Added: Mar 21, 2026
Updated: Apr 7, 2026
Provider:
Blueprint Gaming
Diamond Mine Extra Gold is Blueprint Gaming's Megaways-powered sequel that bolts a free spins gamble, an extra horizontal reel, and an unlimited bonus multiplier onto the original Diamond Mine chassis. The 6-reel cascading grid scales up to 117,649 ways to win, but the real arithmetic lives inside…
Blueprint Gaming dropped Diamond Mine Extra Gold on 11 December 2019 as a beefed-up revision of the original Diamond Mine, and the upgrade philosophy is clear: same frontier aesthetic, meaner bonus architecture. The addition of a free spins gamble and a horizontal reel that feeds retriggers into the feature round turns this from a passive cascade slot into something with actual decision points. Whether those decisions reward you or just accelerate the bankroll bleed is the question this review answers.
Under the hood you get a 6-reel Megaways grid that shifts between 2 and 7 rows per reel, topping out at 117,649 ways when fully expanded. An extra horizontal reel sits above reels two through five, serving double duty as a retrigger dispenser in free spins and a scatter delivery lane in the base game. Cascading wins clear paid symbols and drop replacements, so one spin can chain into several payouts — though most of those chains in the base game produce the mathematical equivalent of a polite nod rather than an actual payday.
Our Minty Verdict: Here's the deal with Diamond Mine Extra Gold: it hands you a shovel, points at a mountain, and whispers "the gold's somewhere in there." The base game is a cascade-powered endurance test — plenty of visual motion, very little wallet motion — designed to funnel you toward the free spins round where the unlimited multiplier finally starts earning its keep. When the bonus fires on all cylinders (gamble lands on 30 spins, retriggers rain from the top reel, cascades stack the multiplier past double digits), the math can get genuinely violent in your favour. But most rounds? You'll meet The Barren Shaft — that soul-crushing sequence where the multiplier crawls to 3× and the reels go dry before anything premium even appears. Blueprint built a competent volatility engine here, but the 10,000× ceiling feels modest for how hard you have to work to reach it.
The gold rush mine coat of paint does exactly what it needs to and nothing more. Rocky desert tones, wooden reel frames, a grizzled miner, lanterns, pickaxes, sacks of gold, and the titular diamond fill out the symbol set against a dusty canyon backdrop. It is not going to win any art direction awards, but it reads cleanly — and that clarity matters more than aesthetics on a Megaways grid where reel heights shift every spin and cascades need to be trackable at a glance.
The special symbols earn points for thematic coherence. Dynamite as the wild and a TNT barrel as the mystery symbol feel like organic parts of the mine rather than generic icons pasted over a spreadsheet. On mobile the layout holds up well; the extra horizontal reel does not cramp the main grid, and premium symbols are bold enough to identify without squinting. For a 2019 release, the visual package is functional and legible — which, in a Megaways slot, counts as a genuine design win.
The variable grid (2–7 rows per reel) means one spin can show a narrow, stingy formation while the next blows open to full width. Wins connect across consecutive reels from left to right — no fixed paylines — and every paid combination triggers a cascade: winning symbols vanish, new ones drop in, and the grid re-evaluates. This cascade loop is the slot's primary rhythm, and it keeps the base game from feeling completely static even when payout density is low.
Dynamite wilds substitute for all regular symbols. The TNT mystery barrel reveals a matching regular symbol on landing, occasionally stitching together connections the grid wouldn't produce on its own. Gold bag scatters are the key to the bonus — land four across the main grid and horizontal reel to trigger free spins. The premium paytable runs from lanterns and mining tools up through the miner himself, with the diamond sitting at the top. No hold-and-win, no coin-collect gimmick — Diamond Mine Extra Gold keeps its economy inside cascades and the bonus system, which is a design choice that at least keeps the rules mercifully short.
Four gold bag scatters buy you entry to the free spins feature, starting at 12 spins. Before the round begins, Diamond Mine Extra Gold plays its trump card: a gamble screen that lets you risk the initial award for a shot at up to 30 free spins. It is a binary nerve test — keep the safe 12 or chase a fatter starting stack with the real possibility of losing the lot. This one mechanic separates the slot from its predecessor and injects a layer of player agency that most Megaways clones skip entirely.
Inside the feature, the horizontal reel earns its rent. Extra scatters landing on that top rail add more spins mid-round, giving the bonus a retrigger pathway that can extend sessions well past the initial allocation. Meanwhile, every winning cascade bumps the multiplier by 1×, and that multiplier has no cap. This is where Diamond Mine Extra Gold stores its violence. A slow start at 1× or 2× can snowball if cascades keep chaining — the multiplier climbs, better symbols land on the refill, and suddenly a modest connection is paying at 8× or 12× its face value.
The 50× bonus buy option bypasses the scatter hunt entirely. For demo testing it is invaluable — you can stress-test the feature round repeatedly without grinding through the base game. In real-money play, it is a calculated shortcut: you pay a premium for immediate access to the slot's only meaningful payout engine, which either justifies the cost or reminds you why high-volatility mining is a dangerous hobby.
The 96.43% RTP is above average and reads well on paper, but the distribution tells a more honest story. Most of that return is locked behind the free spins feature rather than trickling out through base-game cascades. The base game's job is bankroll maintenance at best and slow erosion at worst — it keeps the session alive while you wait for four scatters to align. When they do, the gamble step, retrigger reel, and unlimited multiplier work together to compress the slot's value into sharp, concentrated bursts.
High volatility is the accurate label, and the session profile confirms it: extended dry stretches punctuated by bonus rounds that either fizzle at low multiplier values or erupt into the kind of cascading sequences the game was designed around. The 10,000× max win gives the ceiling some weight without requiring a jackpot layer, though it sits on the conservative side for a Megaways slot with this much variance. Every dollar of that cap has to be earned through cascade momentum and multiplier accumulation — there is no shortcut symbol or instant prize waiting at the end of a lucky reel stop.