2024 has been a year for some of the industry’s best slots, with top developers releasing some truly unmissable reel-based games – and it’s not over yet! From top collection sequels to fascinating fresh additions, come and check out our list of the best slots 2024 has brought us so far and see which ones inspire you the most!
3 Pots Riches Extra: Hold and Win
Playson’s summer 2023 original has been succeeded by a somewhat expanded and enhanced sequel in 3 Pots Riches Extra: Hold and Win, which was released in mid-February. Sporting a larger 5×4 reel set and 30 paylines over the original’s 25, this slot retains its Irish charm, not to mention its various pots of colourful clover coins, which come into play during the Hold and Win bonus feature. Green ones double your coin values, blue ones collect them, and red ones award up to 150x multipliers. In Hold and Win style, fill all positions on the reels and you’ll unlock one of the game’s four fixed jackpots – Mini, Minor, Major, and Grand – for a payout of up to 5,000x.
Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake
Reel Kingdom’s collection of Big Bass slots has really shot up in size this year with no fewer than five new additions, taking the total to 17 since the release of the original Big Bass Bonanza. Launched in April 2024, Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake offers a more Arthurian theme than its bright, upbeat predecessors, complete with submerged, stone-embedded Excalibur. As in the other top slots in the Big Bass series, the free spins feature is where the action is, with our fisherman friend (adorned with a crown on this adventure) collecting up to 5,000x multiplier money fish whenever he appears. However, unique to this slot, the Secrets of the Golden Lake feature removes all other symbols apart from those plump money fish and plays out on special reels.
Wolves! Cash Collect & Link
Just launched at the tail end of June 2024, Wolves! Cash Collect & Link is Playtech’s answer to Hold and Win, with the upgraded mechanism first appearing in last year’s Breaking Bad. Set in the rugged snowy domain of North America’s wolves, this slot’s variously valued gold coins can be picked up by landing the Cash Collect symbol on reels 1 or 5. Combine it with a Link or Mega Link symbol and you’ll unlock the feature, which is your access point to coin prizes, multipliers, free games, and the slot’s four fixed jackpots.
Big Bass Floats My Boat
The popular Big Bass series expanded further in February 2024 with the release of Big Bass Floats My Boat, which sees our friendly fisherman taking us out on his boat for a spot of evening trawler fishing. Never straying too far from their winning formula, Reel Kingdom sticks to the same feature unlock of 3+ big fish scatter symbols for up to 20 free spins. However, on this fishing trip, the fisherman hauls in his catch using a net, something he also does at random during the base game.
Pirots 3
Pirots is a rather ugly portmanteau of pirates and parrots, the latter being the feathered stars of this slot show sequel, which was released by ELK Studios in June. Word cringe aside, I think Pirots 3 is actually a really entertaining gem of a slot. While the first instalment in the trilogy featured a not so subtle, erm, Caribbean pirates theme, and the second a, er, park of Jurassic creatures theme, the third slot is set in the Wild West.
This Cluster Pays slot features the comical capers of the same four colourful parrots that eat up nearby gems on an expanding grid. It includes great features, exciting duels, train rides, and a rather grumpy looking caged vulture who has his own unique effect on the reels when he’s released.
My fellow OJO writer Dan Grant made ELK is Provider of the Year in 2023 and reckons Pirots is one of the best slots series ever. I’ll let you make up your own mind.
Sugar Rush 1000
Systematically amping up some of their existing best online slots with the ‘1000’ upgrade, Pragmatic Play gave their sweet Sugar Rush slot the special treatment too, with the release of Sugar Rush 1000 in March. The RTP sits a whole 2% higher in this new version and that isn’t the only thing that’s new. The game mechanics remain the same, with clusters of five or more symbols triggering wins and tumbles upping the multipliers. However, those multipliers have exploded from a maximum of 128x to an incredible 1,024x and they don’t reset during the free spins feature.
Demon’s Gold
Demon’s Gold, released by Inspired Gaming in April 2024, looks like your standard 5×3, 10 payline, four fixed jackpot slot. However, looks can be deceiving as this wicked little number illustrates rather well with its fiery bonus feature. You start off with up to 20 free spins and each demon you land gobbles up all visible coin values and pops onto the three stage trail at the top. Reaching a new stage unlocks 10 extra free spins and up to 10x coin multipliers. Switch to Fortune Spins to remove all other symbols and opt for Fortune Bet to supersize the bonus symbol.
3 Cherry Frenzy
Canadian developer PearFiction released the 3 Cherry Frenzy slot in June 2024, which is best described as a fruity disco! There’s a lot happening on the five (six?) reels of this colourful game, including splitting symbols, 243 to 7,776 ways to win, and three different LockNWin features. The Jackpot LockNWin feature is your access point to the five fixed Micro, Mini, Minor, Major, and Mega jackpots of 10x, 20x, 100x, 500x, and 5,000x payouts, respectively.
Mining Pots of Gold
Gameburger Studios has created at least 10 Pots of Gold games, including 9 Pots of Gold, which you may know is a rehash of 9 Masks of Fire. Their top online slots collection in this vein has expanded with the launch of Mining Pots of Gold, which combines the popular mining and Irish leprechaun themes, resulting in a somewhat Elton John-ish main character (check those specs!).
The pots in this slot are actually minecarts that you’ll fill with green, blue, and purple gems as you play. Light the fuse of that huge pile of dynamite to empty those minecarts onto the reels in the bonus round.
Cash Strike Hotstepper
Blueprint Gaming’s March 2024 release of Cash Strike was quickly followed up by the enhanced Hotstepper version just over three months later and has become one of 2024’s top slots. While the new slot retains the original’s Cash Collect symbol, which grabs the cash values of all visible coins, the Hotstepper mechanism sees the Cash Symbol moving down a reel position on each spin. That means the coin collecting can continue for a little bit longer.
