Slot Machine Types – Your 2024 Guide to Different Types of Slots in the UK

Penny slot machines won’t bring in much money for the casinos and players won’t win much either as the stakes are just too low. But it’s a great way to get people playing the games, with the idea being that once someone is a customer, they will move on to more rewarding slot types.

If you want to win anything worth playing for, you should play slots with a bare minimum of a Nickel. Some Nickel online slot games offer a shot at progressive jackpots, although your odds of landing a massive prize at this level is slim, to say the least.

Now we’re starting to enter the territory where prizes can be worth the effort. Slots you can play for Quarters include jackpot games, slots with bonus features, and games themed around movies, TV shows, and celebrities.

Perhaps the most common of all slot types. Dollar slot games cover every theme, style, format, and feature you can wish for.  Popular examples of Dollar slot games include Wheel of Fortune, Jackpot Jinni, and Fruit Mania, and they're part of a vast selection of Dollar slots at top sites.

You’ll need to place big bets to pay high limit slot machines, but there are several advantages to these games. They tend to offer higher average returns, so you can get a greater percentage of your stakes paid back in prize money, as operators want to attract as many high rollers as possible.

These slots often feature traditional fruit symbols, with just a few paylines, typically from one to five. You’ll need to fill a whole line with matched symbols to win prizes as you play three-reel slot machines.

Slots with five reels are the standard format, although the number of rows can vary from three to five or more, depending on how many paylines are available.

Play six-reel slot machines and claim wins as symbols match across paylines, or enough of the same type stop on adjacent reels.

In recent years, slot machines with seven reels have become hugely popular. They often use a Megaways system, pioneered by Big Time Gaming, where the number of symbols per reel varies randomly from two to seven.

Traditional games with just three reels, one, three, or five paylines are the perfect introduction to the world of slots. They are easy to understand, and many come with simple bonus features, such as wild symbol substitutions and scatter symbols that pay in any places. Other common features include a simple bet structure, and the paytable listing symbol values to one side.

Video slots now dominate the land-based and online markets. These replace mechanical reels with computer animations and come with a wide choice of symbols, paylines, bonus features, and prizes. Some emulate traditional slots while others link to popular topics such as Ancient Egypt, Irish luck, or the Wild West. These are just a few examples of the seemingly endless variety of themes.

While these games usually feature fruit symbols, perhaps alongside themed ones, it’s the mechanics that defines a fruit machine. These games let you Hold or Nudge reels, for the chance to match symbols for a win. These types of online slot also let you gamble wins, boosting the prize on the correct pick of a card colour, or moving you up a win ladder.

Thanks to the proliferation of themed slots on the market, fans of movies, game shows, cartoons, and music can experience their favourites in a whole new way. It’s a perfect match as the copyright holders get extra exposure to their properties, and game developers have a built-in fanbase for the games.

New technologies allow game developers to create slots with 3D effect graphics where the symbols seem to jump from the reels. Unlike the movies, these don’t require special glasses, although it’s more of an illusion than true 3D. Popular examples of 3D effect games include A Night in Paris and The Slotfather, both from the studios of Betsoft.

Amusement With Prizes games can be any type of slot machine, and it’s more a term used in certain establishments to cover licensing and legality. Generally, AWP games have lower bet limits and pay smaller prizes, but this varies depending on local gambling laws.

Most of us now play slots on mobile devices, and it’s the most popular way to access online casinos. Other than some controls and icons rearranged for ease of use, these slot machine types work in exactly the same way as their desktop counterparts, with the same graphics, gameplay, and features.

Although something of a novelty, Virtual Reality slots take players right into the heart of the action, surrounding them with symbols in CGI environments. A VR headset is needed, and the range of games is limited, but it’s an experience like no other.