Featureless slots aside – copies of old-school one-armed bandits and simple 3-line fruit slots have the right to exist, but they are too simple to elaborate on – most games include Wilds and Scatters. Both can appear on either all reels or only selected reels (for example, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th reel) depending on the design of the game.
Wilds can substitute for all regular symbols to create new or more winning combinations.
Three, four, or five (sometimes even two) Scatters trigger a series of free spins. The more Scatters you catch on the screen – yes, Scatters count regardless of whether they appear on an active pay line or not as long as they appear at all – the more free spins you get.
Most games do feature Wilds and Scatter as the basic powerhouses to build your game around. Some slots also feature Stacked Wilds, the ones that can cover the entire reel to trigger more winning combos. Stacked Wilds usually come in packs of two, three, four, or even five symbols, thereby covering a lot of gaming space. Besides, not only Wilds can be Stacked, though it would be fair to say that other symbols rarely incorporate that feature.
The majority of slots pay from right to left, which leads to tons of frustration when the 1st reel misses the symbol that would lead to a big win. Luckily, you can exclude these painful moments by choosing pay-both-way slots. Theoretically, this feature should significantly increase your winning odds; in practice, though, even the best slots have an RPT rate equal to or lower than 99%.
In Respin slots, whenever you see a potentially winning combination that lacks a single symbol, you can opt for a re-spin, or you might even be allowed to freeze a few reels of your choice. That said, re-spins are not free – you will have to pay for the luxury of re-spinning – so it all comes down to calculating the costs and the potential reward.
Also known as Avalanche slots, slots with Tumbling Reels remove the winning symbols with the ones from above, thereby giving you yet another chance to score. Multipliers are special symbols that can double, triple, or quadruple your win. There’s no limit to the size of wins that can be triggered, but then again, that doesn’t affect the overall profitability of the slot you play.
The craziest feature of all – Pick Your Bonus – allows you to select the bonus you’d like to obtain. However, it’s tricky: you can select the bonus type – Wild, Scatter, Mini-Game, etc. – but the size of the reward remains hidden, making it a sheer gamble.