JILI77 Types of Slot Machines: Seven Pay Formats, One Covered Title Each

The types of slot machines on this site differ by one rule: how a win is counted. Theme, art and music change nothing about it. Sixteen titles from JILI, Pragmatic Play and PG Soft fall into seven pay formats, and one covered title below shows each. The wider comparison of those titles sits on the popular slot games page.

Types of slot machines at a glance

Each row names the format, the covered title that shows it best and how a win is counted.

Slot types with fixed lines: classic and payline games

Among slot types, the line games are the oldest. Crazy 777 is a 3-reel classic with a single line, so a win is a match across the middle. The Dog House has 20 lines on a 5x3 grid, and Boxing King has 88 on a 5x5 grid. A line is a fixed path across the reels, and the paylines meaning page defines it.

In a line game, the stake is often quoted per line. A stake of 2 units on 20 lines is 2 times 20, or 40 units a spin. Read the total stake on the screen before you spin, because it can differ from the per-line figure.

5 reel slots: the common frame

Most of the sixteen titles use a 5-reel frame: Super Ace, Boxing King, The Dog House, Mahjong Ways, Mahjong Ways 2 and Wild Bandito. The reels share a layout, but the pay rule on top is what separates them. Super Ace and Mahjong Ways count ways, while The Dog House and Boxing King count lines. The table shows the split:

Check the rule on the info screen, not the reel count.

243 ways slots: how ways are counted

A ways game has no lines. A win needs the same symbol on adjacent reels starting from the left, in any row. The count is the product of the rows on each reel, so 5 reels of 3 rows give 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3, which is 243 ways. Add a fourth row and the product is 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x 4, which is 1024.

That second figure is the one in the data: Super Ace and Mahjong Ways both list 1,024 ways on a 5x4 grid. The ways to win meaning page covers the term, and Mahjong Ways 2 raises it to 2,000.

Megaways, cluster pays and scatter pays

Golden Empire is the Megaways example: the number of ways changes on every spin, up to 32400. Sweet Bonanza is the cluster example, where 8 or more matching symbols anywhere on the grid pay. Gates of Olympus is the scatter example, with no fixed lines. The scatter pays rules separate these two pay-anywhere formats with the published figures for both games.

Dragon Treasure is the odd one out. It is a tap-based arcade game with no reels, and JILI lists a 2000x max win for it.

Penny slots: a stake level, not a format

Penny slots describe a low stake, and any format above can be played that way. JILI publishes no minimum stake for any of its titles, so the stake selector inside the game is the only source. Open it, find the lowest step and decide before you spin. You must be 21 or older to play.