Cash Bonanza review
Cash Bonanza came out of Pragmatic Play on 18 October 2021 and fits a simple picture: fruit, bells and sevens inside a green leather vault stuffed with coins and bundles of dollars. The grid is 6×4, yet it changes in front of the player: every win freezes symbols and adds rows, so the number of ways can climb as high as 262,144. The demo has neither a bonus buy nor an ante mode.
The press release and the developer’s card
The press release calls the slot a classic fruit-inspired masterpiece and a follower of Piggy Bank Bills and Empty the Bank. The setting is a luxurious vault with leather lining, and the headline attraction of the base game is the Increasing Ways Respin: symbols from winning combinations stay on the reels and accumulate value until a payout is made. Yossi Barzely, the chief business development officer, promises expanding reels and says the game is meant for every type of player. YumYum Powerways, Chilli Heat Megaways and Starlight Princess are named as recent hits, and the HTML5 catalog is put at over two hundred titles.
The card on the developer’s website is shorter: a golden vault of coins and dollar bills, a timeless design, fruit symbols and Wilds meant to keep prizes surprising. It states an RTP of 96.52%, one figure for the entire game, but names neither a volatility nor a maximum win. Those have to be read from the game itself.
Ways instead of lines
Payment runs from the left edge across neighbouring reels, and there are no lines in the usual sense: a combination counts when each of several consecutive reels shows the needed symbol in any row. Three of a kind needs three reels, six of a kind needs all six. At the start each reel holds four symbols, giving 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 4,096 ways, as the plaque on the left side of the grid reminds the player.
For each way only the best combination pays, and prizes from different ways add up. Every value is multiplied by the base bet, so the pay table scales along with the coin.
Twelve symbols as shares of the bet
On the rules screen prizes are quoted in money for a 2.00 stake; the table converts them into fractions and multiples of the full bet. The top end is modest: even the priciest seven pays only 10x for six. That is normal for a slot where money arrives through multiplied ways rather than a single combination.
Red seven — 6 of a kind: 10x; 5 of a kind: 5x; 4 of a kind: 2.5x; 3 of a kind: 1x.
Pink star — 6 of a kind: 2.5x; 5 of a kind: 1x; 4 of a kind: 0.5x; 3 of a kind: 0.3x.
Golden bell — 6 of a kind: 2.5x; 5 of a kind: 1x; 4 of a kind: 0.5x; 3 of a kind: 0.3x.
Clover — 6 of a kind: 2x; 5 of a kind: 0.8x; 4 of a kind: 0.4x; 3 of a kind: 0.3x.
Grapes — 6 of a kind: 1x; 5 of a kind: 0.6x; 4 of a kind: 0.3x; 3 of a kind: 0.2x.
Cherry and plum — 6 of a kind: 0.5x; 5 of a kind: 0.3x; 4 of a kind: 0.2x; 3 of a kind: 0.1x.
Lemon, orange, watermelon — 6 of a kind: 0.4x; 5 of a kind: 0.2x; 4 of a kind: 0.1x; 3 of a kind: 0.05x.
Ten paying symbols fall into four steps. The seven stands alone, the star, bell and clover form a second layer, grapes, cherry and plum a third, and the lemon, orange and watermelon close the table. Three lemons on one way return five hundredths of the bet, so the entire arithmetic leans on the number of ways: when they run into the tens of thousands, even small symbols start adding up to noticeable sums.
A single way is easiest to see with an example. Suppose the cherries fall like this: three on the first reel, two on the second, two on the third and none on the fourth. That makes three reels in a row and 3 x 2 x 2 = 12 ways. Each pays 0.1x for three cherries, so 1.2 bets in all. A Wild standing in for a cherry on the third reel does not change the way count, but it can carry the chain on to the fourth reel when that reel holds a cherry or another Wild. The Wild acts as a connector rather than a multiplier.
The Wild from reel two to reel six
The Wild, a bundle of banknotes, never appears on the first reel and shows up from the second one through the sixth. It substitutes for each icon but the vault and stays put during a respin. The pay table gives it no values of its own; it only completes combinations.
Since the first reel carries no Wilds, a chain from the left always begins with a real symbol. A Wild cannot start a combination, so it speeds growth along but does not conjure a win out of empty space.
The vault Scatter: a bonus that stays on screen
The golden safe can drop on any reel. Three or more open the free spins, and like the Wild it freezes in place on every respin. The rules name no separate payout for safes: a safe only opens the round. The trigger check happens at the very end of the respin chain: if three or more safes are on screen, the round is awarded.
While respins continue, safes accumulate. Each frozen safe stretches its reel, which raises the odds of another win and at the same time brings the three-safe threshold closer.
Increasing Ways Respin: how a chain works
The rule fills a whole page of the game’s help. After each spin, the symbols that form winning combinations, all other symbols of the same type, and any Wild and Scatter freeze, and a respin starts. On reels holding frozen symbols the count of possible positions grows by the number of newly frozen symbols. If matching symbols land on the respin or fresh combinations form, they freeze too, another respin begins and the reels grow again. The chain ends when nothing new has been frozen.
