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Do you remember the opening sequence in the James Bond film Spectre? The spectacular scene is set among the Dia de los Muertos festival in Mexico, which translates as the Day of the Dead. During which many people dress up as skeletons or similar to celebrate the life of those that have since passed on.
That festival is based on friends and family coming together to celebrate the lives of those passed on and to celebrate and enhance their spiritual journey in the afterlife. While the theme may be the dead, Dia de los Muertos is not a sombre tradition and the day is filled with joy and happiness.
Given that and the fact it is a bright, vibrant and passionate celebration, it provides a rather nice and unusual backdrop for one of the newest slot games from Microgaming. Called Beautiful Bones, this slot celebrates many aspects of the holiday and is particularly eye-catching. Does it stand up though as a modern slot? Let's take a closer look and find out.
Mini Slot Overview
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Presentation
There are several different aspects to the presentation of the Beautiful Bones slot which combine perfectly to give you a very neatly presented game. First off the console is simple and easy to follow with all the key features of the slot displayed at the bottom and sides of the reels. Deciding how much to wager is simple, as is getting the reels spinning.
Visually, the slot is stunning with bright colors and stunning symbols used on the reels which are very eye-catching. The musical accompaniment to the slot is also excellent and completely in keeping with the Mexican theme of the slot and rather than sombre, the music is upbeat and cheery.
All in all, the presentation of the Beautiful Bones slot may look slightly unusual to more westernized eyes at first, but once you understand the theme of the celebration, it all makes perfect sense and captures the essence of the holiday very cleverly indeed.
What's on the reels?
The first thing you will notice about the reels is that you have the usual playing card low symbols in place, from 10 through to the Ace. These offer the lower paying wins in the game as you would expect but these symbols have also been given a bit of a Mexican theme in how they are designed and represented on the reels.
The higher value symbols are the two male and three female characters who have a skull painted onto their face. These symbols offer the higher payouts in the game although the three female symbols only appear on the central three reels, but they can also appear fully stacked on those reels, which can help land some decent sized wins across multiple pay lines.
Alongside these standard symbols there are a small number of other symbols, Wilds and Scatter symbols each of which serves a particular purpose which we will explore in the sections below.
Wild Features
The Wild symbol is a red heart with the word Wild emblazoned across it and it can be used to substitute for any of the high or low value symbols to create a winning spin. You can land a Wild anywhere across the reels and when you do this tends to be the way you can trigger some of the better value wins in the base game, especially if you can land more than one Wild across the reels on a single spin.
Free Spins Features
The way the Free Spin feature operates in the Beautiful Bones slot is slightly different to that which you would find on most other games. In this game, you collect the Sugar Skull scatter symbols across your spins and as you collect them, the number that you have collected is tallied up on the left hand side of the reels.
You can elect to trigger a Free Spins bonus when you reach 10 Sugar Skull scatters collected and for this you will receive 10 free spins with a 3x multiplier in place. Alternatively, you can keep collecting the Sugar Skulls until you collect 20, where you will be rewarded with 15 free spins with a 4x multiplier. Finally, if you want to push on still further, you can collect 30 Sugar Skull scatters for which you will get the maximum 18 free spins with a 5x multiplier.
What is nice is that you can elect to play this feature when you reach the milestone, or you can keep your tinder dry and try to collect more Skulls until you reach 20 or even 30 collected. The choice is yours, which is a nice touch.
Once launched your Free Spins play out on a slightly different reel set and the Wild Spin Again feature (which we will explore in more detail below) is active during the free spins bonus round, which has the potential to award you even more free spins.
Other Bonus Features
The main additional bonus feature of the Beautiful Bones slot is the Wild Spin Again feature. This is triggered every time you trigger a winning pay line on the slot of three, four or five symbols. When you do, you not only receive your cash payout, but these winning symbols will then combine to produce one or more Wild symbols which will then be placed on the reels for one free re-spin.
You can then earn another win potentially by landing symbols alongside the Wild symbol(s) on the reels for that free re-spin. One nice touch is that this bonus is triggered on every win and also during the free spins bonus, which can result in some additional free spins wins and with these subject to a multiplier of 3x to 5x, that can prove very lucrative indeed.
Best Feature of the Beautiful Bones slot
It is hard to separate the two big bonus features of the Beautiful Bones slot as I think both have excellent features and are equally attractive. With the Free Spins bonus, I like the fact that the player has autonomy over when they trigger free spins. It is nice for a player to have that choice, rather than simply triggering a free spins bonus. I also feel the bonus, with the multipliers, offers the best chance of a sizeable win in the slot.
However, the Wild Spin Again feature is also hugely enjoyable as it is triggered a lot more often and can result in some fantastic value additional wins on a re-spin that you don't have to pay for. Furthermore, this bonus is also active in free spins, which means you get additional free spins on top of what you trigger, each with at least one Wild symbol in place on the reels.
It is impossible for me to decide which of these two features are the best and indeed, I think both features will draw in plenty of slot players to give the game a try.
What does the Beautiful Bones slot lack?
If there's one thing that the Beautiful Bones slot lacks in my view then it is not so much a slot feature, but more a referral back to the original theme of the slot. The Day of the Dead festival is loud, vibrant and features lots of dancing and celebrations and while the slot tries to show that, it doesn't quite capture the mood of the festival in perhaps the way it ought.
I'd have liked to have seen a bonus round that links back to this, even if it was simply a Pick'em round where you receive a small bonus. Then this could have enhanced the celebratory aspect of the slot as well as giving players a third bonus to try out.
However, this is a very picky point I will confess as the actual Beautiful Bones slot is put together very well.
Conclusion
The Beautiful Bones slot is a very well constructed game that has some excellent bonus features which really give the slot an added edge. It is a game which plays as a more medium variance slot, with wins being a mix of sizes and occasionally there may be quieter periods on the game when the slot doesn't pay out much. However there are also times when you can hit bigger value wins relatively quickly and frequently.
The base game and free spins games are livened up considerably with the Wild Spin Again feature which is a fantastic addition to the game and with the usual outstanding presentation that you would come to expect from a Microgaming slot, Beautiful Bones hits all the right notes.
I don't think this slot is quite up there with the very best though. The game-play is a tad repetitive and the jackpot sizes are not particularly jaw-dropping, but if you want a high quality medium variance slot that offers a fair chance of a decent sized win, then Beautiful Bones hits all the right notes.
Ratings
Good Luck!
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