Glossary

Slot-industry terms and Spinative-specific vocabulary in one place. The brand-voice rule that we don't define slot terms in body copy applies *everywhere else*; this page is where the definitions live.

Math vocabulary

RTP (Return to Player). The long-run percentage of total wagered money the game pays back to players. 96.0% means 96 cents back per €1 wagered, averaged over millions of spins. Authored by the math team; carried as project metadata in Spinative; quoted in the GDD and math spec exports.

Hit frequency. The probability that a single spin produces *any* win. Inverse of "dead spins". A 25% hit frequency means one in four spins wins something (anything from a tiny consolation up to a jackpot).

Volatility (variance). A qualitative band describing how big and how often wins land. Low volatility = small frequent wins; high volatility = rare large wins. Standard bands: Low / Medium / High / Very High. Authored in the math model.

Max win. The cap on the biggest single payout the game will pay, expressed as a multiple of the stake. 5,000× stake means a €1 spin can win at most €5,000 in a single round. Required by most gaming jurisdictions.

Bet range. Minimum and maximum stake per spin, plus the discrete bet steps in between. Wider ranges accommodate more player types but pressure the math model.

Reels vocabulary

Reelset / Reel layout. The grid shape. Spinative supports 5x3, 5x4, 6x4, 3x3, megaways, 243, 1024. Notation is <cols>x<rows>.

Reel strip. The ordered list of symbols on one reel, top to bottom. Spinning "stops" the strip at a random position; the visible cells become the grid for that spin.

Payline. A path across the grid (e.g. middle row, top diagonal) that pays when matching symbols land along it left-to-right starting on reel 1. Classic slots have 1–25 paylines.

All-Ways / MultiWays. A pays scheme without paylines — any left-to-right adjacent match counts. 243 ways (5×3) and 1024 ways (5×4) are the common standards.

Cluster Pays. A pays scheme where 5+ adjacent matching symbols form a winning cluster, no paylines. Common on 6×4 / 7×7 grids.

Megaways. A licensed variable-height reels mechanic from Big Time Gaming. Each spin shows 2–7 symbols per reel; the total ways can reach 117,649 on a 6-reel layout.

Symbols vocabulary

High symbol. A premium-value symbol. Pays more, lands less. Usually theme-specific imagery (the cowboy, the pharaoh, the treasure chest).

Low symbol. A lower-value symbol. Pays less, lands more. Historically playing-card ranks (A, K, Q, J, 10, 9); Spinative treats them tier-neutrally so non-card themes don't get a card aesthetic forced on them.

Wild. A symbol that substitutes for any standard symbol to help complete winning lines. May carry multipliers, stickiness, walking behaviour, etc. (see Features).

Scatter. A symbol that pays from anywhere on the grid (no payline alignment required) and / or triggers a bonus feature when N+ land.

Bonus symbol. A symbol that triggers a feature when N+ land, but doesn't necessarily pay on its own.

Special symbol. Spinative's umbrella label for non-standard slots: bonus, mystery, multiplier, character-specific specials. Up to 6 named special slots per project, in addition to wild and scatter.

Feature vocabulary

Free spins. A bonus where the player receives N spins without betting; wins during these spins go to their balance. Often paired with multipliers or modified reels.

Hold & Spin (Lock & Win). Coin / special symbols land and lock; the grid respins until no new lockable symbol lands. End-of- round prize is the sum of the locked values.

Bonus pick. A pick-and-reveal mini-game triggered by bonus symbols. Player selects from a grid of closed tiles; each tile contains a prize.

Cascade / Tumble. Winning symbols are removed and replaced from above (or below), potentially enabling chains of consecutive wins on a single bet.

Sticky wild. A wild that stays in place across one or more subsequent spins.

Walking wild. A wild that shifts one column per spin until it exits the grid.

Expanding wild. A wild that grows to cover its full reel column.

Multiplier wild. A wild that carries a multiplier (2×, 3×, …) applied to any line win it contributes to.

Win multiplier trail. Consecutive wins in a single bet increase a multiplier counter (1×, 2×, 3×, …) applied to subsequent wins.

Gamble. A post-win double-or-nothing — usually a card-colour guess, a coin flip, or a wheel. Risk the win for a chance to double it.

Buy feature. The player pays a fixed multiple of their stake (50×, 75×, 100×) to trigger the bonus directly without waiting for natural scatter triggers.

Ante bet. An optional side-bet that increases the bonus trigger frequency in exchange for a higher per-spin cost.

