Just like Vegas - 'what happens in a black hole stays in a black hole'. Thank you, Internet, for that side-splitting start to the review of Gravity Bonanza, an online slot from developer Pragmatic Play. No stranger to the outer limits of human travel, Pragmatic Play earlier ventured forth into the great inky unknown in the crash game Spaceman, but Gravity Bonanza, by contrast, is a more conventional online slot. It utilises a tumble mechanic in conjunction with a Black Hole symbol feature to hoover up certain symbols to potentially award a Gravity Bonus – possibly with a multiplier in free spins. If flirting with one of the most mysterious objects in the entire universe appeals, then suit up for Gravity Bonanza and come take a look.
You won't be alone if you do as a suited-up spaceman hovers next to the reels on the right-hand side of the screen before a planetoid-filled sky above the exotic landscape of an alien world. It's a pretty cosmic scene, but not sure about Gravity Bonanza's tunes, though. Personal preference, yet the tunes sounded better suited to sun down at Café Del Mar than Earthrise over the moon. It's not a bad tune, just a bit out of place, perhaps, though it makes no major difference to the gaming side of Gravity Bonanza.
>Gravity Bonanza is played on a 7x7 sized game grid and uses a cluster pays system to form wins. Wins are awarded when at least 5 matching symbols land, connected to each other in horizontal or vertical directions. With its highly volatile math model, Gravity Bonanza has a default RTP value of 96.09% when betting 20 p/c to $/€240 per spin, or 95.99% when buying the bonus round.
All of Gravity Bonanza's pay symbols have a universe-y look to them and consist of things like planets. Or something like that. There are 7 of them in total, awarding 0.2 to 1 times the bet for a 5-matching symbols cluster or 1,000 to 10,000x the bet for a 31+ sized winning cluster. Gravity Bonanza does not have a wild symbol, yet it does have a scatter symbol and a Black Hole symbol. The tumble feature removes all winning symbols from the reels when they hit. Symbols left on the reel strips tumble down to fill the empty gaps, which may create a brand-new win. Tumbles end when no new win is created.
>Space might be pretty far out, man, but Gravity Bonanza's features are more down to earth, in some ways, and consist of a Black Hole symbol, the Gravity Bonus, free spins, and a bonus buy.
Only 1 Black Hole symbol may land during one spin and all tumbles resulting from it. When a Black Hole Symbol hits, a random type of symbol is chosen, and all instances of this symbol in view and on following tumbles are collected by the Gravity Bonus indicator. When tumbles end, the total number of collected symbols is paid according to the pay table.
Hitting 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatter symbols in the base game awards 10, 15, 20, 30, or 50 free spins, respectively. In the free spins round, extra free spins are awarded in the same way. During the round, when the Black Hole symbol hits, it can do so with a multiplier of x2, x3, x5, or x10, which is applied to the Gravity Bonus prize when awarded.
Players keen to rocket into the bonus round can do so for the cost of 100x the bet. Once bought, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatter symbols will land to trigger the feature.
>For a while, black holes existed only in theory, thanks to luminaries like Albert Einstein and Karl Schwarzschild, until the first one, Cygnus X-1, was identified in 1971. Fascinating phenomenon, one way black holes are formed is when a massive star collapses in on itself, its weight crushing in on all sides to compress the star into a singularity – a point of infinite density and zero volume that is exceptionally good at drawing in things which happen to float too close by. To push a metaphor, Pragmatic Play is rather good at drawing in all manner of ideas that cross its path for use in its games, as well. It kinda has to, really, so frequently does the studio sling slots out the door. Seriously, the rate Pragmatic Play can produce games, usually of a decent quality too, we might add, is staggering.
Very broadly speaking, some slots quite often follow a relatively similar template – pick a theme, think of a feature for the base game, then expand the feature in a bonus round. Not that Pragmatic Play follows this approach exclusively, yet this is generally how Gravity Bonanza plays out, not badly either. Black Hole symbols follow their real-life counterparts by collecting symbols to build a Gravity Bonus, and maybe with a multiplier in free spins. Simple yet fun, clever without being game-changing, but good for producing wins of up to 10,000x the bet.
Being torn to bits as you're being dragged across the event horizon of a black hole where gravity is so crushingly powerful not even light can escape its pull would be pretty boo, right? However, in Gravity Bonanza, Pragmatic Play has flipped the idea so that you want Black Hole symbols to hit as much as possible in what is an entertainingly, cosmically minded game.
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