Pulse 8 Studios is yet another independent developer under the Microgaming umbrella, and they have stated ambitions of creating the “most innovative and diverse gaming content” that “shows the market endless possibilities”. There’s nothing wrong with lofty ambitions, but a release like Bust The Mansion is hardly putting your money where your mouth is. There is very little new to see here, and the audiovisual presentation is mediocre too.
You’ve already broken into the mansion as the game starts, and the reels look like a bookshelf full of valuable artifacts and cash vault symbols. The alarm goes off as you trigger the Link&Win feature, and filling the grid awards the 5,000x Grand Jackpot. We got the feature quite often during testing, and it has a higher chance of triggering from within the bonus round for reasons you’ll understand from the feature section below.
The 4 premium symbols pay between 6 and 20 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, and the Wild symbol pays 400x your stake for the same. The wild, of course, also steps in for all regular pay symbols to help complete winning combinations. Other than that, you can look forward to the Link&Win feature, as well as a regular bonus round.
The Link&Win bonus triggers when you land 6+ vault money symbols anywhere in view, and as the burglary alarm goes off the triggering vault symbols become sticky on a new and otherwise cleared grid. You start with 3 respins, and each new cash vault or jackpot symbol that lands resets the respins tally to 3 again.
The Mini, Minor, Major and Mega jackpot symbols are worth 20x, 50x, 200x and 1,000x your stake, respectively, and you can land more than one during the feature. To win the Grand Jackpot worth 5,000x your stake however, you need to fill the grid completely with non-blank symbols. This also ends the Link&Win feature, and your total payout is then summed up.
The Bonus Round triggers when you land 3, 4 or 5 golden key scatters anywhere in view, and this gives you 10, 15 or 25 free spins, respectively. The middle reel is replaced by a special reel where only money vault symbols land, and they serve double duty as wilds. This can help trigger the Link&Win feature from within the bonus round, while also helping you with regular wins. You can retrigger the bonus round with extra spins by landing 3 or 4 scatters on the same free spin.