Every major pokie feature explained in plain language — what each one does, how it triggers, and how it affects your potential wins.
A wild symbol substitutes for other symbols to help complete winning combinations — similar to a joker in a card game. If you have two matching symbols on a payline and a wild lands in the right position, the wild completes the win.
Wilds come in several variants:
A scatter symbol pays regardless of its position on the reels — it doesn't need to land on a payline to trigger a reward. Landing three or more scatters simultaneously is the most common way to trigger a free spins round.
Scatter payouts are usually expressed as a multiplier of your total bet, not your line bet — which makes landing multiple scatters in a base game spin disproportionately valuable.
Some modern slots use scatter symbols that contribute to a counter or meter rather than triggering directly — filling the meter activates the bonus.
Free spins let you spin the reels without using your balance. They're triggered most commonly by landing scatter symbols, and they almost always come with enhanced mechanics — expanded wilds, multipliers, or additional scatter opportunities — making them the highest-value part of the game.
Some games offer retriggerable free spins — you can land more scatters during the free spins round and add extra spins to your total. In high-volatility games, a large retrigger sequence is often where the biggest wins occur.
A multiplier increases the value of a win by a set factor. A 3× multiplier turns a $10 win into $30. Multipliers appear in several forms:
In high-volatility slots, multipliers inside the free spins round are often the mechanism behind the game's biggest potential wins. A 10-spin round with a 10× multiplier on each win produces dramatically different results than the same round without one.
A bonus round is a separate game mode triggered by landing bonus symbols (or sometimes by scatters, depending on the game design). Bonus rounds vary significantly between titles:
Bonus rounds are often where the most significant wins occur, which is why triggering them is a central goal of most pokie sessions.
In a cascading reels game (also called Avalanche or Tumble depending on the developer), winning symbols are removed from the grid and new symbols fall in to replace them. If the new symbols form another win, those also cascade away — and this continues until no new wins form.
Cascades are frequently combined with progressive multipliers — each cascade in a sequence increases the multiplier, meaning a long chain of wins can result in a very large payout from a single spin.
Games using this mechanic include Pragmatic Play's Gates of Olympus and NetEnt's Gonzo's Quest.
Megaways is a game mechanic licensed from Big Time Gaming that uses variable reel heights to change the number of ways to win on every spin. Each reel can show 2–7 symbols, with the combination creating up to 117,649 ways to win simultaneously.
Because Megaways games don't use fixed paylines — any matching symbols in consecutive reels from left to right form a win — they feel quite different from traditional slots. They're typically high-volatility games with large maximum wins and extended dry spells between significant payouts.
The buy feature (or bonus buy) lets you pay a fixed multiple of your current stake to enter the free spins round or bonus game directly — skipping the base game trigger entirely. The cost typically ranges from 50× to 200× your stake depending on the game.
This feature gives players direct access to the highest-value part of the game without waiting for the scatter trigger to land. However, the feature is not available in all regions and may be subject to regulatory restrictions.
To understand how payout percentages work across all these features, read How Does Pokies RTP Work?
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