Sticky Wilds will act in the same way as regular ones, replacing any other icon on the reels (with small exceptions). But unlike the normal ones, the Sticky Wilds will remain in place for the entirety of the special feature that they’re included in. StickyWilds.com, through your Tracker, to permit a Player to hyperlink from your website to our Site. “Advertising Revenue” is the percentage of Casino Net Revenue less (i) converted complementary points and (ii) fraudulent transactions, due and payable to you, at the end of each calendar month, based solely on our system’s data. Sticky wilds - also known as locking wilds - are wild symbols that appear in a slot (either in the base-game or the bonus round) that “lock' in place, remaining there for a set number of spins. While some games do have sticky wilds present during the base-game, the vast majority of games choose to bring them out during the bonus round.
The sticky wild plays an important role here as when the Stan bonus game begins there’s a sticky wild in the centre position on the middle reel. It only stays there for a couple of spins though but other sticky wilds can also appear. The significance here is that for the free spins to continue you need there to be a sticky wild on the reels. The sticky wild is a wild symbol that can take the place of all regular game symbols. The thing that makes these wilds so important is that they will remain in place for any free spins that are offered on the game. This means that players will have more chances at creating winning combinations, especially if additional sticky wilds appear.
Over the past few years, we have become acquainted with slot games featuring variations on the stick’n’respin theme. In one of the most popular of those, a 3×5 machine, the wild symbol is present on Reels 2-4. When it lands in the window, it expands vertically to the entire visible part of the reel. The paylines are then evaluated (both left-to-right and right-to-left!) and the wild reel sticks during a free respin. If during a respin an additional wild symbol appears, it too will expand to the whole reel before line evaluation, and stick for yet another free respin. The process continues until no additional wild symbols appear. Thus, a player can get up to 4 spins with an increasing number of reels covered by wild symbols, all by staking and pressing the PLAY button only once.
As a continuation of the previous post, it is briefly explained below how this can be solved by means of Markov chains. Each spin in a “stick’n’respin cycle” is started with each of Reel 2, Reel 3 and Reel 4 being either wild or not. We will therefore work with 9 states numbered from 0 to 8, where 0-7 represent spinning with one of the possible wild distributions (think binary!) and 8 represents “no more spins”. Knowing the probabilities that a wild symbol appears on a specific reel, we readily get the transition probabilities between the states. Always performing the initial spin in State 0, it turns out that we will surely end up in State 8 no later than prior to the 5th consecutive spin (which is thus not executed).
If we consider a 3-bit binary number, where the least significant bit represents Reel 2, then we get a natural enumeration of the states 0-7. If the “wild probabilities” are, say, 0.02, 0.05 and 0.03, for reels 2, 3 and 4, respectively, and we repeatedly multiply the resulting transition matrix from the left by an initial vector with probability 1 for State 0 and probabilities 0 for all other states, we end up at the following table.
It is then a matter of calculating the conditional averages given that some of Reels 2-4 are wild which, to a large extent, is a matter of copy and paste (once we have the average for State 0). The nth column in the above table contains the probabilities that the nth spin is executed in State k, where k=8 means that the spin is not executed at all.
Another popular concept involving sticky wilds is to let all wild symbols popping up during a freespin session stick in their positions for the remainder of the freespins, thereby overriding any symbol that appears underneath. Assuming a possibly random but fixed number of freespins, we can solve this in a similar manner. Note that we may consider one payline at a time, and expand the average return linearly to all lines. If the wild symbol is present on all five reels, we have to deal with 32 states and need the conditional average for each of them. The corresponding probability table dictates how often the nth freespin is played with wild configuration k. These are then multiplied with the corresponding conditional averages and the sum of the products is the average total session win. Watch out if retriggers are possible!
A third variation on the same theme is to let the triggering scatter symbols turn into wilds and remain in their positions during an entire freespin session. It is standard that three or more scatter symbols are required (anywhere in the symbol window) in order to start the freespins. There are a number of differences compared to the previous concept, the most important ones being that we do not start at State 0, and different paylines are in general affected differently by the wild symbols. For simplicity, we assume that no additional wild symbols can appear during the freespins. Suppose that the game has 20 paylines. Then, given a triggering scatter/sticky wild combination, some of the paylines may not be affected at all while others have one or more wild symbols given.
Paylines are affected differently
Thus, in general, for each possible triggering combination we get one “line count” for each of the 32 possible wild configurations, adding up to 20. Again, we need the conditional averages for all possible wild configurations. Once those are in place, we weigh them with the line counts mentioned above to get the average total win per spin.
In order to complicate things, the latter two can be combined. It gets a little messier if we allow retriggers, since then we don’t know in advance how many freespins will be played. Also, we need to define whether or not a scatter symbol shall count should it appear underneath a sticky wild. All in all, however, it is usually possible to solve the game analytically with a bit of caution.
Slots with features are so common these days that it's hard to imagine a time when slot machine didn't have them. Unless you're talking about the classic 3-reels, almost every online slot machine has one feature or another: scatter symbols, wild symbols, cascading wilds, sticky wilds, free spins, and bonus games. Many online slots players choose virtual machines by which special features they have, but if you're new to gambling online, these can be awfully confusing at first. With the proliferation of casino software development companies and the fact these firms design a dozen or more new games a year, it's become hard to keep track of all the new bells and whistles you can find in the slots industry.
