Hot Gems: Cash Collect Slot by Playtech

Every win here does two things at once. The matching symbols pay out as a cluster, five or more touching side to side or top to bottom, and then those same symbols get tallied into a tall brass meter running up the left of the reels. That meter is the Cash Collect Bar, thirty slots deep. Fill it before the next batch of symbols drops and the game plants a Cash Collect symbol on the grid, which sweeps up every coin sitting there and pays their combined value. The bar can fill more than once on a single spin, so a long tumbling chain might spawn several collectors, each one raking the whole board.

Winners explode, new symbols fall into the gaps, and the chain keeps feeding the meter as it runs. The coins are what make filling it worth chasing. Gold Cash Coins hold fixed amounts like 7.50, 25 or 50, and blue adder coins stamped +3, +4 or +5 boost whatever a collector grabs. A stick of red TNT complicates things: it lands and sits until the collapses run dry, then detonates, blowing up everything around it except the coins, Wilds and Cash Collect symbols. Whatever the blast destroys still counts toward the bar, and a fresh collapse follows. A glowing Filler symbol does the same job more bluntly, dumping 5, 10, 15 or 20 slots straight into the meter before bursting.

In the base game that bar wipes clean at the start of every paid spin, which is the catch. Free Games remove it. The meter stops resetting between spins, and each Cash Collect symbol you land turns sticky for three spins, so collectors pile up and keep sweeping. You can buy the Free Games directly, or flip on Extra Bet for a euro more, which only nudges the odds of triggering them. Above the buy button sits a diamond ladder of four jackpots, Mini through Grand, and the only way in is a Diamond Coin caught by a Cash Collect, which then hands you one tier at random.

The whole thing plays out deep in a gem mine, dark rock walls veined with glowing pink and blue crystal, oil lanterns hanging in the gloom, brass pipework wrapped around the reels. The Wild is a jolly white-bearded miner in a red cap who fills in for the paying gems, lanterns and pickaxes.