The first slot machines have appeared back in the end of XIX century; those slots consisted only of three reels and just one of slots lines for forming combinations. But later, as the time went on, the world of gambling slot machines kept growing richer and richer in terms of new, improved models. Modern players can play the slots with different amount of reels and lines.
Classical slot machines
First slots had only had one payment line.Such slots exist nowadays, too. Traditionally those consist of fruit symbols, bar and bell pictographs. Bonus options and special symbols are usually absent. Classical retro-models are present in collections of many famous developers.
Aside from that, there are one-armed bandits with one line and non-standard design or advanced functionality:
Funky Monkey from Playtech is a free slots 40 lines with thematic design. Aside from bar symbols, it contains commonly used classic symbols. Pictographs of this slot depict monkeys, palms and bananas.
Free Spirit from Microgaming has a Wild Symbol, that multiplies the prizes;
Vault Assault Mini and Gold Rush from NetEnt have a jackpot feature.
and other models from various developers.
The main advantages of 1-lines slots are the simplicity of rules and low level of bets with pretty high payment coefficients.
Improved classics – 3-5 lines
Main distinctive features of slots with 3-5 lines are:
- increased number of lines and reels;
- presence of special symbols;
- presence of double-up rounds.
The slot doesn’t have to have all three parameters included in the same model, but usually there are at least 2 out of 3. The popular examples of slots of this category are Fruit Machine, Ultra Hot and Ultra Hot Deluxe, Sizzling Hot online.
Slots with 9-15 lines
This category combines ree slots multiple lines with minimal set of functional characteristics. They have a wide spectrum of themes and allow to regulate all the game parameters: number of lines and bet level.
The necessary elements are the special symbols: a Wild Symbol and a Scatter. Among the bonus features there are risk game and free spins round.
The main advantage is the harmonic ratio of total bet and payment coefficients.
Videoslots with 20-100 lines
Those slots are the modern representatives of slot machine developers’ collections. Such models are usually taking leading positions in this segment.
Those slots have improved graphics, animations, wide variety of stories. Slots can have a fixated or regulated number of lines. Only in latter case you can change the number of lines used in the game. The edition of bet level is available in all models of videoslots.
Slot machines with 20-100 lines can have multi-functional Wild Symbols and several kinds of prize options.
Among the advantages of such free slots 100 lines there is a function of forming a big number of combination with a high drop-out frequency. Another advantage is the presence of bonus games, allowing to play for free. The only disadvantage of such games are high bets.
Newest models of slot machines
This category combines slots, that can form no less than 243 and no more than 4000 combinations. The main feature of such slot is a non-standard sequence calculation sequence.
In this case there is no connection to the lines. The main condition is to have from 2 (or 3, depending on slot’s rules) identical pictures at the neighboring reels, starting with the first one.
Also, nowadays you can find so called free slots on lines slot machines with no lines. For example, series of IGT’s slots has a special feature called Multiway Xtra, that allows to collect prize combinations not by lines, but by columns. This principle was also used in slots made by other famous developers, including Novomatic, Playtech, NetEnt. At slots without lines the number of prizes depends on images and their drop-out at the reels.
The main advantages of multiple-lined video slots are:
- ability to form numerous combination with different drop frequency;
- big variety of special symbols and bonus functions.
As a rule, in such slots you can take part in several kinds of prize rounds. There are usually no risk game in such slots.
The players also have to pay attention to the fact that the bigger is the amount of lines used in the game, the bigger is the total bet parameter; but the bigger are the chances for getting a winning combination.