50 Lions pokies were the first 50-line game Aristocrat built, on Australian club floors since 2002: five reels, four rows, stacked lions and free games that add a new wild to the reels on every spin. The online 50 Lions slot machine returns 94.71%. The free demo below is a similar lion safari pokie you can play online, with no download or sign-up.
The game uses five reels and four rows with 50 paylines paying left to right, including the scatters. On club machines the lines are adjustable, with the classic options being 1, 12, 25, 38 or 50 lines, or 2 to 50 lines in steps of ten on the “one credit buys two lines” model. The current online version fixes all 50 lines and charges 25 credits a spin, so with coins from 1 cent to $6 a spin costs between 25 cents and $150. The online return to player is 94.71%. Club and pub machines are set by the venue from Aristocrat’s approved variations, and the one ACT approval record we could find for a 50 Lions cabinet lists returns between 85% and 92.6% depending on the variation, so the online game is the generous one. The top line pay is 1,000 times the line bet for five lions, there is no jackpot in the base game, and volatility sits in the middle: no multipliers, no big scatter pays, but a free games round that can turn four reels almost entirely wild.
50 Lions Pokies Characteristics
Pick your lines and your bet per line, or on the online version just the coin size, and spin. Wins pay left to right on active lines, highest win per line only, and card symbols need three of a kind. The lion is the top-paying regular symbol and comes stacked on every reel, which is how a single spin can fill several lines with lions at once. The wild is the purple diamond, not the lion: it lands on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5, substitutes for everything except the scatter, has no payout of its own and does not multiply. The red protea flower is the scatter and appears only on reels 1, 2 and 3, so there is no such thing as four or five scatters on this game.
Club versions and the older online build have a card gamble after any win, red or black for double and suit for four times, up to five times in a row. The newer Aristocrat Interactive build drops the gamble.
Line wins below are multiples of the line bet for two, three, four and five of a kind, as published for the one-credit-per-line version. The 25-credit online model pays exactly half these figures per credit, which works out the same per dollar.
Three proteas pay 4 times the total bet, which with 50 lines is 200 times the line bet, and start the free games. Because the lions are stacked, the realistic big result in the base game is two or three full reels of lions across many lines rather than one 1,000x line on its own.
Three proteas on reels 1, 2 and 3 in one spin pay the scatter win and award 10 free games at the triggering bet. The feature is simple and it is the whole point of the game: on every free game one extra wild diamond is added to each of reels 2, 3, 4 and 5, and the diamonds stack beneath one another, so by the last few games the right-hand side of the screen is mostly wild. Up to 16 diamonds can be on screen at once, which is the full 4 rows on all 4 wild reels.
Three more proteas during the feature add 5 free games, once only, for a maximum of 15. Any protea triggers after that pay the scatter win but no more spins. There are no multipliers in the feature, so the value comes entirely from the wild reels combining with the stacked lions, zebras and giraffes on reel 1.
At 94.71% the online game keeps a little over 5 cents of every dollar over the long run, which is about a point under most modern online pokies and a couple of points better than a typical club setting. The base game is quiet: no scatter pays beyond the trigger, no wild multipliers, so a session is a slow grind of small line wins until the proteas land. The free games are where the swing is, and because the wilds build up spin by spin, the early free games pay like the base game and the late ones can pay like a different machine.
At 25 cents a spin, $25 buys 100 spins, which is a reasonable run at seeing the feature once. If you are on a club machine with adjustable lines, playing fewer lines makes the spin cheaper but also cuts the number of lines the wild reels can pay on in the feature; most regulars play all 50 at the lowest credit value for that reason.
Aristocrat has reused the 50 Lions engine many times. 100 Lions (2006) doubles the lines on the same African theme and the same feature. 50 Dragons is the Asian reskin with the identical extra-wild mechanic, and the two are often side by side in Australian venues. 50 Lions Deluxe is a 2022 online remake with fixed lines and sharper graphics at a lower return of 93.54%. In October 2022 the original came back to Australian and New Zealand club floors inside the Cash Express Luxury Line cabinets, with $1 and $2 denominations, a Hold and Spin jackpot layer and a twist on the feature: you choose between the classic 10 free games with the added wilds or 5 free games with Red Star and Gold Star symbols added to reels 2 to 5 instead. If the machine in front of you offers that choice, it is the Luxury Line build.
The look is an African savanna at sunset: stacked lions, zebras and giraffes, two tribal singers, a baobab against an orange sky, the spinning purple diamond and the red protea, with nines to aces filling out the low end. It is an early-2000s Aristocrat MK6 design and the online port keeps it that way, with drum music that only kicks in during the free games. The HTML5 version runs in a phone or tablet browser and looks much like the cabinet, which is part of the appeal for players who learned the game in a club.
50 Lions is an Australian game first. It was built in Sydney, released on the MK6 platform in 2002 and has been a club and pub fixture ever since, with the Luxury Line revival putting fresh cabinets on floors from late 2022. Online is a different story. Aristocrat licenses its real-money online games to regulated markets such as the UK, Europe and New Jersey and does not offer them to Australian players, and the offshore casinos we review for Australians do not carry Aristocrat in their lobbies. If you see a “50 Lions” at a Curaçao-licensed casino, check the provider name in the help screen: several small studios sell a game under that title that has nothing to do with Aristocrat’s maths or paytable. Free play is through Aristocrat’s own social app, Heart of Vegas, or third-party demo sites.
50 Lions is a classic for a reason: one feature, clearly explained, that gets better the longer it runs. The base game is slow and the 94.71% online return is a little under the modern norm, so it is not a game for chasing a big multiplier or a jackpot. It is a game for players who like 50-line play, stacked symbols and the sight of four reels turning wild. If you want the same engine with more lines, 100 Lions is the obvious step up; if you want jackpots on top, the Luxury Line cabinet in a club adds them.
The online version returns 94.71%. Club and pub machines are set from Aristocrat’s approved variations and generally return less, with a recorded range of roughly 85% to 92.6% on one cabinet version.
Land three protea flowers on reels 1, 2 and 3 in one spin. You get 4 times your total bet plus 10 free games.
It is the wild on reels 2 to 5. In the free games one extra diamond is added to each of those reels every spin and they stack, so the late free games can be almost all wild.
Yes, once: three more proteas add 5 free games for a maximum of 15. After that extra proteas only pay the scatter win.
Five reels by four rows. That is how 16 diamonds fit on reels 2 to 5 in the feature.
Not through Aristocrat’s official online version, which is limited to regulated markets. The game is widely available in Australian clubs and pubs, and online play is free play only.
