbols, like a row, column, or diagonal.
Once a feature has finishing performing its action it is turned into a coin with a value of 1x the bet.
Final Verdict
Bone Raiders at first appears a pretty simple game, perhaps down to the pared back graphics, but there are some pretty fun mechanics at play here. The feature symbols that come to life in the bonus round are the star of the show. Each one shooting spaces and causing chaos (in the best possible way).
The coin doubling effect whenever a coin is shot is a nice touch that has the potential to cause some big wins. Overall, this is a simple slot game with a decent RTP and a volatility that isn’t terrifyingly high. The max win of 10,000x your stake is plenty big enough to attract mega prize hunters too!
Testing Notes
Test spins and results analysis by Mark Wadie.
Results from 250 spins for free on Bone Raiders (Relax Gaming) test servers.
- Stake Size: 1
- Start balance: 5,000
- End balance: 4,906.40
- Hit Rate: 20.4% (51 winning spins in 250)
- Biggest Win: 161x
- Bonus Round: 1
Bone Raiders looks great, as we have come to expect from Relax Gaming. The skeletal paytable characters are fun and the castle backdrop is nicely drawn.
But what was it like to play?
I extended the session to 250 spins to see if I could unlock that bonus round but no luck. Proof that this is game is going to be a tough one to crack. The base game doesn’t have much going on, just the doubling multiplier / respin combo that will be familiar to anyone who has played Yggdrasil’s DoubleMax games. This, combined with a paytable with good value in it (5 top payers are worth 100x) made me think you would get some decent wins in the base game. That wasn’t quite the case. My biggest was a 24.1x from 5 consecutive wins that pushed the multiplier up to 32x. I did also see a 20x and a 10x, but that was all.
The win rate overall was 20.4% but I should say the distribution was very uneven. For the first 100 spins the rate was down at around 16%, then it improved considerably for the second half. So a classic high variance slot in other words. Read on to find out how that elusive free spins round would work.
Who Made Bone Raiders?
- Name: Relax Gaming
- UK License: Remote 037462-R-319357-014
- Total Games: 100 +
- Known For: High variance, high max win, progressive jackpots, innovative game mechanics
- Popular Slots: Money Train, Temple Tumble, Dream Drop Jackpots, Hellcatraz