What is Megaways in an online slot game?
In 2015, Australia-based game developer Big Time Gaming (BTG) introduced the Megaways mechanic into the world of online slots with its Dragon Born title. It was not until Sweet Bonanza which was launched a year later that took the online slots world by storm because of the thrill it creates and the ridiculous amount of winnings players can get from it.
What is the Hype All About?
For anyone who has been on the land-based casino scene for a while, you would understand most conventional slot machines has a limited number of symbols/spaces it can display on each reel. For example, a 5×3 grid slot machine will never offer more than three spaces per reel. Unlike Megaways slot machine, it could hold varying amounts of symbols in each reel, making a six-reel game for example, could hold anywhere from 2 to 7 symbols. This means that the Megaways offer way more combinations of winning than the traditional slot. Many of BTG’s portfolios offer a mind-boggling 117,650 ways to win! And that’s not all, since BTG began licensing Megaways to other game studios, there are games that even came up with 15,630 paylines, meaning there are titles with more than 248,000 different ways to win!
How Does It Work?
Megaways are different from traditional slot machines in two key ways:
- The number of available paylines changes from spin to spin
Traditional slot machines have a static number of symbols in their reels. Thus, there is a fixed number of paylines that you’ll see in the paytable.
Megaways Slots feature six reels. The difference is that the number of symbols of those reels could changes randomly from one spin to the next, up to a maximum of seven symbols per reel. This means that there is a different number of paylines on every spin. - Wins require the same symbols on adjacent reels
On a traditional slot, wins are earned by lining up symbols along the slot’s paylines. On Megaways Slots, you can win by landing identical symbols on adjacent reels from as few as three reels up to all six. Most Megaways Slots will show the number of ways to win on each spin at the top or bottom of the screen. You can figure out the number of winning possibilities by multiplying the spaces in each reel.
To demonstrate:- Reel 1 has three symbols
- Reel 2 has four symbols
- Reel 3 has five symbols
- Reel 4 has seven symbols
- Reel 5 has eight symbols
- Reel 6 has six symbols
- 3 x 4 x 5 x 7 x 8 x 6 = 20,160 ways
There are also cascading reels in many modern slot games. For example, Sweet Bonanza features a Tumble game engine whereby winning symbols would disappear after every spin. The remaining symbols will then fall to the bottom of the reels and empty rows will be replaced with symbols from above.
Which One Should You Pick?
Line-based slot machines may not be the hottest thing right now, as of today there are still plenty of payline slots being brought into the market. It continues to innovate with engaging themes and high-quality graphics. When choosing a game whether it be the conventional or the Megaways Slot, we would suggest to look into the Return-To-Player (RTP) as well. This theoretical metric will give you an idea of the expected payback percentage of the games i.e., the higher the RTP percentage will give you a better chance of winning in the long run.
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