Barrel Bonanza: Slot Overview

You could say this about any year, really, but 1981 was a rather eventful one. Amongst many other things, President Ronald Reagan was shot, the first case of HIV/AIDS began in the USA, Pope John Paul II was also shot, and the Salvadoran Army killed up to 1,000 people in El Mozote (info from Wikipedia). However, it was not all doom and gloom. Not only did Prince Charles marry Lady Diana, but in July of that year, Donkey Kong was released, which would become Nintendo's first success internationally, totally altering the video gaming landscape while introducing the world to a certain Italian plumber going by the name of Mario.

Since then, the influence of Mario and Kong has been felt far and wide for decades in a wide variety of ways. This influence has filtered down to the online gambling world, too. One example is the online slot Barrel Bonanza from Hacksaw Gaming partner Backseat Gaming. It features a muscled simian who throws barrels onto a gaming grid in order to produce wilds/wild multipliers. In this tropical paradise, you won't find Mario, though; that would have been too much of a copyright assault, while a gorilla is a more generic character, one presumes. In this reconstructed nod to video game royalty, palm trees move in the breeze, Kong hangs to the side with his huge hands, and upbeat music adds to the feeling good by the sea factor.

For Barrel Bonanza, Backseat Gaming has built a gaming grid out of bamboo and filled it with 5 reels, 4 rows, and 14 paylines. Statistically, this is a medium volatile slot, though volatility and RTP change when buying features. The default return value is 96.23%, and this is when betting 10 c to $/€100 per spin. Other values are listed below.

The pay symbols used in Barrel Bonanza are a simple set of card royals and fruit. The low pays are where the 10 to A royals come in, while the highs are cherries, watermelons, pineapples, and bananas. Hitting 5 matching card symbols pays 1-2 times the bet, or 4-10 times the bet when landing 5 matching fruit. Wilds substitute for any regular pay symbols and appear on all reels. A winning line of 5 wilds pays the same as the bananas do.

Barrel Bonanza: Slot Features

Mario might not have enjoyed having barrels being thrown at him, but barrels are a boon in Barrel Bonanza since they produce wilds/wild multipliers. These wilds become sticky in the free spins bonus round, while all features are triggerable for a cost from the bonus buy.

Going Bananas

When the Going Bananas feature activates, Kong throws 1 to 5 wild barrels onto random reel positions, usually revealing a multiplier when they land. There are 3 tiers of barrels – low, medium, and high. Low-tier barrels are Wild (no multiplier) to x10, medium is x5 to x50, and high is x30 to x100. If a barrel lands on a barrel already on the reels, it bounces and duplicates, so 2 barrels fly to new positions on the grid. If either of those barrels hit another barrel, the bouncing and duplicating repeats until all barrels land on a position that is not already occupied by one.

Bonus Game

Players win 10, 12, or 14 free spins when landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols in the base game. During the bonus game, all barrels remain sticky and reveal a new random value from their tier on each spin. The Going Bananas feature triggers more frequently during the bonus game. Scatter symbols do not appear during free spins.

Bonus Buy

Barrel Bonanza gives players the chance to buy features from the buy bonus section. The options are these; all are highly volatile:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins – 3x the bet for a spin that is 5 times more likely to trigger the bonus game. RTP 96.36%.
• Kong FeatureSpins – 25x the bet for a spin that guarantees to activate Going Bananas. RTP 96.29%.
• Bonus Game – 100x the bet to receive 10, 12, or 14 free spins. RTP 96.26%.

Barrel Bonanza: Slot Verdict

Barrel Bonanza didn't feel destined to disrupt the iGaming scene the way Donkey Kong exploded over the video gaming one, but it's a positive slot on the whole. It did get a little slow in the base game in between Going Bananas features which weren't very frequent. Those in-between times were filled with dead spins, or typically low-value wins, with few to no extras padding them out. Round they go, till Kong feels the urge to start lobbing barrels into the game. Outside of BonusHunt FeatureSpins, which could get manically exciting, Barrel Bonanza was not like Donkey Kong, where barrels roll down in annoyingly high abundance, yet there are moments.

These moments can really kick off when Kong throws barrels on top of other barrels, causing them to bounce and duplicate, which may then go on to bounce then duplicate some more if they land on barrels again. The process is similar to the scene in Harry Potter, when Harry and his chums break into Bellatrix Lestrange's vault at Gringotts Wizarding Bank, and the treasure starts multiplying like crazy. Those parts of Barrel Bonanza were rare but neat. If you can get a solid bounce going in the free spins round, it'd be even neater since wilds are sticky there, and we know how useful that trait can be.

What's good to know is that Barrel Bonanza's max win of 10,000x the bet is not dependent on stacking the grid with sticky wilds during a free spins session. The reason why is the top prize is technically achievable in all game modes, the info page makes this clear. In conclusion, what we've got here is an enjoyable game with the potential to go bananas when our pal Kong is playing it fast and loose with the barrels.