Every Reel Position Gets a Price Tag A Bonus Grid Sitting Above the Game, Paid Out Wherever a Trigger Symbol Lands

This application covers an electronic gaming machine that displays a second grid alongside the main game, in which each cell holds a bonus value and is tied to one specific symbol position in the game below it. When a trigger symbol lands in a position, the machine reads the value in the cell directly above it and animates a change to the award. It was filed by Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited, the Sydney based gaming machine business, and names a single inventor. It is the fifth application in an Australian divisional chain that began in 2018.

The Problem

The background section of this specification is unusually short, and the shortness is the point. It says only that gaming machines are known where selected symbols can include prize values, and that a need exists for alternative gaming machines. That is a candid description of the commercial problem in this industry: the mathematics of a spinning reel game is well understood and tightly regulated, so the room to differentiate a product lies almost entirely in how outcomes are presented.

Games in which a symbol itself carries a printed cash value have been a mainstay for years. The player watches for a symbol with a number on it and hopes enough land at once. The weakness of that format is that the prize and the symbol arrive at the same instant. There is nothing on screen beforehand to look at, no sense of a board already set, and no reason to care which position on the grid a symbol falls into.

The specification also describes the wider constraint any such design has to work within. A machine must be configured so that the combination of base game and bonus game returns a set proportion of turnover over the long run, and the worked example names a target of roughly 80 to 90 cents returned for every dollar wagered. Any new presentation layer has to be built so its contribution to that figure can be calculated and held, which rules out simply bolting on extra prizes.

What This Invention Does

Claim 1 defines an electronic gaming machine with a display providing a set of display positions and a game controller holding three things in memory: a pool of symbols that includes both trigger symbols and non trigger symbols, a pay table, and the program instructions. When a play is initiated, the machine selects symbols from that pool at random using a random number generator, shows them at the display positions, and shows the award those symbols earn by reference to the pay table.

The distinguishing element is what else is on screen. The controller displays a bonus array containing a set of visual element positions, each uniquely associated with one, and only one, of the game display positions. The array is normally laid out to mirror the game grid, so a cell in the top left of the array corresponds to the top left position of the game and the player can see the pairing without being told. When a display position ends up holding a trigger symbol, the controller animates a modification of the award based on the value sitting at the paired visual element position.

The specification puts numbers on it. In the described embodiment the trigger symbol is a dollar sign, and the cells hold amounts such as 750, 580 and 625. When five positions land trigger symbols, the five paired cells light up and the award is modified by their combined values. Those cells are then removed with an animation, an explosion or a shattering of the block, one at a time, with a prize counter above the array ticking upward as each goes, and remaining cells fall downward to fill the gaps.

Two further mechanics appear in the dependent claims. The values are dynamically generated, meaning the board can be reset between plays, every set number of plays, at a defined probability such as ten per cent of spins, or in response to a player touching the screen. And the value assigned to a cell can be chosen with reference to how likely a trigger symbol is to land in the paired position, which is how the design keeps the overall return within its configured band.

Key Features

• One cell per position. Each visual element position in the bonus array is uniquely associated with a single symbol display position, so the pairing is one to one rather than a shared pool of prizes.
• A board the player can read in advance. The array is displayed before and during the spin, so values are visible while the outcome is still unresolved, unlike a value printed on the landing symbol.
• Values set against landing probability. A cell value can be selected based partly on the probability of a trigger symbol appearing in its paired position, which lets designers hold the configured return to player figure.
• A refreshable board. The array can be regenerated between plays, after a set number of plays, on a defined probability, or on player input.
• Sequential animated removal. Contributing cells are removed one at a time with a counter incrementing as each goes, rather than the total appearing at once.
• Upgrade on a special symbol. A special trigger symbol can modify the paired cell in both appearance and value, in the worked example lifting a cell from 250 to 500, and the array may sit on the same display as the base game or on a separate auxiliary display above it.

Who Is Behind It

The applicant is Aristocrat Technologies Australia Pty Limited, the Australian operating company of Aristocrat Leisure Limited, founded in Sydney in 1953 and now one of the largest suppliers of gaming machines in the world. Its land based machine business trades as Aristocrat Gaming, and the company publishes a responsible gameplay position covering how its products are designed and deployed. The specification refers in passing to the company’s Reel Power format, a long running Aristocrat mechanic in which the player buys reels rather than paylines.

The named inventor is Christian James Salmon.

The filing history is a chain of Australian divisionals. This application is a divisional of Australian application 2023270334, which was a divisional of 2021232844, which was a divisional of 2019261781, which was a divisional of 2018202650. Every step in that chain is an Australian filing, so the priority country is Australia and the original filing dates from 2018. Nothing in the specification points to a foreign priority document.

Why It Matters

Filing five successive divisional applications on one disclosure is a deliberate strategy rather than an accident of prosecution. Each divisional lets the applicant redraft the claims against whatever competitors have released since, while keeping the 2018 filing date. In a market where a successful game mechanic is copied within a product cycle or two, an open pending application on the same disclosure is a useful thing to have on the register. The effect shows in the drafting: the detailed hardware recitations that fill the summary section have been dropped from claim 1 in favour of language centred on the uniquely associated visual element position and the animated modification.

The mechanic sits in a well populated part of the market. Grids of cash values displayed alongside a base game, with symbols that collect them, have become one of the dominant formats on venue floors over the last decade. What this claim reaches for is narrower than the general idea of a prize grid: the one to one mapping between a cell and a position, and the decision to make the award modification an animation driven by that mapping.

Australia remains a significant market in its own right. Gambling in Australia includes one of the highest per capita concentrations of gaming machines outside casinos, regulated state by state, for example by Liquor and Gaming NSW. Approval regimes in those jurisdictions test the mathematics of a game closely, which is part of why a specification like this one talks about expected return in the same breath as animation.

Related Concepts

• Slot machine – the broader machine category, including the video reel format the base game uses here.
• Return to player – the configured long run payout percentage the bonus values are calibrated against.
• Random number generator – what selects the symbols and therefore decides which cells are collected.
• Video lottery terminal – a related regulated machine class that shares much of the same presentation technology.
• Divisional patent application – the filing device behind this application’s five step chain.
• IP Australia – the office that examines and publishes the application.

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AU 2026202120 was published in the Australian Official Journal of Patents on 9 April 2026 and is open for public inspection. Patent applications represent inventions that are sought to be protected and do not necessarily reflect commercially available products.