Glossary

Slot Terms in the Dog House Games, Explained

Barrels, sticky wilds, Biggie spins, ghost wilds, ante bets, RTP: the Dog House series has its own vocabulary on top of the usual slot words. Here is every term you'll meet in the nine games and on this site, in plain English, grouped by topic.

Topics: Bets and costs · Reels and wins · Wilds · Free spins · The numbers

Bets and costs

Total bet: What one spin costs, shown on the bet button. Every multiple on this site, like "37.5x" or "a 100x buy", is a multiple of the total bet. In the Dog House games it runs from $0.20 to $240.
Coin value and line bet: The game builds your total bet from a coin value times 20. The rules screens print pays in dollars at the current bet, which is why our paytables convert them to multiples instead.
Bonus buy (buy free spins): Paying a fixed price, usually 100x the bet, to start the free spins straight away. Seven of the nine games have one; the original and Dice Show don't. See the bonus buy guide.
Ante bet: A higher price per spin that makes the free spins more likely to trigger. The Big Dog House has four, from 2x to 6x the normal bet; Megaways 1000 has one at 3x.
Super spin: A special bet in the two 2026 games that guarantees wilds on every spin, at 5x to 500x the normal cost, but switches off the free spins while it's on.
Bet multiplier: How the rules describe special bets: "20x" is a normal spin, so "40x" means twice the cost and "4000x" means 200 times. We always quote the converted figure.
Demo (fun play): The free version of a game with virtual credits. Pragmatic Play's demos have the same rules, features and buys as the real game, which is how we test. See free demos.

Reels and wins

Reels and rows: The columns and lines of symbols. The classic games are 5 reels by 3 rows. Muttley Crew is 5×5, and the Megaways games have 6 reels of changing height.
Paylines: The 20 fixed paths across the reels in the classic games. A win needs three or more matching symbols on a line, starting from the leftmost reel.
Megaways: A reel system licensed from Big Time Gaming: each of the six reels shows between 2 and 7 symbols, so the number of ways to win changes every spin, up to 117,649.
Ways: In the Megaways games, every combination of matching symbols on neighbouring reels counts as one way, and each way pays. Two Rottweilers on reel 1 and one on reels 2 and 3 are two ways.
Cluster pays: Muttley Crew's system: five or more matching symbols touching horizontally or vertically make a cluster, anywhere on the grid.
Paytable: The list of what each symbol pays. The Rottweiler is the top symbol in every game; in Royal Hunt the hunter Dachshund is second. All of them are in our symbols guide.
Hit frequency: The share of spins that win anything at all. It is not in the rules; we measured it for each game in our demo statistics. Many hits pay less than the bet: in The Dog House, 59% of base game wins did.
Scatter pay: A win for the bonus symbols themselves, paid wherever they land. Three bonus symbols in The Dog House pay 5x the bet on top of starting the free spins.
Respin: In Royal Hunt, when the bonus symbols could slide down one row, the game sometimes nudges them down and respins the other reels, giving a near miss a second chance.

Found your Dog House game? Every game in the series is one click away at our partner casino. 18+. Play responsibly.

Play now

Wilds

Wild: The symbol that stands in for every pay symbol. In most games it's a dog house; Dog or Alive uses a sheriff's star, Dice Show a jester die and Muttley Crew a treasure chest.
Multiplier: A number on the wild that multiplies the win it's part of. In the classic games it's 2x or 3x and several on one line are added together. In the Megaways games they multiply each other.
Sticky wild: A wild that stays in place, multiplier and all, for the rest of the free spins. It's the core of every Dog House bonus.
Raining Wilds: The second free spins mode in The Dog House Megaways: more spins, and up to six wilds of any size drop in at random on every spin, but they don't stay.
Random Wilds: The Megaways 1000 version of Raining Wilds, with multipliers from 1x to 1,000x.
Expanded wild: A wild that covers a whole reel, 1×3, in The Big Dog House.
Colossal wild: A 3×3 wild covering reels 2, 3 and 4 at once, also from The Big Dog House.
Ghost wild: An icy blue wild on reel 5, only in The Big Dog House's free spins. When it lands, it pays like a wild and then removes one of your sticky wilds at random.
Doubling wilds: Dog or Alive's twist: at the 3rd, 6th and 9th wild of the free spins, every wild multiplier on screen doubles and 3 spins are added.

Free spins

Bonus symbol (scatter): The symbol that starts the free spins: a paw print in most games, a safe in Dog or Alive, a die in Dice Show. In the classic games it lands only on reels 1, 3 and 5.
Barrels: The 3×3 grid that spins before free spins in five of the games. Each barrel shows 1, 2 or 3, and the total, between 9 and 27, is your number of spins.
Free spins: The bonus round, played at the bet that triggered it, where wilds stick and the big wins happen.
Retrigger: Winning extra spins during the free spins. Most Dog House games can't retrigger; Muttley Crew can through bonus overlays, Dog or Alive adds spins at each doubling and Multihold adds them with each new grid.
Grids (Multihold): Multihold's free spins start on one 5×3 grid; three more bonus symbols open the next, up to four, each copying the sticky wilds of the last.
Bonus overlay: In Muttley Crew's free spins, a small paw can appear on top of any symbol. Two or more overlays at once add 5 to 30 spins.
Biggie and Ghost Out: The Big Dog House's two free spins modifiers. Biggie makes every wild land as an expanded or colossal wild; Ghost Out turns the ghost wilds off. Coloured bonus paws or a buy give you one or both.
Royal free spins: Royal Hunt's 500x buy: free spins where every wild carries 10x or 20x instead of 2x or 3x.
Super Bonus free spins: Megaways 1000's extra rounds, started by teal Super Bonus paws or a buy, where wilds of any size land on every spin.
Special reels: The rules' way of saying the free spins use different reel strips from the base game, so symbols land in different proportions.

The numbers

RTP (return to player): The share of all money bet that a game pays back over millions of spins: 96.51% for The Dog House means $96.51 per $100 in the very long run. It says nothing about one session. Casinos can run lower versions, so check the rules where you play. See RTP and max win.
Volatility: How swingy a game is. The rules rate seven Dog House games medium and two high. High volatility means fewer wins but bigger ones.
Max win (cap): The most one round can pay, from 6,750x in the original to 25,000x in Megaways 1000. In the newer games the round ends the moment it gets there.
Max win odds: How rarely the cap is reached. It isn't on the rules screen, but the newer games carry it in the settings they load when they start; for Dog or Alive it is about 1 in 139 million rounds. We list the ones we found on our statistics page.
House edge: What the RTP leaves for the casino: 100% minus the RTP, about 3.5% in this series.
Session: One sitting at a game, with the budget you brought for it. Short sessions are ruled by volatility, not by RTP.

Missing a word? Most of them are explained in context in our beginner's guide and the FAQ.

Done with the demo? Play the Dog House slots for real money, from the 2019 original to Megaways 1000. 18+. Play responsibly.

Play now