In a world where most online casino companies have put the majority of their efforts into creating stylish interactive slot games with lots of features, PlayTech has taken a more balanced approach. Sure, you can find those types of games at their casinos too, but there are a host of other games – including one of the biggest selections of classic three-reel slots you’ll find anywhere in online gaming.
The company was founded in 1999, and provides a full suite of casino games to gambling site operators that license their software. They’ve also created popular software platforms for online poker, sportsbooks, and bingo sites. The company has been publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange since 2006.
The PlayTech Slots Selection
Their library of slot machines features well over 200 different games. There’s a pretty good balance here between traditional three-reel slots and their newer five-reel counterparts, meaning that players can get a good variety no matter what they’re looking for.
Let’s take a look at a couple of their signature games to get a better feel for what they have to offer. First up, there’s Reel Classic 3, one of the more up to date versions of a classic slot machine. Like the old time machines you’d find in a casino in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, Reel Classic 3 offers only the bare basics of a slot machine: three reels, a single pay line, and the opportunity to win a big jackpot at the right moment. Players can play up to three coins (ranging from a nickel to $5 each) at a time, with the maximum jackpot of three golden chip symbols winning 5,000 coins. It’s worth remembering to play three coins to get the full payout; at 2 coins, the jackpot is only worth 2,000 coins.
Of course, they offer tons of the more fashionable five-reelers as well. One great example is Captain’s Treasure, a nautical themed game with five pay lines and plenty of wild cards thrown in. The captain himself is a wild symbol, and can help you win up to 5,000 coins at a time! As with most five-reel games, there are some additional bonuses you can hit on the reels, like scatter symbols and a “Dollar Ball” game. With nine pay lines, you can play this game for anywhere from a penny to $45 per spin.
One very cool thing about PlayTech is their selection of slot machines that include famous brand names. Take, for instance, their X-Men slot machine, which is not only a lot of fun, but features all of the famous characters from the popular movie and comic book franchise. As you spin the reels (and gamble on up to 25 different pay lines), you’ll be mixing and matching both good and evil characters, hoping to land matches that allow you to take part in some of the most exciting bonus games we’ve seen. One in particular allows you a large number of free spins, eliminating all but the character symbols from the wheel. If you hit all “good” or “evil” characters, during the bonus round, the game switches modes; while in hero mode, you’ll have unlimited free spins, but in villain mode, you only get eight spins (unless you’re lucky enough to trigger the hero mode again).
There are plenty of these licensed games, and they have some of the most unique play modes of any online slots; it’s clear that a lot of work was put into them. A few of the other popular licensed games include Blade, Iron Man, King Kong, Fantastic Four, Gladiator and The Incredible Hulk.
What’s New this Year
The latest slot machines released this year are also household names – Rocky – based on the popular movie franchise starring Sylvester Styllone and the Pink Panther – another world-famous character.
Best Progressive Jackpots
While PlayTech has several great jackpot games, we’d like to point out two in particular. First, several of the Marvel-licensed casino games share what’s known as the “Marvel Jackpot“, which is often among the largest jackpots on the network. In fact, as of this writing, the jackpot is well over $600,000.
However, the biggest jackpot of all currently belongs to the Beach Life slot machine. This progressive jackpot slot features a beach theme. There are 20 pay lines, each of which can be played for 50 cents. The progressive jackpot can get enormously large; at the time of this writing, it was over $1.3 million, by far the largest of the PlayTech jackpots (and one of the larger jackpots on any casino network).
Overall Quality
PlayTech has an interesting slots assortment, and one that we think should appeal to three kinds of players. If you like more traditional slot machines, they have one of the wider selection of three-reel games. If you’re a fan of licensed games, they have the biggest catalog of movie-licensed games around, with few other casino platforms coming anywhere near them in this regard.
Finally, they also offer some great choices for jackpot hunters, since they almost always have several jackpots that run into the hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars at any given time. While their basic five-line video slots may not be quite up to the standard of RTG or Microgaming, they have so many great specialized games that you’re unlikely to notice that a few of the older games they provide aren’t quite up to par.
