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At first glance, 3 Crown Coins Deluxe by Zillion Games looks like your standard, run-of-the-mill classic fruit machine. While Zillion has stripped the base game down to its barest bones, they’ve hidden a surprisingly volatile and complex Hold & Win feature under the hood.
I took the Deluxe version for a spin to see how it compares with the original 3 Crown Coins, with which it shares a name and a theme rather than its maths.
The Base Game: A Classic, Unforgiving Grind
If you like action-packed base games, this slot might test your patience. The layout is a strict 3×3 grid with just five fixed paylines. You need three matching symbols to win, no exceptions, no two-of-a-kind payouts.
Because every win requires a full line across the board, Wilds are largely useless unless reels one and two already match. During my session, I hit long stretches of dead spins where Wilds would land on the third reel next to mismatched fruit, doing nothing.
The silver lining? The paytable is unusually generous to make up for the low hit frequency. Even the lowest-paying fruits (plums, oranges, lemons, cherries) return 4x your bet. Watermelons and grapes pay 16x, bells pay 20x, and the top-tier Wild Sevens pay 50x. When you do finally hit a line, it actually feels worth it, but be prepared for a dry base game experience.
Those Mysterious Collection Meters
Above the reels, you’ll notice three enticing coin pots labelled TWIN, EXPAND, and MULTI. Landing coloured crowns in the base game visually fills these meters.
Here is my biggest gripe with the game: it never explains them. Over dozens of spins, I watched these meters tick upward, but the rules don’t assign any persistent value to a full pile. The crowns that land on the triggering spin are what actually determine your bonus modifiers. I never saw the growing meters do anything, which can be frustrating for players expecting a feature once a pot is full.
Why Coins Pay Nothing Without a Royal
Most of this slot’s 96% RTP and potential is locked inside the Bonus Game, triggered by landing three bonus symbols. The fruit vanishes, leaving a blank grid, and you get three respins that reset every time a new symbol lands.
Here is where the mechanics get genuinely interesting. Everything revolves around the middle reel.
- The Outer Reels (1 & 3): This is where coins (1x to 5x) and four fixed Jackpots (Mini 15x, Minor 30x, Major 100x, and Grand 1,000x) land.
- The Middle Reel (2): This is the only place “Royal” symbols can land. Royals act as Collectors.
Here is the high-stakes catch: Coins and Jackpots pay 0x on their own. They are completely worthless unless a Royal is sitting on the middle reel to collect them. Furthermore, a Royal only collects coins that land after it arrives. If you land a board full of coins but no Royal, you win nothing. But, if you land two or three Royals early in the round, they will all collect the value of every subsequent coin simultaneously. It’s a brilliant, edge-of-your-seat mechanic, but the timing of when those Royals land will make or break your session.
Modifiers and Chasing the 5,000x Max Win
The crowns that trigger the bonus dictate which modifiers you get during your respins:
- Twin: Doubles the value of every Royal (meaning every collected coin/jackpot pays twice).
- Expand: Adds a fourth row, turning the grid into a 3×4 setup. This gives you more spaces for coins and an extra slot for a Royal collector.
- Multi: Drops multipliers on the outer reels that double, up to 32x, each time a new multiplier lands in the same cell, and clear once a bonus symbol lands there instead.
Next to the original 3 Crown Coins, it shrinks the 5×3 grid of the original 3 Crown Coins but bumps the max win from 3,000x to a much tastier 5,000x.
Can you hit that 5,000x cap? Yes, but you need a perfect storm. The base game’s 50x top line won’t get you there. You need the Expand modifier active to get four Royals on the middle reel early on. You need the Twin modifier to double their values. And finally, you need that 1,000x GRAND jackpot to drop on an outer reel so its doubled value is sucked up by all four Royals at once.
3 Crown Coins Deluxe is a game of extremes. It requires a lot of patience to get through the dry, featureless base game, and the UI regarding the collection pots could be much clearer. However, if you are a fan of high-volatility Hold & Win games, the middle-reel Collector mechanic is incredibly clever. It completely changes the way you watch the bonus round unfold, making it a solid choice for players chasing massive, sudden jackpot sweeps.
