Relax Gaming Best Payout Slots
Introduction
Relax Gaming is an online casino game developer that players seeking high return to player percentages (RTP) will want to explore. We’ll focus on the slots here and only those games with the highest payout percentages, but the company does a lot more behind the scenes than develop slots for regulated markets all around the world.
Relax offers some of the industry’s lowest house-edge games with their premiere high RTP game only taking 1% in the long run with a stated RTP of 99%. The game is conveniently titled, “Book of 99” but there’s more to the name than the RTP. We’ll get to that later.
It’s good to keep in mind now and then that RTP isn’t everything but it’s a big thing. For example, Nevada in the US only requires a minimum of 75%, but market forces (players voting with their feet and wallets) tend to encourage casinos to give them a better deal for their gambling entertainment dollar. The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) implemented a supplement to regulations there that dropped the minimum from 92% to 85% in mid-2022. Anything north of 95% or 96% would seem to be hog heaven for online gamblers.
The great news for Relax Gaming slot fans who also gravitate toward high RTP (low House Edge) games is that in many markets all or most of the games should be above 96%. However, operators can also be offered different settings, and players in Germany can only play a 90% version of some games like Relax’s Money Train that are rolled out at an RTP of 96.20% in other places. If that sounds confusing, the better news is that in some places, like the UK, the RTP must be displayed. The stranger ‘news’ is that although the Gambling Commission in Great Britain requires RTP to be displayed, an operator such as Unibet can simply lower a game to 94% and it’s up to the player to notice.
All of that is simply in full disclosure of the reality that we can’t guarantee any slot title with a stated RTP of x% will be the game you play. At least in the UK, since there is no statutory minimum %RTP figure, you will be able to learn that number, no matter what it is.
High RTP Relax Gaming Slots
We’ll take a look at a few of the top RTP slots from Relax Gaming. Other than Book of 99, these are not necessarily the absolute highest-paying games but they are all in the upper register (96%+) and present a good cross-section of the art styles, sounds, maths, mechanics, and other features of the games which number about 100 titles as this is written.
This selection runs the gamut from the epic and mythical Book of 99 to the brilliantly bright, exciting, and simple Powerspins, to the Puckish gladiators of Marching Legions. It’s not easy to find a “bad” Relax Gaming title from the company’s own studios, so it’s easy to stick to the good ones for the following list:
Book of 99 (RTP: 99%)
"Book of 99" offers more than high returns over time, it’s also a relatively rare slot that brilliantly illustrates that it is possible to have extremely high RTP along with high volatility. It also challenges the urban myth that the inverse is always true when generalizing game maths. Without going too deep, simply imagine a game like this one that offers the best of both worlds where you don’t need to trade excitement for long-term returns. Many things can be true at the same time when it comes to slot machines, and that is part of the magic of Relax Gaming.
If you like mythological themes this game might be calling you as well with its decent narrative punctuated with a mythic journey of collecting until you get your 99th book on the meter. You’ll collect wild scattered book symbols to trigger free spins as an extra-chance aside from the regular three-symbol scatter trigger found in most games in the genre.
It’s perfectly fine to change your bet whenever you want to along the way as the free spins will be played at the average bet - which is recorded with each book placed on the meter rather than every spin made. On the other hand, free spins triggered with scatters are placed at the size of the triggering bet.
We mentioned that the books are also wild symbols and scatters. Land three in the same spin to trigger the spins feature. Since it's a “Book of” game, once you trigger free games a special expanding symbol will come into play during the spins bonus.
Marching Legions (RTP: 98.12%)
Marching Legions puts players in a place where they can imagine the command of marching Roman soldiers with stacked legionaries triggering respins as they move across the reels. The Nudge feature increases the chance of Marching Stacks showing up and then being tracked on a Collection Meter. Collecting five will unlock Free Spins.
Nudges matter and the Waves can thrill.
In the Free Spins round, another meter is set up to track special symbols. Every time you collect three you’ll trigger more waves of Free Spins with more Marching Stacks. The game offers potential wins of up to 10,000x the bet. This is another highly volatile Relax Gaming slot with top-tier RTP and plenty of fun features. You may or may not be drawn to the graphics (imagine chibi-esque gladiators for a mix of silliness and drama) but the constant action and higher return to player elements might be enough for even the most serious slot players.
Powerspin (RTP: 96.84%)
Powerspin is a 3x3 slot with 5 fixed paylines that mixes retro symbols like cherries and lemons with more modern features like a bonus wheel. It’s a simple, but dynamic slot with a clean interface, nice colors, and high 96.84% RTP. The bonus wheel has multipliers and symbol upgrades to power up your game.
