Online pokies today come with a wide variety of in-game bonus features.
Free Spins Rounds
Typically triggered by landing Scatter symbols, free spins let you spin the reels a set number of times without deducting any bet from your balance. Free spin rounds often come with extra perks, for example, higher multipliers, additional Wild symbols, or special expanding symbols during the free game.
Free spins bonuses are great for extending play and can lead to big payouts, especially when combined with other features like multipliers (many pokies offer free spins with win multipliers or increasing multipliers on each win). It’s not uncommon for 3+ Scatters to award, say, 10 free spins with a 2× multiplier on all wins, or even a chance to retrigger more spins by landing more Scatters during the feature.
Pick-and-Click Mini-Games
These are interactive features where the pokie presents you with a selection of on-screen items (like treasure chests, coins, or icons). You get to pick one or several of them to reveal instant prizes.
Pick-and-click bonuses are usually triggered by bonus symbols or a special combo, and they add a fun, game show-like element to pokies.
The prizes can range from small coin wins to major hits like a jackpot or a big multiplier. For instance, a pokie might have a “Click the Coin” bonus where you pick 3 out of 12 coins on the screen, each revealing a cash amount that gets added up, and maybe finding 3 matching symbols could even trigger a jackpot prize.
Bonus Wheels and Prize Drops
Many pokies feature a bonus wheel that you get to spin for a prize. This is often in jackpot pokies or games with multiple feature possibilities. If triggered, you’ll see a big wheel (like a Wheel of Fortune) spin and land on a segment which could award anything from free spins, a multiplier, a jackpot, or entry into another bonus.
A similar concept is prize drop features, where random prizes (cash, jackpots) drop onto the reels or screen.
Bonus wheel rounds ramp up the suspense. You watch the wheel slowing down, hoping it stops on the best reward. An example could be a “Jackpot Wheel” that guarantees one of several fixed jackpots or bonus rounds. These features usually come on top of other bonuses (e.g., triggered by a special Wheel symbol or after a free spin round ends, you might get a chance at a wheel).
Cascading Wins (Avalanche Reels)
This is a popular mechanic in modern pokies where symbols that form a win explode or disappear, then new symbols fall in (or “cascade”) from above to fill the gaps. Essentially, one spin can lead to multiple consecutive wins: each time a winning combo occurs, those symbols vanish and new ones take their place, potentially creating another win, and so on.
Cascading reels (also called Tumbling reels or Avalanche) often continue until no new win is formed in a sequence. This feature by itself isn’t a separate “bonus round,” but it greatly enhances regular gameplay and is often paired with other bonuses.
For example, some games apply an increasing multiplier with each consecutive cascade win in one spin, so by the 3rd or 4th tumble your wins might be doubled or tripled, etc. Cascading wins add a lot of excitement because a single paid spin can chain into a big payout if luck is on your side.
Sticky Wilds, Expanding Symbols, and Multipliers
These are special enhanced symbols that usually come into play during bonus rounds (or sometimes in base game for added excitement).
A Sticky Wild is a wild symbol that, once it lands, stays in place for multiple spins, often until the bonus round ends or for a set number of spins. This can dramatically increase your chances of hitting winning lines on subsequent spins since the wild is effectively “locked” in a favorable spot.
Expanding symbols can refer to either wilds or special symbols that expand to fill an entire reel when they land, thus creating more winning combinations (common in “Book of”-style pokies where one random symbol in free spins will expand across reels if a win is possible).
Multipliers can appear in many forms: a wild might carry a 2× or 3× multiplier value (and if multiple multiplier wilds are in a win line, they often multiply together); or there may be a multiplier trail that increases as you hit consecutive wins or progress through a bonus. For example, some free spin rounds have a multiplier that increments by +1 after each spin or each win, so later spins can pay out much more.
Sticky wilds and multipliers tend to boost volatility. They might not appear often, but when they do, the payouts can skyrocket due to multiple winlines or multiplied wins.
Bonus Buy Feature
The Bonus Buy (feature buy) option allows players to pay a fixed price (a multiple of their bet) to instantly trigger the pokie’s bonus round, instead of waiting for it to land naturally. For example, a game might offer a bonus buy for 100× your current bet to jump straight into the free spins feature.
Some games even offer tiered buys (e.g. pay 50× for a smaller feature or 100× for the main feature, sometimes even a higher amount for a super-enhanced bonus). This can be very appealing if you’re impatient or just really want to experience the bonus without spinning for an hour, but it comes at a steep cost. We’ll discuss later whether using bonus buys is wise, but it’s certainly an interesting option to have.
Bonus Buy is typically disabled for Australian players on locally licensed sites, since Australian regulations currently don’t allow it. However, at many offshore or crypto casinos like the ones you’ll find at Best Australian Online Pokies, the feature is available. Always check the game. If the little “Buy Feature” button is present (often shown as a shopping cart or star symbol in the interface), you have the option, otherwise you’ll have to trigger bonuses the old-fashioned way.
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