Slot Intelligence Series / Vol. III
Regal Riches
A technical and mathematical review of IGT's Progressive Wilds franchise — the four persistent wild banks and their must-hit-by ceilings, the five-meter Regal Link and the two-meter digital build, the published specification and paytable, the bank-size-to-award curve, the trademark record, and the Class II and Montana route positions.
- Persistent wild banks
- 4
- Land return band
- 85–96%
- Award per wild, 31 to 101
- 2.76×
Executive summary
A core video game, sold rather than leased, built on one new mechanic. Regal Riches is a five-reel, four-row, 30line video slot that IGT introduced on its CrystalCurve cabinet at the G2E Virtual Experience in October 2020 and put into commerce on November 30, 2020. Its mechanic, which IGT had named "Progressive Wilds" in a trademark filing nineteen months earlier, banks every wild that lands and later releases the bank all at once. The game led Eilers & Krejcik's January 2021 ranking of new core video reel games, IGT's own results presentation listed it "among top core video titles" in May 2021, and it won Best Slot Game at The Casino Awards in London in April 2022. IGT marketed it as for-sale core content rather than as a leased premium game.
Four banks, three with must-hit-by ceilings, kept separately at every bet level. A blue base-game bank holds 5 to 50 wilds and releases them onto the screen as Guaranteed Wilds; purple, green and yellow banks reset at 30, 40 and 50 wilds, must award by 75, 100 and 125, and release as ten free games carrying every banked wild. Each bet level keeps its own four banks, and they survive a cash-out, so the state one player builds is inherited by the next. That is the whole design: a must-hit-by meter the player can read and cannot price, because the bank is counted in symbols and the value of a symbol depends on where it lands. The banks are true persistent state, the series' counterexample to perceived progression; the one display laid over them that stores nothing is a flame behind a meter past its average, and the flames "do not indicate a bonus is due or about to hit, just that the average has been crossed".
Four meter architectures wear the brand, and their numbers do not transfer. Prosperity Pearl, in commerce from March 10, 2021, is the same four-bank game in a Chinese theme. Regal Link, in commerce from August 26, 2023 on the PeakCurve cabinet and called "chart-topping" by IGT that October, is a different game: two themes, Lion and Raven; five free-game meters from amber 30→50 to diamond 175→200; silver base-game wilds; Ca$h Wilds that carry credits instead of multipliers; and three jackpot meters. The digital and social builds keep only a blue meter and a green Major meter, with a fixed 88-wild Mega award, and a Montana route version sits under a $2 wager cap.
What IGT has published is a specification block, not a paytable. The block gives a maximum bet of 150 credits, a 39,000-credit top award, a hit frequency of about 50% and a theoretical hold of 4% to 15% — an eleven-point return band, 85% to 96%, that no player can read from the glass. The only paytable is a practitioner's reading of the help screens in credits, beside a 75-credit bet increment. The screen's bet was never stated. The digital paytable is exactly one fifth of it, which is what a table read at 150 credits would show; that reading halves every times-bet figure derived from it, and this volume prints both readings because the record does not settle the question.
The award curve is convex, and the entry points remain contested. Five releases logged at a $0.75 bet pay 0.65 times the bet per banked wild at a bank of 31 and 1.78 times at 101 — a 2.76-fold rise — and an independent set of ceiling averages rises the same way. More wilds in the same ten free games means more stacking, and stacking compounds. Every additive entry rule therefore misprices the banks, and the published entry points spread across 9 wilds on purple and 14 on yellow, each anchored to an unstated or assumed machine return (Appendix C).
No Class II build, no promotion since 2023, and a new owner. IGT's six tribal-show line-ups from 2021 to 2026 name thirty-two Class II products and no Regal game, and no IGT show release located after G2E 2023 names a Regal title. The mechanic returned in April 2026 inside Wheel of Fortune Dream Destinations, which reprises "the Guaranteed Wilds Feature first seen in the game Regal Riches." The company that built the game sold its gaming business to Apollo funds, combined with Everi, on July 1, 2025; its former parent is now a lottery company, Brightstar.
What the volume covers
Section 1 is the orientation: four meter architectures, ten builds, and what is and is not common to them. Section 2 covers IGT from its founding to the Apollo combination, the franchise's dated timeline, the trademark record and the awards. Section 3 is the cabinets. Section 4 is the mechanical core — every bank, trigger, placement and multiplier rule, for the land game, Regal Link and the digital build. Section 5 is the mathematics: the specification block, the paytable in credits and the question of which bet it was read at, the return figures, the award curve and a register of the bad figures in circulation. Section 6 is the variant census. Sections 7 to 10 cover the wild banks as a jackpot analog, denominations, market position, and regulatory class and channel, including the Montana route. Appendix A grades every source and lists what remains unpublished; Appendix B shows every calculation; Appendix C is the persistent-state and advantage-play register, with every published threshold set and the field observation log.
Independent research by Lost Cabin Consulting LLC, not published, endorsed or reviewed by any game maker; game names belong to their owners. Gambling carries real risk of loss, and nothing here promises a win. Play only where it is legal and you are of age. If gambling stops being fun, call 1-800-GAMBLER. See the disclaimer.
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