California Gold Slot by NextGen

California Gold Bonus Game and Free Spins

You have three additional opportunities to receive a prize in California Gold by NextGen: a bonus round triggered by the Wild, free spins by Scatter and a double-up game. If Wild symbols line up on the second, third and fourth reels, the bonus game, called Mad Miner Bonus, begins. A map with four mines appears on the screen and you need to pick one of them. You can get from this mine up to five golden nuggets of different weight. The ultimate prize for the round is calculated as follows: the total weight of nuggets is multiplied by the bet per line. You can get access to the Mad Miner Bonus not only in the main game but also during free spins.

Three or more Scatter symbols landing anywhere on the reels will not only pay out in credits but give access to a free spins session. At the start, you receive 10 spins that you are not required to give credits for. All winning combinations are tripled. The round takes place on those lines and with the stake that was active during the spin that landed Scatter symbols. If three Scatters appear again, you will get 10 extra spins.

Symbols and Multipliers on the California Gold Slot

There are two special symbols in treasure-themed slot California Gold - Wild and Scatter. These bonus options are covered in full in the payout table - click the Info button to open it.

The Wild symbol depicts a miner with a gold nugget in his hand. It appears only on the second, third and fourth reels. Its main property is to replace the missing symbol in a payline. For example, there is a picture of dynamite on the first, third and fourth reels, according to the rules, this is not a winning combination. If a Wild appears on the same line on the second reel, you will score a combination of four dynamites that will earn you a payout of 15 times your bet. All combinations that include the Wild symbol pay twice the amount.

Scatter is a golden nugget. As soon as two of these symbols appear on the reels in any position, you will receive a payout in credits. When three or more icons come up, they trigger an extra round with free spins. Common symbols that only win you credits are divided into two groups approximately equal in number. The first are low-paying symbols with a payout that barely covers the total cost of launching the reels. They are:

• Pickaxe, barrel - 5, 10 or 100 times your bet
• Map, lamp - 5, 10 or 150 times your bet
• Dynamite, bowl with gold - 10, 15 or 150 times your bet

Icons of a donkey, trolley, rails and cowboy earn significantly larger payouts. In this case, you can get a prize for rails and cowboys starting with two symbols on a line. In most cases, you will have to collect several combinations or combinations of four and five icons to return the cost of a spin.

Double-or-nothing

One of the possibilities to increase the prize in the main game is Gamble. This is a classic double-up game where you need to guess the colour or suit of a card. As soon as a winning pattern lines up on the reels, the Gamble button becomes active. The double-up game is not available if:

• There is no winning combination
• Free spins are played
• The Autoplay mode is on

If you correctly guess the colour of a face-down card, the win for the spin doubles, if you guess the suit, it quadruples. A wrong guess resets your winnings and returns you to the main screen.

Rules of the California Gold Game

The gameplay on the California Gold online slot begins with setting your bet on one line. You can do this in the Bet window using the '+' and '-' buttons. The minimum bet in the game is 0.01, the maximum bet is 5 credits. If you want, you can immediately place the highest stake per line. To do this, click the Max button to the left of the game screen. The next stage is to select paylines - there are 20 of them available. Click the Info button to see how they are arranged on the reels. The more lines that are selected, the more options for collecting combinations you will have.

According to the rules of the slot, payouts are only awarded for those winning patterns that appear on active lines. For example, there are 15 lines selected, if a sufficient number of symbols appears on lines 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20, you won't receive a prize for them. To change their number, in the Lines section use the '+' and '-' buttons. You can select all 20 lines at once by clicking the Max button found to the right of the window. There is also a numerical reference of each line on both sides of the reels. Click them to activate the lines.

The values in Bet and Lines influence the total cost of reel spins. You can see it in the Total Bet window. With 20 active lines, it is 0.20–100 credits depending on the value in the Bet section. A combination is considered winning if it contains identical icons. For most of the symbols, the minimum combo number is three, for others it is two. They should be located on one active line and adjacent reels. At least one icon must be on the first reel. Scatter, that triggers a bonus and a payout for appearing on the reels, does not follow these rules.

Prizes for combinations are calculated automatically. However, the formula is simple, just multiply the bet per line by the factor of a combination of symbols in the paytable. Payouts for patterns consisting of Scatter symbols are calculated using a different formula: multiply the factor of symbols by the total bet.

Two buttons are responsible for setting the reels in motion - Spin and Autoplay. Spin activates a single spin of the reels, after which the slot will highlight winning combinations (if any), add up the prize and offers you the chance to play a double-up game or start the next spin. A click on Autoplay opens a new window where you can select the number of automatic spins by dragging the slider from 0 to 100. As Autoplay is subsequently started, you can click the Last Settings button to select the same number of spins as the previous time.