Bounty Hunter Unchained

Bounty Hunter Unchained: Slot Overview

Players, if you'd like to live out any Dog the Bounty Hunter or Sadie Adler fantasies, come take a look at Bounty Hunter Unchained from developer Blueprint Gaming. Just to be clear, a bounty hunter, in this case, is a person who goes after criminals or fugitives for some type of reward. While most people steer clear of criminals, these brave individuals do the opposite, heading towards danger for money certainly, but possibly for the thrill of the chase, the adrenal rush of closing in on a bounty, and the personal satisfaction of bringing lawbreakers to justice. Blueprint Gaming may be hoping players experience some of these emotions while taking on Bounty Hunter Unchained, an online slot where persistent wilds, Wanted Wilds, free spins with a rising multiplier, and more may be found.

Bounty Hunter Unchained is a Western-themed online slot set in about as desolate a place as these sorts of games get. Players are far away from a smoky saloon or moseying bow-legged through a quaint wooden frontier town while the sun romantically lights up a blazing red sky filled with clouds that stretch to the edge of the horizon, invoking thoughts on the timeless ebb and flow of nature and what an individual's place in it might be. On the contrary, it doesn't look like the sun has shone on these parts in a long while. Instead, snow buckets down on a grim isolated patch in the mountains, as if some baddy has been hiding out and has just been discovered by a determined bounty hunter. With a faintly True Grit Redemption feel, Bounty Hunter Unchained tees players up for a desperate showdown way out in the boonies.

The active gaming area consists of 6 reels holding 4 positions each, plus a Top Tracker reel with 4 positions sitting above reels 2-5. However, Blocker Crates may land, which are valueless symbols taking up space, reducing the number of ways to win. When wins occur next to a Blocker Crate, the Crate is removed, and at the most, Bounty Hunter Unchained can have up to 10,000 ways to win. The math model is highly volatile, and no matter how the game is played – betting on individual spins at 20 c to $/€10 a pop or buying either of the bonus rounds, the RTP holds steady at 96.12%.

The cascade mechanic removes, or in this game slices and shoots, winning symbols from the reels when they create a win (not the Bounty Hunter Wild as discussed). Removed symbols are replaced by symbols dropping down from above on the main reels or sideways on the Tracker, and cascade runs only end when no more wins appear. As for the paytable, we get 5 high pay Outlaw symbols, all armed, most looking dangerous as the high pays, as well as metallic 10 to A card royals as the low pays. Hitting a 6 OAK winning way pays out 0.3 to 0.4 times the bet for the card ranks or 1 to 5 times the bet for 6 of the same Outlaw symbol. The bounty hunter in Bounty Hunter Unchained is the wild symbol, appearing only on the Top Tracker reel. The bounty hunter wild substitutes for any pay symbol and is never removed during winning cascades.

Bounty Hunter Unchained: Slot Features

As well as cascades, Bounty Hunter Unchained counts Wanted Wilds, Bounty Hunter Free Spins, Unchained Free Spins, and bonus buys as its features.

Wanted Wilds

Any win with a Bounty Hunter Wild and a high-pay Outlaw symbol converts the Outlaw into a Wanted Wild on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5 or the Top Tracker for that spin. Wanted Wilds replace any pay symbol and get multipliers of x2 to x10. Wanted Wilds are removed when used in a win.

Bounty Hunter Free Spins

In the base game, landing 3 or 4 scatter symbols awards 6 or 8 Bounty Hunter Free Spins, respectively. Any winning cascade during the round increases the win multiplier by +1, which never resets during free spins. Any Wanted Wilds created on a free spin do not hold over between spins. Each scatter that lands (they only appear on the Tracker in the bonus) awards up to +2 additional free spins.

Unchanged Free Spins

Should 5 or 6 scatters land in the base game, players win 10 or 12 Unchained Free Spins, respectively. For this round, the rules are the same as Bounty Hunter Free Spins, except that any Wanted Wilds created on a free spin remain active till the bonus ends.

Buy Bonus

From the bonus buy menu, players can get Bounty Hunter Free Spins for 80 times the bet or Unchained Free Spins for 250 times the bet.

Bounty Hunter Unchained: Slot Verdict

Blueprint Gaming isn't exactly majorly renowned for its Western gunslinger slots. Bison or mining slots, sure, the team has dropped plenty of those, not to mention King of the West a while back, but it's not a genre the studio has done a heck of a lot of business in. Perhaps, when designing Bounty Hunter Unchained, the team looked to one of the heavy-weight designers of Western slots, Nolimit City, for some inspiration. There are a few things in Bounty Hunter Unchained which provoked this speculation. The grim setting, the way winning symbols are sliced, the two tiers of bonus rounds and so on. We could be way off the mark, of course, but just making an observation.

Bounty Hunter Unchained's action isn't as intricate as an NLC sudoku of a slot, though, meaning the learning curve is a lot less steep. The base game is a mix of quasi-Megaways reel dynamics due to the inclusion and destruction of Blocker Crates, as well as transforming high-pay Outlaws into multiplier Wanted Wilds when lucky enough to land them in a win with the Bounty Hunter Wild. Not a hugely common occurrence during testing, but it may be enough to keep player interest up. Landing more than 4 scatter symbols naturally wasn't the easiest task, though desirable since Wanted Wilds hold their values in the Unchained Free spins that follow. Presumably, this is where the best chance for hitting impressive returns is, which could be anything up to 8,000x the bet or $/€250,000 - whichever comes first.

By the end, Bounty Hunter Unchained didn't feel like it was going to be recorded in the annals of Western slot history as one of the greats, but enthusiasts of this style should be happy enough with the particular set of features, and the uncommon location in which to experience them.