Are you ever confused by the many different types of slots that can be played at online casinos? The days of all slots games being alike have long gone, and the variety of formats available to today's players is staggering. For the benefit of those of you who are new to playing slots, here's a quick guide to the five most common slot types you're likely to find at a Canadian online casino.
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Classic Slots
Once upon a time, all slots were mechanical, and that meant they had a simple and straightforward format. They often had no more than three to five reels and one to five pay lines, and special features, if present, were rudimentary. Old-fashioned slots also used to have fairly similar symbols on the reels - usually fruits such as cherries, oranges, plums and grapes.
Classic slots are games that are designed to replicate that traditional simplicity for online players. The number of reels and pay lines will be modest, and often the games will look and feel much like their mechanical predecessors. If you're new to online slots and want something straightforward to start with, classic slots are perfect.
Video Slots
Technically speaking, video slots are ones that display the action via video screens instead of physical reels, and you'll find plenty of them at land-based casinos. What originally set them apart from classic slots was their ability to incorporate animations, movie excerpts and computer-generated visuals, and when you play video slots online you'll find that they really emphasize those things.
Video slots online have many different themes, and their focus on the visual aspect makes them perfectly suited to movie and TV tie-ins. You'll therefore find plenty of video slots based on popular franchises such as Tomb Raider, Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park, Rocky and Game of Thrones. If you want to really immerse yourself in a game, video slots are the ones to focus on.
Progressive Slots
Playing slots is an entertaining experience in its own right, but nobody will deny that winning prizes is always a welcome highlight. The bigger the sum you can potentially win, the more exciting it is to spin the reels, and that's why many players love playing progressive slots. These are slots with jackpots that increase in value every time someone plays the game. When a player eventually triggers the jackpot, he or she wins the entire value of the progressive.
Perhaps the most famous progressive slots are those in the Mega Moolah series from Microgaming. These games share a progressive jackpot with a starting value of 1,000,000 and they have given players some of the biggest payouts in history. For example, in April 2021 a player in Belgium landed a staggering €19.4 million jackpot after winning on Absolootly Mad: Mega Moolah.
Megaways Slots
What are Megaways slots? Well, put simple, they are games that feature the Megaways mechanic, which was invented by Big Time Gaming. The mechanic varies the number of rows appearing on the reels with each spin, and the more rows that appear, the more ways there will be for the player to win a prize. The maximum number of ways to win in most Megaways slots is 117,649, but there are games that deviate from that figure.
A number of developers produce games that use the Megaways mechanic under license from Big Time Gaming. Some examples would be Dynamite Riches Megaways by Red Tiger, and Majestic Megaways slot by iSoftBet.
Buy Feature Slots
Buy feature slots are the most recent innovation in online slots gaming, and allow you to pay money to trigger their special features like the bonus round at any time. Normally a special feature is triggered by getting a certain number of bonus symbols on the reels at the same time, but in buy feature slots games you can simply click a button, pay the required fee and guarantee that the feature will be triggered on the very next spin of the reels.
What's Your Type?
Having seen the main types of slots that can be played at online casinos in Canada, the only question remaining is: Which one will become your favourite? The easiest way of finding out is to play them all first and stick with the slots that entertain you the most. Enjoy the research!
