Most of the buttons and controls used in UK online slots are self-explanatory.
But what about the bonus buy button? For newcomers to slot gaming, or those that haven’t seen the feature before, that can be a source of much confusion.
So let’s tackle the main questions head on. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into bonus buy, exploring how bonus buy slots work and the kind of cost-reward ratio you can expect.
Finally, we’ll conclude whether or not the bonus buy feature is worth using and whether it’s right for you and your gaming preferences.
What is Bonus Buy in Slots?
Often when playing real money slots, players are hoping to trigger a bonus feature. It could be free spins, a pick ‘em game, a bonus wheel… and so on.
Of course, each spin of the reels costs money – with no guarantee that the bonus will actually be triggered.
This is why some players favour buy bonus feature slots. These are exactly as the name implies: you can skip the spins and instead buy your way straight into the bonus feature.
That sounds like a good deal, right? Well, there’s a bit more to it than that…
Cost-to-Reward Ratio in Bonus Buy Slots
The question that players must ask themselves is how much are you willing to pay in order to go straight through to the bonus feature?
Each game has a different ‘buy in’ level, but it’s not uncommon that the required amount can be 100x your stake in some real money bonus buy slots.
So if you are staking just £0.10 per spin, it would actually cost you £10 to buy into the bonus feature. But remember, those free spins – if that’s the feature in question – will also be played at the lower stake, so is the £10 really a wise investment?
Consider it this way. If you had limited yourself to £10 in your next slots with bonus buy in the UK session, would you want to save time and buy straight into the feature – hoping that your luck is in and the bonus pays?
Or would you rather take your chance on 100 spins (£0.10 per spin), hope to pick up some base game wins along the way and maybe, if it’s your day, trigger the bonus feature ‘organically’ within those 100 turns?
This is the cost-to-reward ratio that must be considered with bonus buy slots.
But then there’s the question of slot volatility, too. Highly volatile games, typically, pay out less frequently – so it could be inaccurate to assume that your 100 spins will land a few wins during the base game… or trigger the bonus feature organically at all.
So maybe, when playing high volatility slots, there’s some logic to the bonus buy feature after all.
The Best Bonus Buy Slots
One of the most popular and enduring bonus buy slots is Big Bass Splash, a game in which players can land a myriad of special features.
The free spins round is the bonus buy-in, where the fisherman symbol can appear on your reels and hook in any fish symbols with cash prizes showing on them. Wild symbols are collected and trigger more free spins, with multipliers of up to 10x added to your reels too.
In Money Train, you can activate the bonus buy feature for 80x your stake. This takes players to a second screen, where the RTP is bumped up to 98% and a handful of free spins are awarded.
There’s six different modifiers that can be landed, which range from enhanced multipliers to extra reels being added and all symbol values being collected.
Fruit Party 2, from Pragmatic Play, features a cluster pay mechanic, rather than traditional paylines, and this is best highlighted during the bonus buy feature.
All clusters of five or more matching symbols are enhanced by a random multiplier, with the bonus itself taking the form of a free spins round – the bonus buy feature grants players immediate access to 10+ free turns, depending on the number of scatters on the triggering spin.
Bonus Buy: Should You Use It?
As we’ve learned in this article, the bonus buy feature offers instant access to a slot’s bonus round – saving you the time of trying to trigger it organically.
However, it could cost you as much as 100x your stake to buy into the bonus… the equivalent of 100 spins of the reels, during which you may just land some base game wins and, perhaps, trigger the bonus for a much lower outlay.
One of the contentious issues with bonus buy is that it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to responsible gambling. For example, a player that stakes £0.10 per spin may have to pay £10 to trigger the bonus buy. If they had planned to wager £10 anyway then there’s no issue, but if their budget is much smaller than that then buying the bonus is not what we would describe as ‘affordable’ gambling.
So the bonus buy feature is a question of budgeting. Is the cost of it reflective of how much you planned to wager anyway?
And, lest we forget, there’s no guarantees that a slot’s bonus feature will deliver wins that exceed your buy in amount, let alone cover the cost.
Bonus Buy Games at Prime Slots
At Prime Slots, we offer a huge library of slot games to enjoy; some with the bonus buy feature included.
In this article, we’ve explored how bonus buy slots work and examined the reasons why these games aren’t for everyone.
But if bonus buy slots appeal to you, then you’ll find plenty of options available here at Prime Slots.
