Slot Special Features

The people who first started mass-producing slot machines understood that adding some prize elements or special features makes the game much more attractive. Big software makers for online gambling try to use modern software and technical capabilities as much as possible so their gambling products attract as many players as possible. And of course, gamblers get to choose which slots to play according to their tastes for features present in a slot’s algorithm and virtual mechanics.

👍 Advantages of special slot features

Because gambling companies are in constant and fierce competition, the gambler benefits.

👉 First of all – continuous improvement in product quality and win potential (when we talk about licensed software, and the positives are present only there).

✌️ Secondly – an ever-refreshing selection on a wide range of themes and regular new releases.

👌 And third – a huge choice of slots with very different functionality that makes the game truly exciting and interesting.

Let’s move on to the variety of slot mechanics, interesting functions and special symbols.

⭐ Most popular special slot features

💠 Thanks to certain properties of some symbols and special features, the player can potentially: hit a valuable combination during a spin, not unlike a small jackpot, get an extra chance to win free spins or a bonus game. Also, most often it is in the prize rounds that additional functional elements of the slot are activated and the allowable max win becomes several times higher compared to regular spins.💶💶💶

Let’s look at which  most common features  a player can encounter today when wagering real money in modern slots, or when playing with demo credits. By the way, the latter can be done without registration in the 4LUCK section with free slots and other gambling games.

And special slot features can include:

• ❌ Multiplier – one of the most popular special slot features. This element in the slot’s virtual mechanics increases the base win from symbol combinations by a certain value. The multiplier can grow with each consecutive winning combo (as in Gonzo’s Quest), drop randomly, be tied to a wild or to a bonus free spins game. There are many variations of Multiplier usage, as well as many games that include this feature;
• 🔄 Re-spins – an extra spin of the slot’s reels that happens with some reels locked in a favorable position to boost the win or as an extra chance to trigger a bonus round, etc. The feature is interesting, often combined with a multiplier and can frequently lead to a surprising big hit;
• 💢 Falling symbols – a slot mechanic where developers moved away from classic spinning reels and gave an impressive falling-symbol effect. Some falling-symbol slots count a combo from the start of a line and by consecutive identical images, while others use cluster pays. That means identical symbols just need to gather into a cluster and the bigger it is, the larger the win;
• 🍒🍒 Double symbols – two symbols occupy one game cell, which can already form a winning combination if a matching symbol stops on the payline. Special boosted prizes are intended for full lines made of double symbols;
• ❓ Mystery symbols – mysterious symbols that remain hidden until a certain moment, their importance being that they are identical and several stacks of Mystery symbols in a row already hint at a guaranteed win, while its size depends on which top symbol is hidden there;
• 🔲 Big symbols – besides the regular symbols that usually occupy one cell, the feature allows larger images to appear spanning several cells;
• 🎡 Bonus wheels – during slot play there may be a chance to trigger a bonus wheel and what it gives the player depends on the game designer: number of free spins, a bonus game, a multiplier on the collected combo or other perks, including a jackpot;
• ⭐ Bonus bets – a bonus stake that gives extra advantages in the game, such as higher chances to trigger a bonus game or more special features. Some games allow the player to opt into this by adding the bonus bet to the total, while in others coins accumulate and can later be used for the bonus bet;
• 🔃 Reelset Changing – changing the number of pay lines on the slot’s play area: when a winning combination lands, in a bonus game, under the effect of a special symbol, randomly and in other ways;
• 🔛 Win both ways – payouts on paylines in both directions: left-to-right and right-to-left;
• 🏆 Symbol Collection – during slot play symbols are collected to activate some special feature: guaranteeing a wild, starting a bonus game, enabling extra prize potential, etc. Slot machines with collection features and how a player can use them in strategies to increase winning chances were described in detail in the article in the section with corresponding slots;
• 🔼 Symbols upgrade – with this feature, slot symbols can upgrade to higher-value ones;
• 💰 Jackpot – the most tempting special slot feature, since it can be an award worth thousands of times the player’s bet. A jackpot can be awarded by landing special symbols on a line, on a bonus wheel, via a Hold and Win style bonus game or even randomly.

In modern slots, wilds are getting more and more prize functionality. About special wilds below👇

🃏 Special wilds

Wild symbol possibilities have become so diverse that they deserve their own list. The most common are:

• Wild with Multiplier – one variant is a fixed multiplier on all winning combinations helped by the wild, and there are wilds with growing or random multipliers or ones that activate only during free spins;
• Expanding wilds – an expanding wild. It doesn’t have to expand only along a single reel. Some Expanding wilds stretch across rows and columns of the reelset and then an epic prize is guaranteed. In some games a wild grows to 3×3 or larger, which also brings solid wins. This feature is also called big symbols, mentioned above. Sometimes Expanding wilds are implied by Wild reels, but
• Wild reels – a wild reel can be a distinct element and carry its own function in the slot algorithm, for example appear randomly or move across the reelset in a bonus game;
• Sticky wilds – a wild that sticks for several spins. Usually such a wild is used in free spins and respin rounds. If a line of wilds lands on the initial free spins, a solid win on it is already secured for the subsequent spins until the bonus ends;
• Stacked wilds – when several wilds can land one above another on a single reel, this is the stacked wilds feature;
• Special wilds – this category includes very different wilds, since developers’ imagination is enormous. For example, wilds that carry extra scatter duties like in the well-known “Book” games are included here. Special wilds can mean random wild appearances on the reels, cloning with a growing multiplier, chaotic roaming across the reelset and much more.

👆Above are the most popular features that bring variety and win potential to a slot. Some developers invent unique features for their games that might later disappear because players didn’t like them, or combine with other elements. So in the near future other new functions may take hold on the reelsets and become in demand. 🎆

For example, quite recently ReelPlay released a slot with

Infinity reels – after each winning combination a new reel is added, increasing the number of paylines and their value.

Developers at NetEnt claim their work on the same feature coincided and a few months after El Dorado Infinity Reels, the casino also got a slot Gods of Gold with infinite reels.

We track new releases too and new slots from many categories, genres and functionalities are regularly added to the 4LUCK gambling games collection for free play.🎰