It is customary today for online casino slots to offer bonus games. Such slots are also known as bonus slots. As their name suggests, bonus games offer opportunities for payouts without any additional investment. This has proved to be a major attraction.

Usually there are two types of bonus games. One is called the bonus game on the reels or free spins bonus round. The playing screen shows the reels. Players get to spin the reels a given number of time. For the purposes of computing the payouts the last wager made by the player stands. No credits are deducted from the player’s balance for the spins but the winnings are added. Some free spins bonus rounds have a multiplier on the payouts or have additional wild symbols to make them even more attractive.

The other type of bonus game is called bonus game on the second screen. This is because in this bonus game the reels disappear and the player is taken to a new environment based on the theme of the slot game. Here players make choices which lead them to win bonus credits. They do not have to wager any amount in order to make those choices. The simplest form of this type of bonus game is the player having to choose X items from Y items displayed and winning a randomly decided number of credits for each item selected. Some online slots offer one of these two types of bonus games whereas others offer both.

With about a dozen new online slot games being released every month the market is getting competitive. Online gaming software providers have to innovate in order to maintain their clientele. One innovation that is now appearing in quite a few new online slots is the combination of both these types of bonus game. The bonus game on the second screen is played first but not for bonus credits. This bonus game decides the parameters of the free spins bonus round, which is then played based on those parameters.

Microgaming has released a few online slot games this year with this combined bonus round. Two of them are being used to describe how these games function. Stunt Pilot was released in April 2009. The bonus game is triggered when three plane symbols appear anywhere on the reels. Four stunts appear on the second screen. The player has to choose three of these. The pilot performs the chosen stunts on the full screen. He is awarded points for each stunt. The three scores are then added up and the player is given that many free spins. In Stunt Pilot these free spins offer doubled payouts.

In Stunt Pilot the two bonus games are combined in a very simple way. Microgaming released an online slot game in May 2009 called the Fat Lady Sings, which has a more refined combination of the bonus games, though the principle is the same. The different plays of the bonus game define different parameters of the free spins bonus round. The player has to choose from a high, low or medium pitch. The Fat Lady sings in that pitch and shatters a number of wine glasses. The number of wine glasses broken determines the number of free spins. In the second play the Asian Fat Lady shatters a number of Japanese wine jugs. These determine the multiplier. In the final play the Viking Fat Lady shatters beer glasses. This determines the bonus credits. The player then gets the determined number of free spins at the determined multiplier and his winnings from the free spins and bonus credits won are added to his balance.

The competition in the online slot segment is getting more intense and in the future the bonus games will get more interesting.