Mr Miner Slot
Mr Miner is a video slot from R Franco Games that will have you digging for treasures in a jewel-filled cavern. The action is helped by a cartoon character who blasts away at symbols, causing the reels to collapse and potentially create multiple winning lines for a single wager. There are 5 reels down this mine, each 3 symbols high, with 20 paylines running across them. While wins in the base games come from landing 3 or more of the same symbol across a line from the left side, Mr Miner helps us out by including a wild symbol, a bonus round where we need to pick fireflies, and a cute mole that comes along from time to time to collapse whole rows of symbols.
Mining seems to be a hot topic among online casino slot developers, perhaps because it gives them the chance to add lots of precious metals and jewels to the mix of symbols. Mr Miner is a good-looking addition to these games. Each symbol position is set in a block of stone and the whole mine is lit up by an eerie blue light, except at the bottom of the cavern where pink toadstools glow in the dark. Mr Miner himself is a red-bearded guy in denim dungarees and a checked shirt who stands to the left of the game, pressing a big red button to get things off to an explosive start.
Before we explore this mine, we’ll have a quick look at the R Franco Games company. The name stands for Recreativos Franco, which has been running since 1965. Clearly, the team haven’t been releasing online and mobile-optimized slot games since then, but they have spent most of the last five decades supplying games to land-based casinos, mostly in their native Spain. At one point, they were supplying 40% of the local betting market with their Los Gnomos gaming model. Now licensed by seven different gambling regulation bodies, they are expanding into international markets and hoping for as much success abroad as they have had at home.
Tunnel Vision
Mr Miner has a rich vein of valuable symbols running through it – from the lump of bronze that’s worth 2x, 10x, or 50x the line stake when it’s on 3, 4, or 5 reels; going up in value with silver and gold ingots; to the green, red and purple jewels. The top prizes are claimed when players strike gold by landing a treasure chest across a payline, which are worth 50x, 250x and 2,500x the amount staked per line.
From deep within the earth, Mr Miner has dug up a fiery wild symbol which is able to substitute for any of the above. This will help complete winning combinations if it’s able to fill in any gaps in a continuous run of matching symbols. Or it will extend a run to the right side of the game, which will result in a higher-value prize.
Any time you land a win, the symbols that created it will explode and new ones will drop down from above to fill the voids. This Collapsing Reels feature can often lead to new winning lines of symbols which will also explode and so on, until you don’t see any more wins. With each collapse in a sequence, a multiplier is applied to the prizes. This starts with a doubled reward and is then tripled on the next collapse, with no upper limit as to how long these can continue.
A cross-eyed mole in a miner helmet can turn up at any time, digging through any row of symbols from right to left and causing them to collapse further. While this rewarding rodent doesn’t always give us new winning lines, it’s a further free bonus that’s always fun to watch.
Finding Fireflies
A wooden crate stuffed with sticks of dynamite is a special bonus symbol that triggers a side game when it’s seen in any 3 or more places. However, it only lands on reels 1, 3 and 5, and isn’t worth anything on its own. Still, this bonus round will always pay out, and it can bring in multiple rewards as you pick from the fireflies buzzing around the mineshafts.
Each fly conceals a prize amount or takes you to different levels of the mine where more flies can be found. Keep picking away at these buzzing beasties until you run out of flies, find a stop sign, or – Heaven forbid – you come across the Death symbol. All of these will end the round.
Mining for Coins
Click the little pile of coins below the reels to set your bet level, which can range from just 0.10 per line to a high limit of 2.00 for a 40.00 maximum stake. With a high return-to-players percentage of 96.49%, punters can be sure that on average, almost all of what they wager will come back as winnings. This means there’s a great chance of collecting some bigger rewards as you dig through with Mr Miner.
The autoplay mode sets those reels collapsing for up to 100 times on their own. There’s no fast spin option, though, so impatient players will just have to wait for the symbols to stop in their own time. Anyone who wants to hear the blocks of symbols crash into place, accompanied by a bit of music, can turn up the volume and get the full effect. If you want to see how it works before playing for real cash, then R Franco Games has provided free Mr Miner video slots. But where’s the fun in playing this way when you can’t actually win anything?
Other Exciting Excavations
There are more exciting nuggets to be uncovered in other games that follow the mining theme, with the Boom Brothers video slot from NetEnt perhaps being one of the best – not only within this genre, but pretty much among anything else as well. It’s got fantastic graphics which tell a backstory as the game loads up. Once the 5 reels are on screen, players are rewarded with CGI characters that blow things up to grant extra features.
Those features include a second chance at wins when one of the brothers throws a bomb at the reels, and between 8 and 50 free spins bonus games. But a unique Railtrack game sees these hapless brothers laying down minecart tracks that lead to precious metals and jewels at the end of the line. If you want to dig further down to find mining-themed slots, then how about swinging your pickaxe at Gold Mine from Microgaming? It comes with a simple-looking 3-reel setup where gold coins are collected for extra bonus payouts, while sticks of dynamite will lead to instant multiplier rewards.
Digging for Victory
The many years of experience that R Franco has built up since the 1960s mean it knows how to produce a slot machine which will attract a wide audience. Mr Miner is another great example of a game that looks good and plays well, with features that will keep players entertained. Top-notch graphics, the Collapsing Reels format and multipliers should ensure that even the base games are enjoyable. We really liked the mole feature, plus the fireflies round comes with quality animations and can be quite lucrative.
The buzz about Mr Miner is very positive. So, whether you play it on a desktop computer, or using an Android, Windows, iPad or iPhone mobile device, we’re sure you will enjoy the underground antics of this game.
