Mine Blown: Slot Overview
Taking up the pickaxe today for a spot of underground mining is experienced online slot maker NetEnt. The occasion is Mine Blown, a clever name which does its share of blowing things up from time to time. It also has two bonus rounds – free spins and bonus spins, plus various other ways of potentially collecting precious resources from the ground.
A subterranean wooden space is the location for Mine Blown’s base game and its free spins phase. A pipe jiggles, fans blow, and the room is a little claustrophobic, but not a bad place to get the mining started. There’s no miner character in Mine Blown, surprisingly, but in his place, NetEnt has laid on a guitar-driven tune, as if the miners have tuned into a local rock station to keep them entertained while they’re breaking into the Earth. Bonus spins take place at a lower depth in a reassuringly sturdier-looking part of the mine.
Whatever the phase, Mine Blown plays out on a 5-reel, 3-row gaming grid. For the base game and free spins, Mine Blown uses 10 paylines for awarding wins whereas the bonus game has a collect cash values win system. A 96% figure is the game’s highest RTP value, while its volatility is on the medium side. Stakes vary from 10 c to $/€40 per spin, with no ante bet or feature buys in sight.
Winning combinations in Mine Blown begin on the leftmost reel, paying left to right. Ten to Ace are the low pays, while highs are items of mining such as picks, lanterns, shovels, and helmets. Wild symbols substitute all high and low win pay symbols.
Mine Blown: Slot Features
Trigger symbols and special symbols activate free spins where wilds are sticky or bonus spins where Vein symbol values are collected. Other extras in Mine Blown are the Dynamite Feature and the TNT Feature.
Triggers
Triggers are symbols that land on the leftmost reel and the middle reel in the base game; 2 of them are required, along with other special symbols, to trigger the bonus round or the free spins round. When 2 triggers land without a Bonus symbol, players win 3x the bet.
Dynamite Feature & TNT
A random number of dynamite symbols may appear, and any that hit the reels explode to transform symbols into wilds. Only 1 TNT symbol may land on the reels anywhere. It explodes to transform itself and some adjacent symbols into wilds.
Free Spins
Landing 2 Trigger symbols and 1 Free Spins symbol on the rightmost reel awards 10 free spins. Should a Free Spins symbol land in the round it awards +3 free spins. Any wild symbols landing during the feature lock and remain locked till free spins end.
Bonus Spins
Landing 2 Trigger symbols and 1 Bonus symbol on the rightmost reel activates 3 bonus spins where only Vein symbols land. Bonus spins start with a mine cart holding 3x in value on the middle position of the bottom row. Any Vein symbol that lands is collected by the cart. The amount accumulated in the cart at the end of the feature is awarded to the player. During Bonus spins, any Dynamite explosions convert symbols to Vein symbols instead of wilds. TNT symbols also convert symbols to Veins, not wilds. Vein symbols come in these forms:
- Undiscovered Vein – has no value but can explode from Dynamite and TNT symbols to reveal other Vein symbols.
- Gold Vein – increases the cart value by +1.
- Sapphire Vein – increases the cart value by +3.
- Emerald Vein – increases the cart value by +5 and awards +1 spin.
- Ruby Vein – increases the cart value by +10 and awards +1 spin.
- Diamond Vein – increases the cart value by +25 and awards +3 spins.
Mine Blown: Slot Verdict
Another day, another mining slot, and NetEnt’s Mine Blown isn’t without its charm. It doesn’t have a lot of thrilling charm, though, as excitement levels seriously lagged at times. A lot of times. The thing was, Mine Blown never really blew its top or felt like it was ever going to. The base game offers the odd distraction, Trigger teases, and an active background, but not much took place there. Neither really in free spins either, mainly because even though wilds are sticky, very few seemed to hit and didn’t do much with the paylines they had to work with. Mine Blown’s sights and sounds are quite lively, but they only do so much to carry the game.
Bonus spins were Mine Blown’s most interesting part, and that’s saying something because they’re peculiarly underpowered. One reason why is that Gold Veins, the most common of the Veins, are only worth 1x the bet, and you’ve only got 3 spins to gather as many as possible. Blink, and you miss them. Unless you collect Emerald Veins or up, which award extra spins to keep the round going. Even then, bonus spins, like the rest of Mine Blown, lack major firepower. Max win isn’t huge as a result, calculated as 2,484.8x the bet, which seems about right after seeing the game in action.
Clearly, if your idea of a swell time underground is something like Dead Canary or Fire in the Hole 2, then Mine Blown just ain’t going to cut the mustard. It’s better geared towards more casual play, chilling out to the rockin’ sounds, blasting through a couple of low-key bonus rounds, and maybe finding a virtual jewel or two.
Poor
Mine Blown is unlikely to blow your mind.
