The Ruby Slot – Free Demo

A fruit machine with three jackpots on top

The Ruby is a vivid and colourful blend of vintage visuals and contemporary gameplay. Each spin costs 30 coins, so the coin value you pick sets the stake outright, and at 0.10 a coin that comes to 3.00 a spin. It comes from the inventive team at iSoftBet, who are renowned for combining elements of the old and new. The Ruby symbol itself is held back for the free spins and turns up nowhere else. Their game is a deceptively plain looking slot. It conceals an intricate mixture of features and three progressive jackpots, and it is hard to describe everything that The Ruby has to offer.

The Ruby seems fairly straight forward with just 5 reels and 3 rows, at first glance. Those meters carry the names Cherry, Topaz and Ruby. But appearances can be misleading, and three jackpot meters sit above the reels and rise as people play. The overall theme is of a contemporary fruit slot with gemstones.

The paytable tops out at 20 times the bet

During the base game 30 fixed paylines come into play, and wins pay left to right only. Scatter wins are the exception to that direction. Only the largest win on each line counts. The volatility level seems to be slightly more mild, resting at 3 out of 5.

A visit to the paytable reveals just 7 base game symbols. Above them all sits the Wild, which pays more than any of the seven. They are distinctive but keep a trace of their fruit slot roots, and climbing up from the lower end we get bars, cherries, bells, money bags, dollar coins, and sevens. The ruby is the highest paying base game symbol worth 300 coins for five of a kind. Coin figures convert into bet multiples by dividing by 30, since that is what one spin costs. Five Wilds pay 600 coins, or 20 times the total bet. That is the most any single line can return. But heap on the features, and the game turns absolutely crazy.

Ruby on Fire can take all three odd reels

You know those reviews where they claim that the slot in question is crammed with features? Well, strap in, because it's going to be one of those journeys, and it all centres around the jewel that gives the slot its name. There are three features - Ruby on Fire, the Bonus wheel, and the free spins. Ruby on Fire is the only one of the three that can start without a trigger symbol. The last two come into play when you land 3 Bonus symbols on reels 1, 3, and 5.

At random, Ruby on Fire begins on any paid spin. The rules put no figure on how often that happens. It turns reels 1, 3 and 5 wild, and one might not seem like much, but it can be one of them, two, or all three. I have seen it land with reel 3 wild from top to bottom and a further wild alongside it on reel 4, worth 49.50 on a 3.00 bet. The aim of this feature is to land as many wilds as possible. Three wild reels at once is the best it can manage. On the reels that remain plain, between 1 and 3 random symbols turn wild as well. So even a single wild reel arrives with company. The wild replaces every symbol except Bonus and The Ruby.

The wheel is the only way to a jackpot

When three Bonus symbols land, the Bonus wheel is triggered, and it awards one of three progressive jackpots - Cherry, Ruby and Topaz - or a cash prize of up to 100 times the total bet, or up to 10 free spins with 5 times the total bet on top. That 5 times the bet is paid on top of whatever the spins themselves return. Only the wheel can award the jackpots. Nothing in the rules says how often it settles on a jackpot rather than on cash or spins. It cannot be retriggered. At the 3.00 I was staking, the cash prize at its highest would have been 300.00. When I checked, Cherry stood at 500.01, Topaz at 1,000.01 and Ruby at 2,500.01.

Some people prefer to ease off at the end of a ride. During the round The Ruby can stand in for any symbol in a winning combination. Others wish to inject the nitrous oxide, and The Ruby opts for the latter choice by equipping the free spins with The Ruby symbol. The first of the two bonus rounds I hit lifted my balance from 837.40 to 972.40. This bonus game begins with up to 10 free spins, it cannot be retriggered, and The Ruby symbol appears only here. The second one took it from 832.90 to 901.90. Every time it lands it either becomes a sticky wild for the remainder of the round, becomes an extended sticky wild for the remainder of the round, or pays an instant win of up to 10 times the total bet.

Minty’s Final Note: 55.2% back across 360 spins, and the two wheels I did reach were the difference between a bad afternoon and a very bad one. The meters are the reason to sit here, because a full line of wilds pays 20 times the bet and nothing else on the paytable beats it. iSoftBet later put the name on The Ruby Megaways, which spreads 117,649 ways at 96.11%.

What 360 spins at 3.00 gave back

iSoftBet have crafted something that is simple, yet rewardingly intricate at the same time. In fact, it can appear plain when it first loads. But give it time to find its groove. The Ruby is not as mild in practice as that 3 out of 5 implies, or so it appears to me at least. My 26 spin drought ended on spin 256. So bonus rounds do not drop all that often. There were 67 spins between the two of mine. Across 360 spins at 3.00 I saw two of them, on spin 111 and spin 178. I wagered 1,080.00 over the run and won 596.10 of it back. They returned 138.00 and 72.00, and the wait for them was not quite worth it either. In stake terms that is 46.0x and 24.0x. The balance never once rose above the 1,000.00 I began with, and 360 spins later it read 516.10, a return of 55.2%.

The Ruby would still be fairly satisfying, even without that potential. The best of my spins outside a bonus was 42.00 on spin 103, 14 times the stake. Though 101 of my 360 spins paid and 57 of those paid back less than the stake, and one barren run went 26 spins without a win.

The main attraction is the features though, and the tempo, and the suspense that they are capable of building can get deliciously fierce. The two bonus rounds I did see accounted for 210.00, or 35% of everything I won. In particular, the Bonus wheel with its three rising jackpots is the reason to keep spinning.