What are Any Adjacent Pays slots?

One of the most exciting things about slot games is that for every convention you think exists for slot games, a game will come along that smashes what is expected of a slot game and changes the way games can be played.

This has happened from the very first slot games and in the online world, that process is sped up a great deal. One time, we had just three-reel slot games, then that increased to four and five reel games. Now we have six-reel games, ten-reel games and sometimes more.

However, that development stretches beyond simply the number of reels and symbols on a reel that a slot has. There are plenty of new developments in terms of the different bonuses and features that a slot incorporates into the game and one of the more interesting and unusual of these is the Any Adjacent Pays feature.

How does the Any Adjacent Pays feature work?

On a traditional slot game, you win by landing similar symbols on the reels from left to right across a winning pay line. The more symbols you land on a line, then the greater the value of your win. However, the key fact to note here is that for you to land a win your sequence of symbols must begin on the leftmost reel and progress across the other reels without a gap in the sequence.

However, there have been moves away from that tradition in recent years. Some games have allowed players to win both ways across the reels, winning left to right and right to left across the same pay lines. Microgaming also invented the first 243 Ways to Win slot, which is a game which allows you to win on symbols appearing in any position from left to right across the reels, so long as they are landed on consecutive reels from starting with the first.

Confusingly, 243 Ways to Win slots (and their cousins, 1024 ways, 2048 ways and so on) are called All Ways to Win slots, simply because they cover all the possible ways you can win across the reels from the leftmost reel to the right. In the case of 5x3 reel slot, that is 3x3x3x3x3 ways to win, which if you multiply it together gives you 243-ways.

Any Adjacent Pays slots go a step further from that though and they are slightly different in one key respect and that is that it removes the need for winning combinations to be landed using the first reel on all occasions. An Any Adjacent Pays slot means you can land three symbols on a paying line on the second, third and fourth reels and still pick up a win for that spin. Similarly, you can land a win if you land three symbols on the third, fourth and fifth reels. You can also win for four symbol wins from the second reel, as well as all the standard wins you could land on a 5x3 reel slot.

Of course, this offers slots players potentially a great deal more flexibility about how they are going to win in a game. It also means that if your first three reels do not match up, you can still win on a spin, which is a nice positive as it means a player's interest in a spin is maintained longer each time.

One thing to note with an Anyways slot is that it may differ from a 243 Ways to Win slot in that a win may need to be on a specific pay line, however it can be at any point on that pay line. Not all Any Adjacent Pays slots are 243 Ways to Win games and many offer wins over only a set number of pay lines.

Who makes some of the best Any Adjacent Pays slots I can play?

One of the companies that have made something of a name for themselves producing Any Adjacent Pay slots for Microgaming is Crazy Tooth Studios. Over the last year or so in particular the company has released a total of five of games that offers this feature including:

• Diamond Force (1024 ways to win)
• Banana Drop (4096 ways to win)
• Ancient Warriors (50 lines)
• Queen of the Crystal Rays (50 lines)
• Arctic Valor (4096 ways to win)

In fact, when you add to this selection games like The Incredible Balloon Machine and the single-expanding reel game Seven 7s, not to mention the quest-type slot Fortress Charge then you can see why Crazy Tooth Studios certainly live up to their reputation by offering some of the most unique content you can find on Microgaming casinos.

Furthermore, the company has a trio of new releases set for 2020/21 which are set to feature a number of exciting new features including a Respin Insanity bonus game on their forthcoming 777 Mega Deluxe slot game, a pinball-themed slot game called 3 Devils Pinball which will feature an exciting new bonus feature called Power Path.

Finally, there is the slot Aureus, which is going fo feature new way to play that uses a new CoinVerge feature that allows players to win in many different ways.

While there are no further Any Adjacent Pays expressly stated in those new slot games, I would be very surprised if Crazy Tooth Studios do not have further plans to use the feature in a number of their forthcoming releases.

Do Any Adjacent Pays slots offer me more chance to win?

It does sound like that playing a slot with the Any Adjacent Pays feature would offer you far more chance of landing a win, but it should be noted that there are a number of factors that influence this a great deal and it does not necessarily mean that these are lower volatility games that will offer you more lower value wins. There may well be some games where that is the case, but it is not a rule you can use across all Any Adjacent Pays slots.

Factors such as whether the slot is based on line wins, or is a Ways to Win slot will play a significant role in deciding how often Any Adjacent Pay wins will land. Similarly, the number of symbols in a game will influence this too, with the more symbols meaning the more difficult it is to hit wins in general.

Other features, such as the use of Wilds in the game and whether the game has any other features, such as blocking symbols (as is the case in the Ancient Warriors slot) will also play a role in deciding how volatile these games are.

As such, I'd advise you to read our review of each slot (and perhaps view a demo video of a play-through if there is one available) to discover more about how volatile each of these Any Adjacent Pays slots are to decide which is the best choice for you.

For me, Banana Drop just about has the edge at the moment, but why not see which one you prefer?