Vacation Station Slot by Playtech

Eight fixed lines, and they don't all run the way you'd expect. On the small 3x3 grid the paylines cut both across and straight down, so three matching symbols stacked in a column pay exactly the same as three sitting in a row. It's an old trick for wringing more hits out of a nine-cell board, and mechanically it's most of what this game has going for it.

Because there's no wild. None at all. Nothing substitutes, nothing expands, and there are no free spins, no respins, no pick round waiting behind a bonus symbol. Every win is a plain three-of-a-kind on one of those eight lines, ranked up a ladder of transport symbols with a single one at the top paying the most for three. That's the whole base game.

The suitcase is the only symbol that breaks the mould. It's a scatter, sticker-covered, and it pays purely on how many land anywhere on the grid rather than along any line. Four of them return double your total bet, and the scale climbs fast from there: five pays 10x, six pays 50x, seven 200x, eight 500x, and a full screen of nine suitcases is worth 1,000x the total stake. It still triggers nothing, though. No bonus, no spins, it just pays out and the round ends.

Visually it's a cheerful cartoon travel scene. The reels sit inside a tiled turquoise archway that opens onto blue sky and a pastel city skyline, with a grinning tourist off to the right in a floral Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses and a camera, red suitcase in hand, under a green arrow "Vacation Station" street sign. The symbols are bold glossy vehicles, a red convertible, a blue sailboat, a purple cruise liner, a green hot-air balloon and submarine, a yellow motorbike, an orange bus and a pink train. Playtech later handed this exact game a graphical remaster as Vacation Station Deluxe, so the maths you're looking at here is the original.