Bonus Game Slots
A bonus game is a separate stage with its own rules, from pick screens to trails, entered by a stated trigger and settled by stated values.
How bonus games work
A bonus game is a stage that plays by different rules from the base spins. The trigger is stated, most often a count of Scatter Symbols, and the game then leaves the reels for a defined round. The term covers every format that is not simply more spins, and the formats share nothing except having their own rules.
The common formats are small in number. Pick screens offer hidden prizes until a stated end condition. Trail rounds move a marker across a board, with steps decided by spins or picks and prizes attached to positions. Wheel stages, covered under Wheel Bonus, settle a prize in one spin. A holding board, covered under Hold & Win, locks values across respins.
The round differs from Free Spins in one structural way. Free spins reuse the base game with modifiers, so the paytable still governs the results. A bonus game replaces the paytable with its own value set, and the rules of the round are the only place those values are defined.
Disclosure therefore carries more weight here than anywhere else in a slot. The rules should state the trigger, the end condition and the value range of the round’s prizes. Where picks are involved, the rules should say whether outcomes are predetermined, and a fair number of games decline to say, which is itself worth recording.
A bonus game is a second, smaller game sold inside the first. It deserves the same reading the base game gets, and its rules either survive that reading or the round remains an unlabelled box a player is asked to value blind.