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If you’ve been playing slots online for a little while you might have heard the term Megaways appear across many different games from many various providers.
But you might not know what it means or how these types of games work. That’s why we’ve put together our Megaways slots guide to help you understand how to play and which games are best.
First, we’ll start with a brief introduction to Big Time Gaming (BTG), the creators of the Megaways mechanics. BTG have been creating slot games since 2011 but only recently have become a household name.
And that’s mainly due to the newly released game mechanics that they have called Megaways.
So what are Megaways slots? Megaways slots, offer varying ways to win on each spin ranging from just a few up to around 117,569 ways to win. This works by changing the number of symbols that appear on a reel on every spin across typically a six reel layout.
It sounds kind of confusing, and when you first open up a game like the popular BTG Bonanza Megways slot, you might want to run and hide.
But don’t, the reason this game mechanic has become so popular not only in BTG slots but also with other providers is cause you never know what you are going to get on each spin, keeping the thrills high, often with big rewards.
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Before this new type of slot mechanic game into place, we had ways to win slots something Microgaming ran with creating many of their latest slot games with 243 ways to win like their Immortal Romance game.
Other providers then upped that to around 1024 ways to win as you’d find in our NextGen Monster Wins and Yggdrasil’s Dwarf Mine slot review.
What does this have to do with the Megaways games like Extra Chilli and Holy Diver?
Well, how they pay isn’t across your standard paylines. Instead they pay for finding matching symbols from left to right, usually on three or more reels, and the more of the same symbols you find per reel, the bigger your wins.
It doesn’t matter where on the reel the symbols land as long as they are there, unlike your bet lines where it matters which row of the reels your symbols land on your spin.
And with slots with Megaways, this way of creating winning combinations works even better as the reels and number of symbols are dynamically changed on each spin rewarding you with a different amount of ways to win.
Each casino game is different, even though the underlying workings of how the game pays is the same, the features it can contain will be determined by the game itself.
Some come with avalanching or cascading wins, where winning symbols explode and more drop down to replace them. Others come with extra reels above or below the main reels which offer up extra wilds, multipliers and mini bonus games.
Typically the features you could find across the thousands of other slots online, could show up in any of these games with the Megaways mechanics.
Just cause a casino slot creates wins differently doesn’t mean it’s going to be complicated to bet on.
Unlike some payline slots where your minimum bet matches or goes above the amount of paylines like the 40 payline game Master of Atlantis by Blueprint Gaming, where it’s minimum bet is 0.50, in slots with Megaways the minimum bet isn’t determined by the max or minimum ways to win.
This means you can bet from as little 0.10 per spin in the White Rabbit Megaways slot for example, even though the maximum ways to win in that game is a whopping 248,832.
It gives everyone with small or big budgets the opportunity to place some real money bets and experience what these types of slots are all about.
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Big Time Gaming’s games came so popular that they decided to license out the way it works to other slots developers so they could integrate it into their games.
This has probably been one of BTG’s best ideas in recent years increasing their revenue by licensing out a mechanic that they have already created.
The best thing for us slots players though is that many providers jumped on board and have started creating a whole range of new Megaways slots for us to take a spin on.
One company, Blueprint Gaming, have probably got the most next to BTG, going full steam ahead to bring us such games as Legacy of Ra Megaways, Megaways Buffalo Rising and Vikings Unleashed Megaways.
Another provider Relax Gaming have also decided to use the BTG mechanics in some of their most recent slots like Machina and Temple Tumble Megaways.
Other providers include Red Tiger Gaming, Red7, and RT Gaming.
But just cause they add this mechanism into their games doesn’t mean they are going to be good.
Big Time Gaming probably still have some of the best casino slots of this type, including big brand names such as Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
There are over 19 different online slots out there with Megaways workings on the inside, this doesn’t give us as much choice as say 243 ways to win games, but that’s ok, cause it helps us narrow down the best three slots to play.
One to look out for in the future is one of our favourite WMS slots, Raging Rhino which will get the Megaways treatment soon enough adding yet another company to the growing list that BTG have licensed their code to.
Each one is worth a spin and can all be found at one of our favourite slots sites online, Casumo Casino, which offers players from the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Europe the chance to enjoy an all-around gambling experience.
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