Free Spins Slots

The round on the house

A free spin is played at the stake of the spin that started the round, and nothing more leaves your balance while the round runs. Most games open it with scatters, symbols that count wherever they land. Many of them change the rules once the round begins. Multipliers stop resetting, wilds start carrying values, or new reels come into play. The round is where the rules change.

None of it’s a gift. The published RTP of a game counts every free spin it will ever give, so the spins before the round pay for it. Now, keep that in mind when you see the round on sale. A bought bonus is the same round reached sooner, and the rules print its own percentage beside the price. It doesn’t buy a better round.

The god at the door

On Olympus the god often decides how the round begins. In 3 of the Rise of Olympus games you choose a god before the first free spin, and the pick fixes how long the round runs. Zeus is worth 8 spins to open with, Poseidon 5 and Hades 4. The god you take then lends a hand on every spin that pays nothing. The 2018 game stops the round at 20 spins, and Rise of Olympus Extreme lets it run to 100.

In Take Olympus the whole family has to turn up. A Zeus 4 symbols tall must land while Apollo, Poseidon, Hades and Aphrodite are all on the reels, and only then do 10 free spins begin. Vikings Go To Olympus carries its vikings up the mountain for the round, and they fight Zeus on every spin of it. In both games the gods are part of the round, not the wallpaper. The theme isn’t just paint here.

Most Gates of Olympus games keep it simpler. Zeus’s own face sits on the scatter tile, and 4 of those tiles open 15 free spins wherever they land. Gates of Olympus 2500 adds a wheel that picks one of 4 kinds of round before it starts. 2 of them are super versions where no multiplier lands under 10x. The wheel chooses unless you buy one outright.

The rounds that build

A round earns its keep when something grows inside it. In the Gates of Olympus games each multiplier on a paying spin joins a total that never goes down. Cats of Olympuss deals cards before its round. The first card decides whether the round runs 6, 7, 8 or 10 spins, and the rest add stacked wilds with multipliers or strip out low symbols. Fortune of Olympus gives up to 30 spins for 4 to 7 scatters. The round can’t open with more than 30.

Not every Olympus game has the round at all. Goals of Olympus BoltLock, Olympus 7s Dream Drop and Olympus Unleashed pay their features out through respins instead. Their bonus lives there.

The numbers

Rise of Olympus prints 96.50% on its best version and caps a win at 5,000x, and Extreme prints 96.20% with a 50,000x cap. Take Olympus runs at 95.49% and pays 2,328x at most. Pragmatic Play’s page puts Gates of Olympus 2500 at 96.51% with a 25,000x cap. For Cats of Olympuss the demo rules show 96.31% and allow 13,195x in one game round. Fortune of Olympus sits at 96.55% with 10,000x. None of those figures depends on the god you pick.

The regulars’ round

On the slot floor the regulars treated free spins like a round of drinks somebody else had bought. They’d lean back, stop counting and let the machine play. I never had the heart to tell them who’d paid for it. You paid for the round before it started.

Each studio’s own page and the rules inside each demo supplied the figures here. How the Reviews Work says why no third-party database stands alone.