A-Z Megaways Slots

Megaways is a trademarked slot game mechanic designed by Australian developer Big Time Gaming.  We have numerous developers using the mechanic such as Kalamba’s Machina Megaways, Nextgen’s Medusa Megaways and Red Tiger’s Mystery Reels Megaways. It is a patented slot model that means that Megaways slots of 4, 5 or 6 reels each have dynamic and therefore varying amounts of rows on each reel on each different spin. These range from 2 to 6 rows or 2 to 7 rows depending on which game you play.  The possible ways-to-win, therefore, vary from 32 to 117,649 during any spin. If the Megaways slots have 6 reels, this will be 64 to 117,649, and if the game has a fixed extra scrolling reel under the centre 4 reels like Bonanza, the minimum ways are 324.

These Megaways slots all spin initially but many of them will remove winning combinations and cascade replacement symbols down from above leading to strings of separate wins on one play.

How many Megaways Slots are there?

At the time of writing this, there are over 100, all listed here. Big Time Gaming invented the mechanic, and it has been licensed since to numerous slot developers including  Blueprint Gaming who have created more than even BTG, Kalamba,  StakeLogic, Relax, Scientific Gaming, iSoftBet, Fantasma and Red Tiger all of whom now have released Megaways slot titles.  The games tend to have stacked symbols and varying feature enhancements such as increasing multipliers for each cascade or multiplying Wilds and extra Wilds as with Holy Diver slot.  This means that the Megaways slots tend to be extremely volatile due to the huge win potential held within the free games bonuses.  They are however very popular amongst the playing community, and multi-platform casinos are clamouring to add them to their games catalogues.

Where do I play Megaways Slots, and can I use bonuses?

Numerous casinos now offer them, usually the Big Time Gaming ones and to a lesser extent the Blueprint Gaming versions. Due to the volatile bonuses, some casinos reduce their wagering contribution or even forbid them for use in bonus wagering. This situation is fluid, but the majority of casinos do allow wagering except for Megaways slots with cumulative feature contribution. White Rabbit and Extra Chilli reduce the cost of feature buy-ins with random tokens as you play, so to stop players getting close to the automatic trigger on bonus funds  (which occurs when the price of the buy-in reaches zero) and then reverting to real cash later to trigger it, casinos generally don’t allow bonus play on those slots.

Feature Buy-Ins:

Many of the most recent Megaways Slots will allow you to purchase the feature if you are impatient, for a multiple of basic stake, i.e. 50 or 100x bet. As the Megaways features tend to pay quite away, they are infrequent compared to many other slots. You can’t use bonus funds generally to buy features as this exceeds the maximum bonus bet. On some, you can gamble the feature for more spins, and lose the whole lot. Paying 50x or 100x bet a throw to have this happen is not for the faint-hearted and in some quarters is considered irresponsible gambling. We recommend you find a stake you can afford and stick with.  In October 2019 the UKGC barred the use of feature purchases for UK players.

You can play some Megaways games below by clicking the logo image!