Only then does the game pay the sum of all winning combinations on screen. The respins themselves cost nothing extra: however long the chain runs, it is still one paid stake. A reel is capped at eight symbols, and before the next paid spin everything returns to four.
A paper chain and the 262,144-way ceiling
The rules describe the principle but show no examples, so here is one worked by hand. Suppose the opening screen yields a cherry win across the three left reels. The cherries freeze, with two on the first reel, one on the second and two on the third. Those reels grow by two, one and two symbols, and the screen becomes 6, 5, 6, 4, 4, 4 rows. The ways number 6 x 5 x 6 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 11,520 instead of 4,096, nearly triple.
On the respin a cherry drops onto the fourth reel and the combination stretches to four. Now six symbols are frozen, the fourth reel gains one position, and the screen reads 6, 5, 6, 5, 4, 4: already 14,400 ways. If the next respin freezes nothing, the chain ends and the sum across all ways is paid. Each step in that scenario multiplies the potential, yet no step is guaranteed.
The number of ways always equals the product of the six reel heights. With all reels at the same height the landmarks are 15,625 ways at five rows, 46,656 at six, 117,649 at seven and 262,144 at eight, which is 64 times the starting figure. The ceiling is reached only when all six reels have become eight symbols tall, meaning twenty-four extra positions have frozen in total. The press release prints the figure as 262,114, while the game itself says 262144, exactly eight to the sixth power, so the news item contains an evident typo and the rules in the game are the source to trust.
Free spins: eight plus four per extra safe
The round opens with eight spins and four more for every safe beyond three: three safes give 8 free spins, four give 12, five give 16 and six give 20. The length of the round therefore depends on how many safes piled up by the end of the chain.
The round begins from the reel heights reached by the triggering spin. If the chain pushed the grid to 6, 7, 5, 8, 6, 7, the bonus starts with exactly that screen, and during the round the heights are kept after every spin instead of being reset. Ways therefore only grow in the bonus. That is the main difference from the base game, where each new spin returns the grid to four rows.
A retrigger needs just two safes: two give four extra spins, and every additional safe beyond two adds another four. The threshold here is smaller than for the trigger, so the round can run past its initial eight spins.
A +1x multiplier on every respin
The bonus carries a growing multiplier: with each respin it climbs by 1x, and when the respin ends the total win is multiplied by the value reached. The press release phrases it as a multiplier that rises whenever the player lands a winning combination, with the payout boosted at the end of the round.
A multiplier “during the round” is mentioned, but nothing says whether it carries over from spin to spin. A lot hangs on that: if the multiplier runs through the whole round, late spins are paid at 10x, 15x or more, and the grid height by then is at its maximum as well. If it resets, the potential is far more modest.
The 5,000x limit and the cut-off of a bonus round
The top prize is spelled out as 5,000 stakes, and the limit covers ordinary spins and bonus spins alike. Once a bonus total touches that mark, play stops at once: the money is credited and unused spins vanish.
Set that against the pay table. The priciest seven in sixth position pays 10x on each way, so reaching the cap demands hundreds of simultaneous ways under a high multiplier. Such a mix is possible only in the bonus with tall reels and a big counter, and in the base game the limit looks more like a formal boundary than a realistic target.
Medium volatility and “colossal wins”
A Medium volatility icon on the rules page comes with an explanation: such games pay steadily and the range of prizes runs from low to very high. For a mechanic with a growing number of ways that sounds plausible. Most spins end at once or after a single respin, and rare long chains make the session. The payout distribution is not published, though, so the exact balance between small and large results stays unknown.
The press release nevertheless promises colossal wins and multipliers. That does not contradict the medium slot volatility label: the cap is reachable in rare bonuses, while a typical session is made of small payouts, and the label describes typical behaviour rather than the limit.
How screen growth differs from Megaways
At first glance the idea is familiar: a variable row count and a huge number of ways. But in Megaways games the height of each reel is random on every spin, while here it grows predictably, by one rule, from frozen symbols. The player sees the cause of the growth: these cherries stayed put, so their reel got that many rows more. The ceilings differ too: a typical Megaways game stops at seven rows, while here a reel climbs to eight.
Neighbours in the studio’s lineup
Cash Bonanza — RTP: 96.52%; Volatility: medium; Maximum win: 5,000x.
Piggy Bank Bills — RTP: 96.50%; Volatility: medium; Maximum win: 5,000x.
Chilli Heat Megaways — RTP: 96.50%; Volatility: low; Maximum win: 5,000x.
243 Crystal Fruits — RTP: 96.55%; Volatility: medium; Maximum win: 100x.
In Piggy Bank Bills the same studio took a money theme with the same ceiling and the same label. Chilli Heat Megaways offers a different idea with a changing row count, but carries a low label. Fruit classics with a fixed number of ways come from Tom Horn Gaming in 243 Crystal Fruits, which has a far lower ceiling.