Fill all 9 positions on the 3-reel set with the same symbol to trigger the Bonus Wheel. The re-spin feature activates when two full columns match. It locks the symbols into place and offers another chance to bring the Bonus Wheel into play. Powerspin is part of Relax Gaming’s Jackpot Stars series and includes a Jackpot Stars side bet for more chances to win. The main game bet range is €0.10 to €500 per spin so be careful thinking about going on full tilt thinking the high RTP will save a session. The volatility is medium-high.
Hellcatraz (RTP: 96.83%)
Hellcatraz, is well, just what it sounds like, and something entirely different. Heaven on earth one moment and the dregs of despair the next while waiting for that volatility to meet the RTP promise. Undisciplined slot players might think twice about some high RTP games like this one that are also highly volatile.
The game world is a fictional prison island built of retro pixel art graphics. It’s hardly a slot at all with no spinning reels carrying virtual strips of images mapped to maths, but it does have 46,656 ways to win and dynamic features like cascading reels and mystery symbols.
The Mystery Symbols appear as countdowns that reveal their value after a set number of cascades. (Lockdown and Mixed Modes have different countdowns, more later).
Key Symbols (get out!) unlock Super Free Spins when you collect 2,000 of them. They come when they come - use this to try to get a “feeling” for the volatility and how it moves in different parts of the game. (clue - probably not across the board between all elements!) In these spins, Mystery Symbols reveal instantly, and Golden Mystery Symbols can trigger more spins.
The Maximum win is 51,840x bet with stakes from €0.10 to €25 per spin in most markets but it looks configurable to €1,000 in demo mode or, perhaps, other markets. Those who love thrills at even €0.10 a go can switch from MIXED Mystery Symbols (high volatility) to LOCKED DOWN Mystery Symbols at “super high” volatility.
Money Train and Money Cart Series (RTP: 96.4%, Various)
It’s not too hard to approach the entire Money Train ‘franchise’ as a whole because they all have common elements. That being said, your ‘feeling’ for any given game will be colored by experience - and - they are fairly brilliant designers so your ‘feeling’ might be right.
Money Train brings it all from the first game to the break-off bonus game. Playing Money Cart as a stand-alone game is a lot like buying a bonus on the tracks with every bet.
Collectors, Snipers, and Necromancers are found everywhere in the gamescape, when they bump into each other, stuff happens. The volatility is through the roof, and while the RTP is 96.4% for most configurations that doesn’t matter much to a single gaming session - the volatility is a near equal power in the short term - these games are not to be trifled with but enjoyed for their ambient power and magic the lab and studios bring to the experience.
In the Money Train games, including the second one, you fight to save a bankroll. On the other hand, Money Cart drops you straight into the bonus round.
Maximum win potential caps at 50,000x the bet across both series:
- Max RTP
- High Volatility
- Max Win Cap
The games can be a blast but even the most perfect-looking maths always have a caveat. Looking at the maximum amount that can be won on any given game explains just how Relax Gaming can provide both high volatility and high RTP in a single game.
Have some fun chasing the rare Collector-Payer chains, they are iconic mechanics and you can’t get ‘hurt’ with 10p bets and a predetermined bankroll.
Conclusion
Relax Gaming has threaded the needle as perfectly as possible with highly volatile games that give players some of the top return-to-punter percentages in the industry. Of course, nobody would have ever noticed the games or played them twice if they didn’t come with stunning visuals, soundtracks, mechanics, bonus features, and thrall.
The generalized game maths above explain how they did it, and how smaller players like RTG keep fiercely loyal followers. It may not rise to the level of smoke and mirrors but the maths never lie. Whether you play these games at full return in a jurisdiction like the UK or licensed through Malta, or in Germany where the tax is over 5% and the operator takes theirs and your RTP is only 90% it really makes no difference in the near term - the volatility is almost as likely to grace you as the RTP in any short term play.
We should note, that nearly all if not all international suppliers of online casino games like slots offer different RTP versions to operators for several reasons. In some cases, like Germany and other countries with turnover tax (every monetary unit cycled through a machine is taxed), they simply have no choice if the operator expects to ever make a profit. Briefly, if the slot is set to 95% and the tax on each bet is 5%, that leaves 0% for operator profit or house edge not given to the regulator. At 90% RTP, there is a 5% margin for the operator after giving the tax collector their 5% and leaving players with 90%.
Grandmasters of the supply-side game like Games Global, using mostly former Microgaming studios, have a whole system put together to release “variants” to the tune of perhaps thousands per quarter every year, so nothing is sacred now that slots are fully regulated. What you think you see is not always what you get. Any given title, like Lara Croft Tombraider, can have any number of internal changes (variants) including RTP. The Gambling Commission doesn’t even care how the final maths come about (they do have several models now) but as long as the actual RTP falls in line with the theoretical return to player percentage over time, all is well.
