The Advancement of Online Slot Mechanics in the Modern Era

The Advancement of Online Slot Mechanics in the Modern Era

We see tons of different types of slot mechanics pop up here and there, but most of them don’t last very long. However, a handful have really exploded in popularity around the turn from the 2010s into the 2020s. Here we take a look at what makes these so special that they stick around.


Online Slot Mechanics: Evolution and Revolution

If you’re an online slot fan, then you know how much the industry can change while it can really stay the same. Around 20 years ago, many the most popular titles had 20-payline formats with five reels and three rows. However, if you look around now, a non-trivial number of new titles have the exact same layout.

While this particular example is because of how solid and balanced 20-line titles are, that’s not exactly the pinnacle of gameplay innovation.

With that said, it’s not necessarily because software companies haven’t been trying. They have to ride a fine line when it comes to offering something new for players. Additionally, these providers have no guarantees that a new idea will be fruitful by any means.

In what follows, we’ll break down what they have to consider and what the trends are. Additionally, we’ll see how players react to changes in common formats and some examples for you to go check out on your own.

Why Stepping Outside of the Video Slot Box is a Problem

Because we’re all human beings, human nature applies to us just as much as anyone else. One aspect of human nature is that our ideas of what we want are different than what our behavior indicates. That’s very much the case when it comes to online slot preferences.

What it mostly boils down to is that slot developers can’t step too far outside of the box. If they try to go with something super innovative, like players say they want, it falls flat more often than not. While this is unfortunate, it’s not unprecedented, and we’ve seen it happen over and over in a variety of different industries.

Overall, this means the mechanics and game format styles that hold up over time follow a pattern. They’re the ones that have one foot in the box and one foot out. You should be able to clearly see the connection to the traditional styles and features. However, they should still stretch out beyond what’s already commonly available.

In the following, we’ll be looking at four different approaches that did just that. We’ll be giving you examples of how these innovative ideas went outside of the box without going too far with specific games as well.

The Hold and Win Feature

Free spins bonus modes have been around since before the Internet was invented. As such, they’ve completely dominated the landscape of video slots the entire time they’ve been around online. If you pick three random slots from any online casino, you’re virtually guaranteed that at least one of them (and often two or three) have a free spins bonus round featured.

Many providers have added things to these modes to make them different than the regular spins. This has included things like multipliers, extra wilds, expanding symbols and more. However, the biggest innovation in the space that’s actually stuck around has been the Hold & Win mechanic.

The Brilliant Diamonds Hold and Win slot is a perfect example of this. While it has a traditional 25-line format, this feature takes the place of free spins in the overall experience.

What happens is that you have the reels clear except for a scatter that triggered the thing in the first place. Those scatters are held in place, and you get a set of re-spins (usually three). From there, the other positions spin, and as you collect more scatters, they also remain stuck in place. However, this resets your number of re-spins as well. This process repeats until you fill the grid or until you run out of re-spins.

To add even more excitement, most of these games include static jackpots that can only be won in this feature. Payouts of 1,000x or more (multiplied by your total wager) are not uncommon along these lines.

Lots of Ways to Win With Six Reel Slots

The “all ways” format expanded things to the 243 ways concept back as early as the 1990s. This changed things away from the traditional payline structure with what we used to call “left to right scatters.” However, that term is pretty obsolete since every single regular symbols becomes a left to right scatter in this type of game.

When you expand this to six reels, especially if you also add an additional row, then you get 4,096 ways to win. A game that uses this format really well is the original Buffalo King slot by Pragmatic Play. As you can see, it has one foot in the older formats by being in the style of the standard 243-ways layout games.

However, it also has one foot “outside of the box” by offering up a larger format than usual.

This larger format has been used in a variety of games. However, it’s really seen as a big part of the gameplay in this one in particular and others like it. This layout of slot has stuck around and stayed popular because players absolutely love what it has to offer in terms of action. It’s also not so different than what they’re used to that they feel alienated when they sit down to play.

The Infinity Reels Online Slot Format

The Infinity Reels concept is something we definitely wouldn’t have thought of on our own. However, as soon as we played a few rounds with it for the first time, we knew it was going to be a hit. That’s because it follows the basic rule we have laid out for these types of things. While you can go outside of the box, you need one foot still firmly planted in what players are familiar with.

The idea behind the Infinity Reels mechanic in games like the Throne of Osiris video slot is pretty straightforward. You start with three reels. However, each time you get a win that extends to the far right reel, an additional reel is added. This process continues over and over with the ability to get several reels in a row. We’ve actually seen footage of someone landing 10 or more reels in a row with this type of format.

As your wins get longer, things typically scale based on a multiplier. That means a five-reel win would be scaled much higher than a three-reel one but also much lower than one with seven reels. Additionally, this creates a tremendous upward pressure for larger and larger payouts.

Other types of common features are often integrated into this format to make players feel more welcome. Things like the “all ways” format, having every symbol be a scatter, wild symbols, free spins and multipliers are often seen. We like how this gives players a very firm grounding in what they are already familiar with.

The Megaways Craze

Our final example here is the Megaways format. It’s such a perfect example of our concept of the box here that we had to save it for last. The basic idea of the Megaways format is as follows:

  • Typically, but not always, the game starts with six reels.
  • The “all ways” approach to determining wins is in effect, but it also has a twist.
  • That twist is that the number of symbols shown on each reel is random for each spin.
  • Generally speaking, between two and seven symbols can show on each reel, but other variations exist.

This format idea is a perfect example of the box idea at work. It fits the ideas of a six-reel game and an all ways game pretty solidly, which are two things players have most likely encountered at some point multiple times. However, by adding one new element, the randomizing of the number of symbols on each reel, it completely blows the whole concept out of the water.

Again, it has one foot firmly in the box with the other foot firmly outside of it.

Our favorite example of this style of game is the Buffalo King Megaways slot, which is the updated version of the original that we noted up above. It offers up a great theme, tons of action thanks to the format and some super solid features at the same time.

Overview

The way that the industry has progressed, in the online slots space in particular, seems to consistently follow the same rule. Providers cannot get too far outside of the box, or players in aggregate get too uncomfortable. As much as we talk about liking new things as human beings, our behavior shows different. Apparently, we can only tolerate so much change at once.

That makes sense considering what we can see about incremental change in a variety of other parts of life. However, the application to formats for the online slot world makes it even more clear.