Bounty of the Beanstalk Slot by Playtech

Three Giants set the main event running. Land them and the free spins begin with the Giant lumbering onto the reels to chase Jack across them, and every time he moves he freezes a random wild in place. Those locked vines don't clear between spins, so they pile up as the round goes, and by the back end of the roughly ten spins you can be sitting on a board half-covered in held wilds.

The wild itself is a full-reel green beanstalk vine, stacked top to bottom, which counts for more than usual on this taller four-row layout: one landing blankets an entire column. It stands in for everything except the Giant and Jack symbols and pays the most of anything on the reels, up to 1,000x the line bet for five. And that's the line bet, not your total stake, so read the figure against the smaller number.

Three Jack symbols open a separate bonus feature. There's also a progressive jackpot ticking away on the plate up top, but be straight with yourself about it: it sits empty in the free demo and can only be won for real money.

The art is pure cartoon storybook. A grinning wide-mouthed cow, a red-bladed axe, green bean pods and blonde Jill make up the picture symbols, with bright A-K-Q-J-10-9 royals filling the rest against a sunny farmyard, a thatched cottage off to one side and the beanstalk twisting up into the clouds on the other, young Jack himself standing at the edge of the reels. It's a dated 2014 Ash Gaming fairytale slot and it plays like one, the return running below what newer titles hand back. The Giant chase and its stack of frozen wilds are the part that's aged well.