Flea Market slot review

The screen is cut in two, as our screenshot shows, the paytable on the left in two columns (one coin and two coins) and the market on the right, where Daddy Flea in his hat haggles at a stall while little Flea rummages in a bin, with the three reels and their single line below them.

Four buttons run the stall. "Select Coins" decides whether one or two coins ride on the spin, "Bet Max" puts both on, a plus and a minus move the "coin value", and "Auto" repeats the spin on its own. In the screenshot the coin is at 1.00, the two-coin bet at 2.00 and a lone lollipop on the line pays 2.00 (one coin back for each coin bet).

The goods on the reels are what a flea market sells: a lollipop, a red urn, the single, double and triple "bar" inherited from the fruit machines, and a diamond ring that somebody must have lost. The ring is the "wild" (it stands in for any other symbol) and the dearest item on the table: one ring in a paying line doubles the prize, two quadruple it.

The one bargain of the market is the second coin, which costs as much as the first and buys more: three rings are worth 4,000 coins to the player who bet one and 10,000 to the player who bet two, two and a half times the prize for twice the price! Every other line of the "paytable" simply doubles with the second coin, so the ring is the one stall where haggling works.

Three urns pay 100 coins (200 with two), three lollipops 40, three triple bars 30, any three bars 3, a lone lollipop on the line one coin. The balance therefore moves like the till of a stall, coins in and coins out, with a long wait between rings, as a slot of low "volatility" (the unevenness of its payments) should.

Three golden coins, the bonus symbol, open the "pick" round (the player chooses among hidden prizes), here a shelf of urns to smash for the instant prizes inside. That is the whole back room of the shop: no free spins, no multiplier other than the ring, no progressive jackpot, and whoever has smashed the urns once has seen everything Flea Market owns.

A stallholder who takes 100 and hands back 96.90 over the years keeps 3.10, and the 96.90 that goes back is the "RTP" of this slot (the return to player, the share of all bets that the game pays back over millions of spins). Rival fixed it at 96.9 per cent once and for all, the same at every casino carrying the game, as the studios of Europe do. RealTime Gaming, whose Coyote Cash lets each casino choose, works the other way round; 96.9 also sits above the 96 that passes for ordinary in the trade.

The volatility is low on the sign and low on the reels: a high "hit frequency" (the share of spins that return something), lollipops and bars paying every few spins, the ring almost never. A player who brings 60 to the market, sets the coin at 0.50 and bets both coins (1.00 a spin) has sixty spins on paper and many more in practice, because the small prizes keep topping up the till. What he should not expect is to leave with 600. The balance walks, it does not jump.

Few casinos stock Rival, so look for the studio's name in the software list of the casino you mean to join, because no card on this page guarantees that Flea Market is on the shelves. The cards carry the offers of houses that stock other games, figures that can change, and the casino's own page has the last word.

Those offers, licence included, are collected on our world list of no-deposit bonuses. The "demo" (the "practice" mode that the Rival casinos open after registration, with credits that are not money) is how we played, and it runs the mathematics of the paid game, bonus round included; a "free chip" (a few dollars credited without a deposit) is the other way into the market without opening your wallet.

A chip comes with two numbers that our page on free spins explains, the "wagering" (how many times it has to be bet before a withdrawal) and the "max cashout" (the most that can be taken out), and both favour a game that pays little and often. Take a chip of 15 with a wagering of twenty-five times: 375 in bets are due, that is 375 spins at 1.00, a long afternoon that a low volatility slot can survive and a high one would cut short in the first fifty!

Flea Market asks a small price and delivers small goods, honestly weighed: one line, two coins, a return most of its neighbours cannot match and a bonus a child could explain. On the plus side we put the 96.9 per cent, the low volatility and the fleas themselves, drawn with more care than the game required; on the minus side a single feature, graphics of their age and a studio that few casinos stock.

In our view it is one of the sounder three-reel slots we have tried for anyone who wants a small budget, or a no-deposit chip, to last an evening; the big win lives elsewhere, in the deep of Crystal Waters or the storm of Thunderstruck Gold Blitz Extreme, the one slot that carries our rating (4 out of 5), with the rest on the review hub for slots and games (18+).