Day of the Dinero
Besides expanding their Pots of Gold series, Gameburger’s also been busy plotting new slots for 2024, including this beauty, which hit the best UK slots sites in June. Based on the South American Día de los Muertos (day of the dead) celebrations, Day of the Dinero puts a money-themed spin on things with five unlockable jackpots.
Try to land the dead mariachi Collector symbol to gather up all cash, jackpot, and extra spins symbols. Trigger the free spins feature and this guy will stick around to boost your collecting power and upgrade those jackpots.
Man vs Gator
Another cracker on our best slots 2024 list is ELK Studios’ Man vs Gator, which depicts a comical clash between beach dude and boxing alligator. Yep, it’s a bit of a mad one, with three bells starting the fight, as well as some pretty gritty guitar grinds. Look out for wilds on both sides, blue and red. If they appear, they’ll pause your spin count and move down a position on each uncounted spin. If two different coloured wilds appear on the same reel, there’ll be an epic showdown, resulting in a full reel height sticky wild for the rest of the feature.
Lucky Lemons
Snowborn Games’ Lucky Lemons came out in June 2024 and combines juicy fruits with cash collect and increasing multiplier mechanics. Land the Collect symbol on reel 5 of this 20 payline game to gather in all those juicy lemon prizes. For every 1UP symbol you collect in a single spin, the Lemon Booster will up its Lemon multipliers by 1 up to a maximum of 10x. This ramps up in the free spins feature, as the Lemon Booster multipliers won’t reset their values.
Genie’s Arabian Riches
Launched by Neon Valley Studios in March 2024, Genie’s Arabian Riches isn’t just another weird blue genie themed slot. The attractive ‘pay anywhere’ setup means 8+ matching symbols anywhere on the reels is enough to trigger a win. Even better, the rolling reels mechanism is enhanced by random multipliers of 2x to 100x. Trigger the free spins feature and the game throws in a free spins multiplier too….
Gold Boom
No best slots 2024 list would be complete without at least one gold mining game and Slingshot Studios’ Gold Boom, released in June, certainly fits the bill. The standard 5×3 setup is enhanced by a minecart that appears above reel 5. This cart can carry various attractive loads, including gold scatters, 2x to 5x wild multipliers, wild reels, walking wild reels, and prize collection. Land a wild symbol directly under the cart and its contents are yours. During the game’s free spins features, a whole train of minecarts will trundle along the top of the reels.
Ted Afterparty
Delving further into Blueprint’s 2017 release of Ted, related studio Lucksome introduces another fuzzy adventure in Ted Afterparty, which landed in July 2024. Amongst this 50 payline game’s highlights you’ll find stacked wilds, free spins with lower paying symbols removed, and a Ted-focused cash feature that unlocks additional rows. It’s every bit of an afterparty as you’d expect from the raucous little guy.
Oasis of Dead
Oh yes they did. Play’n GO expanded its ‘of Dead’ slots collection with yet another adventure in their June 2024 release Oasis of Dead. I’ve always though that Play’n GO have great design chops, and this slot looks stunning and plays really well.
Sticking with their standard simple formula, this 10 payline ancient Egypt themed slot combines the wild and scatter symbol into one, giving you less to keep track of. Land three or more of these ornate gold monuments and you’ll unlock the game’s free spins feature, during which one symbol will be randomly selected to expand. Retriggering the feature means you could potentially activate up to nine expanding symbols.
Candy Roll
Those with a sweet tooth will be delighted by Playtech’s latest slot creation, Candy Roll, which arrived in June. This 30 payline game is a combination of your favourite sweetie matching mobile games and a board game, complete with dice and a set of prize-triggering cards. This Sweet Road Bonus round can be triggered by landing a Candy Roll Bonus symbol on reels 1 or 5 along with a ? card anywhere else on the reels. Then it’s time to roll!
Ze Zeus
Hacksaw Gaming is well known for its unique games and mechanisms and their June 2024 release of Ze Zeus is a great example. Unlike other cluster pays slots, this one not only removes the clusters themselves, but all other matching symbols on the grid, resulting in potentially more rewarding cascades. Even better, Zeus can use his zapping power to transform previously winning symbol positions into prize coins for an added boost. The powerful deity reveals his true might in the slot’s three free spins features, with Zeus strikes on every spin!
Rich Wilde and the Tome of Insanity
The ‘of Dead’ series isn’t Play’n GO’s only collection that expanded this year. May 2024’s release of Rich Wilde and the Tome of Insanity sees the intrepid adventurer return in this descent into more madness. Your goal here is to activate four dark runes to release H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu inspired Yog-Sothoth onto the 5×5 grid. Each rune releases its own effects, while the gruesome one-eyed Yog-Sothoth roams the grid as a giant 2×2 wild. The mystery deepens, but so do the potential rewards, in the free spins feature.
My Picks: The Best of the Best UK Slots 2024
It’s tough to narrow down such an awesome field, but a few of these titles really stand out for me as the best slots online this year. Pirots 3 might hurt my grammar-policing nature, but there’s no denying the comical nature and unique mechanics of this well-designed slot. I found Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake’s more subdued Arthurian legend theme to be a refreshing change from Reel Kingdom’s standard fare.
Man vs Gator’s bizarre beast boxing beach bash and gritty guitar grinds certainly raised an eyebrow, but also put a smile on my face. Whatever you’re into, these 20 top slots of 2024 are sure to provide you with plenty of entertainment value. Check back soon for updates to this list as the year progresses and more great slots are released.
