The Dog House Megaways

The comical gang of rottweilers, pugs, dachshunds and Shih Tzus is returning for another reel brawl on the slot from Pragmatic Play. The Dog House Megaways is taking you back to the suburbs where the daredevils roam free across six reels with wild substitutions and two free spins modes featuring sticky or raining wilds that can lead to wins of up to 12,305 times your bet.

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Slot Details

The Dog House Megaways is a video slot with six reels and up to seven rows as well as 64 to 117,649 ways to win. You can join the comical dog gang for another reel brawl on desktop, mobile and tablet from 0.20 to 100 credits per spin. The game has maximum volatility (5/5) with a default RTP 96.55%. Some casinos will offer it with a lower setting in the 94.xx% range, always check the help file to find out which version you will be playing.

Courtesy of the Megaways engine there are virtually unlimited combinations of rows and ways to win, which makes each spin a unique event. However, Pragmatic Play opted to forgo the usual horizontal reel as well as cascading symbols and reactive wins mechanic. What you get is a straight spinning reels slot. The number of ways is randomly determined at the start of a spin sequence by selecting between two and seven pay symbols an all reels. A small display in the top right corner will show the current number of active Megaways. Wins are awarded for three to six matching symbols on adjacent reels from left to right only.

The graphics and visuals are virtually unchanged except for the now larger game window to accommodate the Megaways game engine. A typical suburban area that is usually the roaming ground of house dogs is the background to a reel set that itself appears as a dog house. Warm colours, perfectly trimmed lawns and humming butterflies create a relaxed gaming environment. A quirky soundtrack as main audio emphasizes the dog theme.

The same goes for the pay symbol set. At the low end are the card royals from 10 through to A, awarding 0.5x to 1x your stake for a single six of a kind. They are followed by a dog bone and a dog collar on the medium level as well as the four doggy friends – a dachshund, a pug, a Shih Tzu and a rottweiler as premiums. Hit six across the reels to win 3x to 15x times your stake.

The wild symbol is, of course, a swanky dog house, appearing on reels two, three, four and five only. Any Wild landing in a winning combo will randomly unveil a multiplier of x2 or x3 in the base game and free spins. More than one multiplier wild in a winning combination are added, not multiplied. Scatters are a jewellery piece with gems in the form of a dog’s paw.

The Dog House Megaways Slot Features

Reading the news coming from Pragmatic Play HQ that they will be giving one of their most popular slots a Megaways upgrade filled us with anticipation and suspense as to what they will include in the gameplay. Loading the game made us realize that we would have to mention first the things they actually excluded. The game has no cascading symbols and with that, no reactive wins chains that are normally a core ingredient in Megaways creations. Instead, it is a spinning reels mechanic just like on any other standard slots.

Well, let’s look past that and see what’s on offer, who knows it might be not that bad after all. The base game is threading along with little to highlight except when a few wilds land on a spin and unveil multipliers. All multiplier wilds are added, leading potentially to an x15 multiplier for the current spin. Add to that a few stacked pay symbols and it could deliver sizeable wins.

Hitting three to six scatters anywhere on the reels in one spin will trigger the Free Spins feature. The game will display two options for your round and you are free to pick any of them on each occasion. Neither of them can be retriggered as scatters are removed from the reels for the duration of the bonus feature.

• Sticky Wilds Free Spins: 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 scatters will trigger 7 | 12 | 15 | 20 free spins with the chance to land two to seven sticky wilds on each reel from 2 to 5 except for the 6-scatter trigger which will give you three to seven sticky wilds per reel. Any wild landing on a free spin will display an x1, x2 or x3 multiplier and will stay on the grid until the end of the feature. It will change size in sync with the random number of symbols on the reels for each free spin.
• Raining Wilds Free Spins: 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 scatters will trigger 15 | 18 | 25 |30 free spins with up to six raining wilds on each spin. At the start of a free spin, wilds can be added to random reel positions, meaning you can have spins with none at all materializing. Any that do will again display an x1, x2 or x3 multiplier. These are not sticky wilds and will disappear again after any potential wins are paid.

Lastly, the game comes with a Bonus Buy option, although only in jurisdictions where these have not been restricted. It will allow you to purchase direct access to the free spins feature by staking 100x your base bet in one amount. Simply hit the button and confirm to see the game launching a spin that will have minimum three scatters land on the reels.

Final Verdict

As already mentioned, we were really looking forward to this release as The Dog House original is a well-liked slot in the casino community. The Megaways upgrade had the potential to make it a top favourite but it missed the mark by a good margin. The base game is often tedious and nonchalant with no modifiers or the usual cascading symbols mechanic. The choice of free spin modes lifts it up slightly as players can mix the features in their session but that’s as far as the excitement goes.

In our test runs, we scored best with the Sticky Wilds Free Spins. Although a max potential of 12,305x your bet could provide for some additional exhilarating moments. Not to forget though, it is a highly volatile slot, so some caution on the bet size is recommended.

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