DJ Dog game menu and the strip of controls under the reels

What sits in the strip, left to right

Four blocks across the main row. At the far left, a menu button. Beside it, the stake, with a minus to its left and a plus to its right and the current figure underneath. In the middle, a wide message panel carrying two figures and a line of text between them. At the far right, the spin control, marked with a circular arrow.

The spin control is the largest single element in the strip and the only one outlined in a different colour, which is the interface telling you which action it expects. Worth noticing in the opposite direction too: the stake stepper is small, its two arrows are small, and they sit close together.

Two balance figures that are not the same number

The middle panel carries a figure labelled credit on its top line and a figure labelled credits on its bottom one, with a message between them — in the still above, a prompt to press start. The two labels differ by a single letter and the two figures are nowhere near each other.

This page is not going to guess which is which. What it will say is that a game screen showing you two numbers that both look like your balance is a screen to read properly before the first spin rather than after it, and the place that defines them is the game’s own panel behind the menu. If you take one of the two for your balance and it is the other, every stake decision after that is made on a wrong figure.

The menu, and what is behind it

The menu is where the game keeps the material that does not fit on screen: the rules, the paytable with every symbol value on it, the settings, and the account of how the feature works.

It is also the only authority on this game that is guaranteed to match the build you are playing. Outside accounts of this title disagree with each other on the grid and on the maximum, and a page written about one operator’s version cannot know what another has configured. The panel behind that button was written for your copy.

The small switches along the bottom edge

Below the main row runs a thinner strip in a smaller type: a way out of the game, three audio controls in a group, a windowed-or-full-screen toggle, and at the right-hand end a long session reference and a clock.

The three audio controls are separate rather than one toggle, which matters on a game this loud: the music, the effects and silence are three different states and they are set independently. Turning the sound down costs you nothing you need, because every state of this game is also shown on screen — the lit line, the counter, the records.

The clock is the piece of that row worth going out of your way to notice. A game screen is a room without windows. Nothing in the lighting changes, the music loops, and a round takes about a second, so the only thing on the screen that tracks the one quantity you cannot get back is a small set of digits in the corner.

What a British build does not show

Two things that appear in accounts of this game written for other markets are absent here. There is no control for playing rounds automatically, and there is no button for buying the feature outright.

Both absences follow from British rules rather than from anything the studio decided, and a British review of this title states as much for each of them. If you are reading a description of DJ Dog that walks you through an autoplay panel or a purchase lantern, it was not written for a British screen.

The stake stepper is affected too. Its floor is 0.10 wherever you play, but the British cap on a single round is £5, which is a long way below the ceiling accounts written elsewhere describe.