Help
Glossary of reel terms
Every term used in the games and the handbook, in plain English.
- Auto-play
- Plays up to ten rounds in a row at the same amount. It stops for features, errors, a hidden tab or a time-check reminder.
- Cascade
- After a win the winning symbols disappear, the rest fall and new ones fill from the top. Each further win in the chain pays at a higher multiplier.
- Expanding wild
- A wild on reels two to four that grows to fill its whole reel before the lines are read.
- Feature
- Any extra behaviour beyond a plain spin, such as free spins, a respin or a cascade.
- Free spins
- Rounds that use no Play Credits, started by three or more scatters.
- Hit rate
- The share of rounds that return any award. Measured over two million rounds per game.
- Ladder
- A free-spin multiplier that rises one step with every free spin until it reaches its top rung.
- Line
- A fixed path across the five reels. A line pays when three or more matching symbols sit on it from the leftmost reel.
- Play amount
- The number of Play Credits one spin uses: 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 or 500.
- Play Credits
- Fictional units used only for playing. They cannot be bought, won as prizes, transferred or cashed out.
- Reel
- One of the five vertical columns of symbols.
- Respin
- An extra spin of some reels while others are held, without using more credits.
- Return
- The share of all credits played that came back as awards over a very large number of rounds. It describes the long run, never the next session.
- Scatter
- A symbol that pays wherever it lands and starts free spins when three or more appear.
- Sticky wild
- A wild that stays in place for one more spin after a losing round.
- Token
- One of the five brass number tokens, numbered I to V: the lowest-paying symbols in every hall.
- Volatility
- How results are spread out. Low volatility means smaller, more frequent awards; high volatility means rarer, larger ones.
- Wild
- A symbol that stands in for every other symbol except the scatter.
Want the longer version? The curator’s handbook walks through each idea with examples.