Hearts & Stars Slot by Fazi

The thing that makes this one tick is the gold MEGAPOT star, and it doesn't care about your paylines. It pays from wherever it lands. Three stars anywhere on the screen returns x100 of your stake, four returns x1,000, and five stars returns x10,000, which is what drags the top win up to about 10,145x. There's no build-up to it either. The Megapot is a set amount that drifts up and down with how much the whole player network is wagering at that moment, and it can drop on any spin with no warning. So the headline prize isn't something you chase with a meter or a trigger. It just arrives, or it doesn't.

Underneath that sits a second, completely separate reward system: three mystery progressives called Gold, Diamond and Platinum. A sliver of every bet feeds them, they pop at a random hidden point, and a bigger stake shortens your odds. Worth keeping the two straight in your head, because they look similar but the star and the mystery jackpots have nothing to do with each other.

The reels are pure Valentine's fruit machine. Deep red field dotted with glowing hearts and little stars, bold red sevens, gold BAR plates, golden bells, green apples, purple plums, red cherries, all of it warm reds and golds with a slightly glamorous shine. The sparkling brilliant-cut red heart is the wild, set in a floral wreath alongside the star. It stands in for everything except the Megapot star, and it's also the best regular line symbol going, five hearts on a line paying 25x. Win anything and you can send it to a red-or-black double-up, pushing the prize up one flip at a time until you miss or hit the 50,000 ceiling.

What you won't find is a bonus round. No free spins, no buy feature, no respins, nothing to break up the spinning. The base game is the heart wild plus the two jackpot systems and that's the lot, which makes it fairly plain between star drops. If the romantic dressing doesn't grab you, there isn't much else holding the screen.