There used to be a minimal amount of features for slots machine players to enjoy: you had your three spinning reels, with maybe ten symbols on each, and, if a certain combo of icons lined up, you could win cash or candy.
That’s right -there was a point in time where slots were made unlawful, and candy was used as prize money instead of real rewards. This is one of the reasons behind the fruit and bar symbols: the fruit represented the flavour of the candy, and the bars told you that you had won some gum!
These days, the online pokies NZ has to offer, as slots are known in that part of the world, and those available for players all over the rest of the globe as well, have all kinds of extras on hand.
These include bonus games of varying degrees of complexity, free spins features, the chance to gamble a prize you have just won, and progressive jackpots that are eye-wateringly huge. Symbols aren’t just symbols anymore either.
You have bonus symbols, multipliers, scatter symbols, and wilds. We examine and explain some of the most popular features here!
1024 Ways to Win
Back in the good old, bad old, days of the mechanical slots machine found in pubs and bars, known as one-armed bandits, paylines were simple.
With the advent of computerised slots, however, it has become possible for game designers to get incredibly creative with how your winning combinations are formed. 1024 Ways to Win games don’t have the traditional paylines, and instead allow you to form winning combinations in all possible symbol combinations from left to right.
243 Ways to Win
Instead of simply adding more and more paylines to a slots game, 243 Ways to Win was the first format which allowed players to win on a five-reel slots game for any three matching icons from left to right, in a low-variance style that pleases many players.
These games are now the format for some of the most commonly found games in the industry.
Win Both Ways
The majority of slots machines award you wins when you form icon combinations from left to right, but there are also those that allow for payouts for combinations from right to left as well.
These are the very popular Win Both Ways or Two/2 Way Pay machines.
Hit Autoplay and Just Relax
Most slots games these days have an Autoplay feature, so don’t worry about having to work to hard to find it.
Once this feature has been activated, the machine will play through spins repeatedly, showing you the results and then immediately commencing with the next spin.
It is totally automated, and you can carry on with whatever else you want to do while the process is being undertaken.
The Nudge and Auto-Nudge Feature
Although not as commonly found as it once ways, the nudge feature is a classic one, and very popular with slots players too.
This has the game giving you the option, either totally randomly or by means of a special symbol, to move down a reel either once or multiple times in order to form new winning combinations.
This feature was mostly manually operated, but some games provided an auto-nudge option as well.