Santa King Megaways

The iconic slot from Inspired Gaming is returning for the festive season. Santa King Megaways comes with graphics for the holiday season as well as cascading symbols, reactive wins, wild substitutions, the well-known Reel King bonus game, a gamble feature and a free spins round with unlimited multipliers and retriggers that can lead to wins of up to 12,500 times bet or 250,000 credits, whichever is reached first.

Update 24th November 2020: The game has been prereleased as an exclusive at bwin and sister brands from GVC Holdings plc. It will go global as planned on 30th November 2020.

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Slot Details

Santa King Megaways is a cascading video slot with six reels and up to 117,649 ways to win using the trademarked BTG game engine (more to that shortly). Wins are awarded for two to six matching symbols landing on adjacent reels from left to right only. You can play on the royal reels on desktop, mobile or tablet from 0.20 to 20 credits per spin. The game has high volatility with an RTP of 95.56% which is substantially lower than for the original Reel King Megaways.

The visuals have not changed significantly with the most apparent being the blue snow crystal background. The pay symbols as well as the reel frames are now decorated in Christmas style with snowy patches, mistletoe, gift bozes and festive lights. Not missing is the Reel King who will appear on the mini in-game slot when the bonus game is triggered nor the well-known reel sounds and “ding-ding-dings” when the reels turn yellow for the bonus ladder.

The pay symbols start at the low end with cherries, plums and melons, awarding 0.8x to 1x your bet for a single six of a kind. They are followed by the card royals from 9 through to A as well as a bag of gold coins. Hit six across the reels to win 1x to 50x times your stake. A Santa hat marked with the world itself is the wild symbol, appearing in the horizontal reel only and substituting for all regular symbols. There are no scatters on this slot.

Santa King Megaways Slot Features

The original Reel King slot emerged from the studios of Novomatic (Greentube) in what feels like an eternity ago. The success turned the game into a branded franchise amassing some three billion spins over its lifetime, a number that has been rarely achieved by any other video slot. The franchise became available to Inspired Gaming in October 2019 when they acquired Novomatic UK’s Gaming Technology Group. Afte releasing the Megaways upgrade for the original Reel King in July 2020, Inspired Gaming has gone on to also bless as with a festive version. Everything but the lower RTP is literally unchanged, so bear with us as we take you through the features in the best chronological order.

Core to the gameplay is the Megaways reel mechanic with cascading symbols and reactive wins. At the start of a spin sequence, the engine chooses a random number between 2 and 7 symbols to cascade onto reel one and seven. In addition, 2 to 6 symbols will fall onto reels two to six. Lastly, a horizontal reel at the top will bring four symbols into view on top of reels two to six. Altogether, this can lead to a virtually unlimited number of outcomes ranging from 324 to 117,649 ways. Scoring any win will set off the reactive wins mechanic. All symbols from a winning combo will shatter before they are removed to make space for new symbols to tumble into the empty spaces, potentially leading to more winners. The process is repeated as long as a new winning combo lands after a cascade.

While spinning the reels, make sure to keep an eye on the Reel King meter to the side of the game window as well as your ears open for the well-known “ding, ding, ding” sounds that are used to announce the feature trigger on the original. Your aim is to light up six, seven or eight positions on the meter as that will trigger the Reel King, Super King and Mega King bonus games.

There are to ways to see you lighting up the Reel King ladder. It can be either or both of them combined that will get you to the bonus games. Up to six reels can light up in yellow colour from left to right at the start of every spin sequence and in turn, adding one step to the meter for each lit reel. Every winning cascade within the same sequence will also light up a reel (if not all are already yellow), further filling up the meter. For example, hear six “ding, ding, dings” starting from the first reel and you got to the Reel King Bonus. The same would happen with six consecutive winning cascades or a combination of both. Any further winning cascade will get you to the top features. Failing to reach the bonus game steps will reset the meter at the end of a spin sequence.

Once you trigger any of the bonus games, you will see the screen changing with a new horizontal Free Spins meter appearing on top of the reels. Plus, a random number of mini in-game Reel King slots based on which bonus game was triggered will appear as an overlay. The mini-slots will be key to advancing on the meter towards the free spins or further increase the number of them for your round.

• Reel King: Will award 1 or 2 Reel King mini-slots. Advance five or more steps to trigger the min. 8 free spins up to a max. of 15 free spins.
• Super King: Will award 2 or 3 Reel King mini-slots. Advance five or more steps to trigger the min. 8 free spins up to a max. of 20 free spins.
• Mega King: Will award 3 to 6 Reel King mini-slots. The meter starts directly at 8 free spins and you can advance up to 25 free spins.

The Reel King mini-slots each have three reels with a single pay line, containing blue, yellow and red 7s as well as black diamond symbol. They will spin once at a time and lining up single or mixed coloured 7s will award a coin win which will be added to your round winnings. Every time all three reels light up in bright yellow on a spin, you will advance by one step on the Free Spins meter. The Reel King mini-slots will stay in play as long as either a win occurs on a spin or the reels light up. Any time neither happens will eliminate the respective mini-slot. The bonus game continues as long as there are mini-slots active with all coin wins accumulated in the King Win display.

Concluding the Reel King bonus game will take you to the Gamble feature. You can decide to collect your won free spins and coin wins or you can gamble to win more free spins, however, no additional coin prizes. The free spins round will start instantly if you have won 25 free spins from the Reel King bonus game. The pie gamble wheel contains red and green sections with the proportions reflecting the level you are on. The higher your amount of free spins, the larger the green sections will become. If you failed to reach the minimum 8 free spins, then you will be offered to gamble the coin wins from the Reel King mini-slot for 6 free spins. Up to 16 free spins, the gamble is all or nothing, from there on it is 20 or 10 and 25 or 15 free spins respectively.

At last, you finally reached the Free Spins round. It will start off with an x1 win multiplier, which will increase by x1 for every winning reaction, no limits. Plus, keep again an eye on the new meter on the side of the reels. Each winning reaction will light up one step, which will not reset between free spins. Getting to the top will see the Reel King spin again a mini-slot with two reels. One can land extra multipliers of up to x3, which will be added to the overall win multiplier and the other +1, +2 or +3 free spins. The result can be either an extra on one or both or nothing at all. The meter will extinguish after the spin, ready for you to start lighting it up again. The round ends when you run out of free spins and all wins from the triggering spin, the bonus game and the free spins round are paid in one amount.

And there is one more thing. Should your balance drop below the current bet value but remains higher than zero, then the game will automatically offer you the Spin Chance. It gives you one chance to win one more spin at the current bet size. A pie chart indicates your odds to win the gamble. Click on PLAY to start the gamble and the marker will start spinning. It will be a winner if the marker ends in the green zone. You can always click on NO to return back to the game screen with the remaining balance.

Final Verdict

Not really sure what Inspired Gaming had in mind when they decided to release a Christmas version of their Reel King Megaways slot. It has nothing new to offer, no differences in the features or an increased win potential. The only things that have changed are a slight touch to the visuals as well as the lower RTP value, the latter virtually disqualifying Santa King Megaways as an option to the original unless you insist on spinning reels with some Christmas decorations.

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