We’ve come a very long way from the one-armed fruit machines you found in decades past.
Between the advanced machines you can play in person and the ones you can find online, we’re in a whole new world of casino games.
With thousands of slot games now available across the internet, however, players have plenty of choice.
That’s why we’ve put together this guide to all the key features of any online slot.
The basics
At the core level, slots all share a number of basic features.
When choosing a slot, the two most critical things to look at are volatility and RTP.
The volatility of slots can range from low to extreme and basically tells you whether you’re looking at lots of little wins or a handful of big ones.
In a low-volatility game, wins come frequently but the cash value of each one is small, whereas a high-volatility slot only gives a few wins in a session but each is on the larger end.
For those familiar with other casino games, it’s like the difference between an inside and outside bet in roulette.
The other statistic, RTP, stands for Return-To-Player and tells you how much on average you can expect to get in returns over a playing session.
The number is normally shown as a percentage with a standard being somewhere around 96%.
That number would mean that, if you put £100 in bets down, you can expect £96 on average back by the end of the session.
It’s important to remember that, because of the random number generator behind every game, this is just an average and the actual returns can be higher or lower, and every slot can be a little different on the number.
Other key features
There are some features that are shared by most slots, although some unique ones play differently.
The first is the number of reels and paylines, both of which can vary massively.
The reel number is just how many columns of symbols are in play at once, and paylines are the ways that symbols can line up to get a win.
These can vary from three reels and around nine paylines up to a dozen reels and, in the case of the well-known Megaways system, over 100,000 paylines are possible on each spin.
A good lineup at a casino includes a wide selection of all of these, from the famous Book of Dead to the unique Chilli Heat Megaways.
Each slot usually has a special bonus mode which can generate a larger payout although only rarely gets triggered.
At the most basic level, these are just a round of free spins on the regular game, although there are more creative ideas out there such as the instant cash wins or massive multipliers.
It’s worth exploring a few different popular slots for this reason as each can offer a very different playing experience.