This article discusses the common features you'll find on the fruit machines you're likely to play these days. When you're finished reading, you'll know why these various features exist and have a pretty good idea which features should appeal to you. I'll start with the simplest features and move on to the less common ones.
Wild Symbols - Wild symbols are a common feature on slots, because they create many different ways to activate a winning combination. On most games, the wilds substitute for any other symbol (except scatters and bonuses) on the machine to trigger a winning combination. Since scatter symbols often trigger bonus games, this would be overkill, so the wilds seldom trigger bonus games. Most wild symbols are found on 5-reel slots, but you'll find them in different sections of these games. Many only appear on selected reels. Wild symbols on reels 2, 3, and 4 are common, though you'll also find machines with wilds on reels 2 and 4 only. Some slots devices have wild symbols on all their reels, so you'll need to read about each new machine you play to make sure you know how often you can expect them. I'll discuss a few exotic wild symbols later, but I want to continue with the most basic, common slots features you'll find.
Multipliers - Some slot machines have multipliers attached to their wild symbols. If a wild symbol completes a winning combo, you might win twice as much (2x) or five times as much (5x) the standard amount. Anytime you see symbols like 10x or '10 times', this is likely to signal a multiplier is in place. Some multipliers stack, so if you get a 2x multiplier and a second 2x multiplier, you might win 4x the amount you normally would.
Occasionally, whole bonus games or other scenarios have multipliers. This is particularly good, since the bonus games tend to involve multiple spins. If you see a bonus game that offers 10 free spins and a 3x multiplier, that's getting 10 multipliers spins in a row, so it's a big deal.
Scatter Symbols - Scatter symbols are another important feature on a slot machine. Often called simply 'scatters', they are referred as such because it doesn't matter where they appear on the screen. Usually, scatters activate a particular bonus or phase of the game. For instance, many scatter symbols activate the bonus mode on interactive slots and video slots.
Having one of these symbols appear usually doesn't do the trick, though. Most of the time, it takes 2 or more scatters appearing anywhere on the screen at the same time to trigger some game mode. Almost as often, you'll need 3 or more scatter icons appearing at once to activate the bonus game. Whatever the case, when scatters trigger an event, you'll usually not have to wonder about it, because the music, sound effects, and graphics usually herald a big event has just happened.
Bonus Games - Bonus games can happen at any time during the game, on any spin. Most of the time, scatters are what activate video slots. I've seen games where wild card symbols and scatters are the same, or wild symbols activate the bonus.
Free Spins - What's important about the bonus mode is you don't have to pay for spins. Everything you win is done without costing you a penny. In some cases, you win 5, 10, 20, or 25 free spins. In other cases, an interactive game begins that's entirely different from the regular flow of the game. The interactive games are found on i-slots, which are designed to be more like the computer games or video games that are so popular right now.
Interactive Bonus Games - Playing interactive bonus games gives you choices that affect the outcome. When you start the bonus game, you're given choices to make. You might pick a certain number of genie's bottles, or choose between the hot blonde, the hot brunette, or the hot redhead. Each game has its own mechanism. Usually in these bonus games, you keep choosing until one of the choices craps out and forces you to return to the regular spin mode of the game. At that point, all your bonus coins are counted up and added to your overall coin total. For the really lucky, bonus games tend to have an upward bonus limit, at which point you end the bonus session.
Cascading Wild - When activated, cascading wild symbols disappear from the screen and allow new reel symbols to cascade from the top of the screen. Cascading wilds therefore allow a gambler to win multiple times on the same spin. Often, the cascading wilds come with bonus multipliers. Tenacious wilds are cascading symbols which offer repeating bonuses. One game offers a 3x multiplier, then cascades into a 2x multiplier, then cascades once again into a 1x bonus.
Stacked Wild Symbols - Expanding Wilds - As stacked wilds appear on a screen, the wild symbol expands to include several spaces on that reel. Expanding wilds are similar, but they expand to include every symbol on the reel. This gives you the maximum chance of filling out winning combination on multiple paylines.
Sticky Wilds Slot
Sticky Wilds - Clumped Wild Symbols - When you have sticky wilds, this feature expands like an expanded wild symbol, but they remain behind for as long as you have free spins. The sticky wild feature thus offers a huge advantage throughout a bonus game feature.
Sticky Wilds Or Raining Wilds
Special Features on Slots
Slots With Sticky Wilds
Those are just some of the most common slot machine features you'll find. Many websites list the progressive jackpots as bonus features, so I would be remiss if I forgot to mention the progressive jackpot prize as a special feature to look at. As you can tell, slot designers have a lot of options to lure players into playing their games. In each case, trade-offs may apply, where you have to give up better bonuses to get more multipliers, and so on. To me, bonus features are like spice on food. A healthy amount of slots feature enhance the whole game, but they can be overdone if you mix in too many together. With all the options available these days, most gamblers prefer to play slots games with a few features, so you should try them all out at least once and see whether you agree.