Forty-payline slots check forty fixed lines on every spin, usually across five reels and four rows. The line count shapes how wins are read, while each game sets its own return and swing: Four Leaf Fortune pays back 97.70% at low volatility, Cleocatra 96.20% at high.
The 40-line games we review show how little the line count decides. It spreads the stake and sets how a win is read, but what a game pays back comes from its own maths: among them, one is a calm 97.70% game and another is built around a 50,000x top. Five well-known 40-line games from other studios follow them further down.
The 40-Line Games We Review
| Slot | Studio | Return | Swing | Top win |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Four Leaf Fortune | Valkyrie Studio | 97.70% | Low | 10,000x |
| Money Train 2, on our Money Train page | Relax Gaming | 96.40% | Very high | 50,000x |
| Cleocatra | Pragmatic Play | 96.20% | High | 5,000x |
Four Leaf Fortune is the steady one. Valkyrie Studio’s leprechaun game leans on sticky wilds and a bonus wheel, and at 97.70% it returns more than any of the five classics further down. It was made for Stake, which turns away UK customers, so readers here can try it only through the free demo on its review.
Cleocatra, Pragmatic Play’s Egyptian cat game from 2022, keeps all forty lines switched on and pairs high volatility with a 5,000x ceiling. Pragmatic also supplies casinos with 95.50% and 94.50% versions, so two sites offering Cleocatra can pay back different amounts.
Money Train 2 is the game for big swings. Relax Gaming set it in a steampunk Wild West and built it so the Money Cart round carries most of the value, and its very high volatility goes with the tallest top win in this group.
Well-Known Games Built on 40 Lines
| Game | Maker | RTP | Volatility | Max win |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Space Wars | NetEnt | 96.75% | Medium | 1,000x |
| Butterfly Staxx 2 | NetEnt | 96.35% | Low | About 300x |
| Chilli Pepe Hot Stacks | Just For The Win | 96.10% by default | High | 10,000x |
| 40 Super Hot | Amusnet | 95.81% | Low | 1,000x a line, plus Jackpot Cards |
| Wolf Run | IGT | 94.98% | Low to medium | 1,000x the line bet |
Space Wars returns the most of these five, 96.75% on NetEnt’s own page, with a medium swing and a 1,000x top. Every win sets off a re-spin with cloned symbols, so one hit can lead straight into the next. Four Leaf Fortune still beats its return by almost a full point.
Butterfly Staxx 2 is NetEnt’s gentler 40-line game. Its respins can open up to three extra reel areas and a pick-and-click bonus sits on top, but the top prize of about 300x is the smallest in the table.
Chilli Pepe Hot Stacks from Just For The Win has the highest ceiling of the five at 10,000x and lets players choose between two free-spin modes with different swings. The 96.10% default is not the only version about: builds at 94.20%, 92.20% and 86.70% are in use too.
40 Super Hot keeps the fruit-machine look of Amusnet’s Hot range, with a Lucky 7 wild, a star scatter and four tiers of Jackpot Cards that can be awarded on any spin. Its 1,000x figure is counted per line rather than per spin, so the jackpots carry most of the upside.
Wolf Run is IGT’s long-running cabinet favourite, where tall columns of wilds turn up in bonus spins that can retrigger. Its 94.98% is the lowest return in the table, and the MegaJackpots version runs lower still, at around 93.04%.
Why a 40-Line Hit Is Often a Loss
With forty lines live, many spins pay something on one line, and a lot of those payments are smaller than the stake. A spin that gets half its stake back has still lost the other half, which is why UK versions no longer play a win celebration when the return is no more than the stake.
Reported hit rates show how the games differ: about 16% of spins pay on Space Wars, about 22.6% on Chilli Pepe Hot Stacks and about 25% on Butterfly Staxx 2. Wolf Run’s often-quoted base-game rate of over 80% counts a great many of those part-returns, so it says little about how often a spin actually comes out ahead.
How 40 Lines Compare With 20 and 50
Amusnet builds its fruit games in steps of 20, 40 and 100 lines. 40 Super Hot is 20 Super Hot with twice the lines and an extra row, the same fruit symbols and much the same low volatility, and its return stays below 96% in both forms. The 20 paylines page holds the smaller set.
In the other direction, IGT’s Wild Wolf adds ten lines to Wolf Run and pays back almost exactly the same, as our 50 paylines page shows. NetEnt took a third route with Space Wars 2, which drops lines altogether for cluster pays. None of these changes moves the return, which belongs to each game’s maths rather than its lines.
How Much Each 40-Line Game Keeps
The average cost of 1,000 spins at £1 follows the return, not the line count. Each figure is an average over a very long run, and one evening can land far from it, more so on the high-volatility games.
| Game | RTP | Average cost of 1,000 spins at £1 |
|---|---|---|
| Space Wars | 96.75% | £32.50 |
| Money Train 2 | 96.40% | £36.00 |
| Butterfly Staxx 2 | 96.35% | £36.50 |
| Cleocatra | 96.20% | £38.00 |
| Chilli Pepe Hot Stacks, default version | 96.10% | £39.00 |
| 40 Super Hot | 95.81% | £41.90 |
| Wolf Run | 94.98% | £50.20 |
| Chilli Pepe Hot Stacks, 86.70% version | 86.70% | £133.00 |
Space Wars and Wolf Run both run forty lines, so the £17.70 between them comes from the return alone. The version a casino loads can matter even more than the choice of game: the same Chilli Pepe Hot Stacks costs over three times its default amount in the 86.70% build, and the game’s information screen shows which one is running.
