Level Up Slots

Leveling up during a bonus round

When you trigger free spins, the bonus round has different stages. You usually start at level one with basic features. By landing specific symbols or hitting certain wins, you move up to the next level to get better modifiers. Pragmatic Play uses this setup in games like Big Bass BOOM and Raging Waterfall Megaways.

The catch is that the early spins often pay very little. The game holds its best payouts for the higher levels. If your bonus round ends early, you walk away with weak results. You really need a higher number of starting spins to give yourself enough time to climb the ladder.

Building progress over a whole session

ELK Studios takes this idea further. In games like Coba, Coba Reborn, and Knight Fight, your progress does not reset after a single bonus round. You advance through levels as you play, and each new level upgrades the game's features for as long as you keep the game open.

This makes a long session feel completely different by spin 500 compared to your first few spins. The downside is that playing for a short time makes no sense. If you only play a few spins and leave, you never unlock the higher levels where the game actually starts paying.

Extra rules in branded games

Blueprint Gaming often uses level-up systems to tell a story in their branded games. Game of Thrones ties different game modes to the plot of the show, while Cop the Lot Megaways adds upgrades on top of an already busy game engine.

This gives the games a lot of variety, but it comes at the cost of being very complicated. There are more levels, more modifiers, and more rules to keep track of. A game like Game of Thrones has so many different bonus paths that new players often spend their time just trying to understand what is happening on the screen. A slot can have a lot of depth, but it should still make sense when you look at it.