When you think of the glory of a big jackpot, chances are that the image of your grandmother doesn’t come to mind. In fact, we’re pretty sure that most players associate little old ladies more with the bingo hall than winning big in a casino.
But Microgaming would like you to think about grandma in a whole new way. In Billion Dollar Gran, the sweet lady sitting quietly at the table turns into a jackpot-awarding superstar, offering you the chance to win tens of thousands of dollars on a single spin. This pokie may not be the most complex game around, but there aren’t many that can match the prizes this Billion Dollar Gran will offer you. See the full list of online pokies reviews.
How to play Billion Dollar Gran
Billion Dollar Gran is a three-reel, single pay-line poker machine that can be found at online gambling sites powered by Microgaming. The basic game-play is quite simple: you can only play for one coin at a time, so there isn’t much in the way of complex math to do. However, that coin can be worth anywhere from $0.10 to $10, giving you quite a bit of variety when it comes to how much you can choose to spend on each spin.
Perhaps the first thing you’ll notice in this game – other than the background and imagery, which fit the bill of a stereotypical house for a little old lady – is the fact that it includes many of the popular “fruit machine” features we’ve seen quite a bit of on Microgaming’s three-reel slot machines. This means that at any time, you might randomly be awarded with holds or nudges that can help you more easily score wins. For instance, a nudge allows you to move a reel one position to complete a winning combination, while a hold will allow you to keep one or more reels in place for the next time you spin. Some of these features can also be randomly “banked” and held over for a few spins should you not want to use them right away. You can even be lucky enough after a losing spin to be automatically granted a win!
Winning is not a simple matter of just putting the right symbols together on the win line, however. If you’ve played similar games before, you might not be surprised to see that Billion Dollar Gran uses the “win-spins” system, in which the combinations you make in the base game only earn you spins on a secondary set of reels, where you can earn the real prizes. Depending on the symbols you connect with, you can earn as many as 25 win-spins – a prize that is awarded if you match three of old Gran herself. Other symbols that grant win spins include cherries, sevens, and cups of tea.
The Real Reels
Once you’ve reached the secondary screen, you’ll have the opportunity to score some real wins. Here, you’ll be presented with another three-reel slot machine; however, this one offers five pay-lines, each of which can earn you prizes. There are a total of seven different symbols that can earn you prizes, from the yarn – which earns you back one coin each time you complete three in a row – to Gran herself, which offers a massive 500x prize. This means that if you were to hit three Grans on every pay-line, you’d win 2,500 coins on that win-spin – up to $25,000 if you played for the maximum of $10! Since you’ll often have multiple win-spins, you can win far more than this if you get lucky on several of your spins.
Bonus Round
Unlike many real money online pokies of this style, Billion Dollar Gran also features an exciting bonus round that can earn you even bigger rewards. The bonus round is triggered if you should manage to hit three bowl symbols on the pay-line during any one spin. When this occurs, you’ll get to play through a second screen bonus in which you’ll get to go lawn bowling with Gran. Your goal is to help her hit the target; the better you do, the bigger the potential rewards. This game can potentially award you up to 2,000 times the cost of your coin, so any time you activate this game, be prepared to win big!
Overall, Billion Dollar Gran is a surprising deep and entertaining game. When we first decided to test this one out, we weren’t expecting much; the theme looked amusing, but we expected some pretty bland game-play. We couldn’t have been more wrong about this pokie though, as Billion Dollar Gran really packs a lot of variety into a rather basic design. Between the two-stage game-play, the fruit machine features and the bowling bonus round, we expect that online gamblers won’t quickly grow tired of hanging around with Gran – especially if they are lucky enough to get a small piece of her fortune.
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Billion Dollar Gran verdict
Billion Dollar Gran is a serviceable online pokies game by one of the world’s largest providers. Unfortunately Aussies can no longer play Billion Dollar Gran at leading online casinos, because of local laws, which forced Microgaming to leave the country.