Win sequence. The escalating celebration pop-ups (Big Win, Mega Win, Epic Win) shown when a win exceeds tier thresholds. Always-on in Spinative — every project ships with the three tiers.

Spinative-specific vocabulary

Pillar. One of the six concerns of slot design: game design, flow, art, math, marketing, handoff. Spinative organises its workspaces around these.

Workspace / tab. A pillar's surface in the editor. Six tabs inside a project: Game design, Flow, Art, Features, Logic, Marketing. Plus the Export route (handoff).

Project. One slot game. Has a Game design brief, a payload of canvas state, an asset set, a math model. Lives inside a Studio.

Studio. The billing entity. Carries a plan, a credit pool, a member list, and zero or more projects. A person can belong to multiple studios; switching between them is one click in the sidebar.

Slot creator. The audience term for everyone who designs slot games in Spinative: in-house art directors, freelance designers, indie founders, contracting math designers, etc. The brand-voice canonical noun for "the human at the keyboard".

SDEFS. The internal map of every screen the editor knows about (Base, Splash, Free Spins, Bonus Pick, etc.). Auto-populated from feature toggles. Don't edit this directly — toggle the feature off and on.

Feat-slot. A generable asset target specific to a feature (freespins.intro_banner, bonuspick.tile_closed). Appears in the Art tab only when the parent feature is on.

SDEFS key. The string identifier of a screen (base, freespin, bonus_pick_intro). Used in URLs, in the audit log, and in payload serialisation.

Asset bible. The locked-in visual signature for a project — palette, material, lighting, ornament density — captured as a short description and injected into every prompt. Anchors cross-asset cohesion. See Game design.

Art bible. Same as Asset bible. Both labels appear in product; they refer to the same thing.

Project Health. The summary pill in the topbar counting open items across every section of the project. Click for a panel with deep links to whatever needs attention. Turns green when handoff is clean.

Snapshot. A named checkpoint of a project. Saved manually via File → Snapshot; restorable via File → Versions.

Autosave. The implicit save-every-change behaviour. The topbar badge shows state (Saving…, Saved 12:34, Unsaved).

Read-only / share view. /p/<projectId> route — no-login preview, no edit chrome, no generation. Useful for stakeholder reviews.

Quick Set. The Marketing workspace's default view — two sliders position character + logo on every banner at once with live previews.

Render All. The Marketing topbar action that composes every uncached tile and zips the result.

Asset type vocabulary

The canonical asset types Spinative generates:

• background_base, background_bonus
• symbol_high_1 … symbol_high_8
• symbol_low_1 … symbol_low_8
• symbol_wild, symbol_scatter, symbol_special_3..6
• logo, character, reel_frame, spin_button, jackpot_label

Plus feature slots, which are dot-namespaced (freespins.intro_banner, bonuspick.tile_closed, …).

Aspect ratio shorthand

• 1:1 — square. Symbols, UI buttons, jackpot tier badges.
• 3:2 — classic background landscape.
• 2:3 — portrait. Characters, tall overlays.
• 16:9 / 9:16 — wide / vertical banners.
• 3:1 / 4:1 — title banners, HUD strips.
• 1:4 — extra-tall column for expanded reel overlays.

Plan vocabulary

• Free — €0, exploration tier, no AI, no exports.
• Freelancer — €29/seat/mo, 50 credits/seat, solo seat.
• Studio — €49/seat/mo, 100 credits/seat, multi-seat.

Credit vocabulary

• Credit — 1 unit of AI work. 1 asset = 1 credit.
• Monthly bucket — the included pool that refills on plan renewal. Doesn't roll over.
• Top-up bucket — one-time packs that don't expire for 12 months and pay per-credit at a discount.
• Reserve — the atomic operation that takes a credit out of your pool before the AI call fires. Refunds on failure.

Export vocabulary

• Asset pack — every generated asset zipped with a manifest.
• Math spec — JSON document of reels, paytable, RTP, volatility, bet range. The build team's wire format.
• Logic spec — Markdown document of win-evaluation rules, wild substitutions, trigger conditions.
• GDD (Game Design Document) — polished PDF with theme, math, symbols, screens, asset inventory. AI-polished prose. 5 credits.
• ADD (Art Direction Document) — polished PDF style guide. Palette, references, asset specs. AI-polished prose. 5 credits.
• Flow PDF — multi-page deck visualising the screen flow for stakeholders.
• Marketing pack — the rendered marketing tiles zipped.