What Are The Best Features In Slots – A 2023 Guide
What Are the Best Features in Slots?
Did you know that Big Time Gaming (BTG) is the company behind the Megaways feature? It introduced Megaways slots in 2015 and has since become one of the most prominent features in online slots. Through the Megaways feature, you can increase your paylines from a few dozen to hundreds of thousands. This enables software developers to create more ways of winning and increases the players’ winning chances.
The Megaways feature is one of the many you’ll come across in modern slots. Others include the likes of free spins (not to be confused with the free spins promotions like the Verde Casino 50 FS), synced reels, expanding symbols and reels, win both ways, cascading reels, ways to win, special wild symbols, and many more.
In this article, we will look at some of these features in detail; and give examples of online slots that have them.
Wild Symbols
Wild symbols in online slots are the equivalent of a joker card in poker. They can substitute all other symbols on the reels (besides the scatter) to form the best winning combination. Nearly all online slots have wild symbols.
While there are classic wilds, there are also new wild symbols that perform the substitution task differently. Some special wild symbols in slots include expanding wilds, sticky wilds, transferring wilds, walking wilds, and stacked wilds.
Online slots with special types of wild symbols include Wild Toro (ELK Studios), Reactoonz (Play’n GO), Jack and the Beanstalk – Remastered (NetEnt), Wolf Run Slot (IGT), and many more.
Gamble Bonus Round
This is an optional feature you can activate manually after scoring a win. It is common in low volatile slots and immediately becomes active after forming a win combination. By activating it, you are taken to a mini-bonus game where you must correctly predict the suit or color of the upcoming card. If you correctly predict the color of the card, your wins are doubled, while correctly predicting the suit of the card will see your wins getting quadrupled.
Sounds lucrative, right? Yes, it does, but there is a flip side to this. If you make a wrong prediction, you lose all the money at stake, including your winnings. So, unless you have nerves of steel, this is a feature that you don’t want to dabble into.
Popular online slots with the gamble bonus round include Book of Dead (Play’n GO), A Night With Cleo (Rival Gaming), Achilles Deluxe (RTG), Big Bass Bonanza (Pragmatic Play), and many more.
Win Both Ways
Win Both Ways first appeared in 2012 when NetEnt released their iconic Starburst Slot. When playing a regular online slot game, payouts are made from the left-most reel to the right-most reel. However, when an online slot has the win both ways feature, wins can be formed either way. This feature is also known as the all-way-pay system.
In addition to NetEnt’s Starburst slot, games such as Immortal Romance (Microgaming), Gemix 2 (Play’n GO), and Pirots (ELK Studios) are some of the online slots with this feature.
Cascading Reels
One of the reasons why NetEnt is considered one of the top software providers in the online casino industry is the sheer number of features it has introduced. In addition to the win-both-ways feature, it is the company behind the cascading reels, a.k.a avalanche, rolling, falling, or tumbling reels feature.
The cascading reels feature first appeared in NetEnt’s Gonzo’s Quest. The feature works in a simplistic way; each time wins are formed during gameplay, the symbols responsible for forming the wins disappear from the reels. This creates a void that is filled with new symbols. If a new win pattern is formed, the process continues until no more wins occur. Cascading reels laid the foundation for many features we see in newer slots, such as Megaways, Infinireels, and Gigablox.
In addition to Gonzo’s Quest, other slots that have the cascading reels feature include Aztec Bonanza (Pragmatic Play), Ecuador Gold (ELK Studios), Jammin Jars (Push Gaming), and more.
Bonus Buy
The bonus buy feature was first released in 2017 by Big Time Gaming but has only gained traction due to its popularity among casino players. As the name of this feature suggests, you are allowed to “buy into” a bonus round instead of having to wait for it to be automatically triggered during gameplay. You must manually activate it by clicking the bonus buy button on the screen, although at an extra cost. The result is you’ll start spinning the reels with the game’s bonus round active.
The biggest misconception and mistake players make is believing they’ll automatically win with the bonus round active. While you increase your chance(s) of winning with the bonus buy feature active, you are not 100% guaranteed to win. The bonus round will play out like it would during the normal round.
Popular games with the bonus buy feature include Sticky Bees™ (Pragmatic Play), Wanted Dead or A Wild (Hacksaw Gaming), Extra Chilli Megaways (Relax Gaming), Lucky Punch (OnlyPlay), plus many more.
Start Playing Small to Win Big With These Slot Features
One of the beauties of online slots is that you can win big from a small bet. While it doesn’t happen often, special features in online slots can increase your winning potential significantly. Sign up at a reputable and licensed online casino, give some of the listed titles a try, and see if it could be your lucky day.
