What are Megaways Games?
If you’ve opened a slots lobby in the past five years you will have seen the word attached to what feels like half the games in it. Megaways has gone from a single title in 2016 to a format that dozens of studios now license, and unlike most marketing terms in this industry it describes an actual mechanical difference.
The short version of Megaways Games is that the reels change shape on every spin. The longer version is more interesting.
Where the Megaways Games format came from
Megaways was built by Big Time Gaming, an Australian studio founded in 2011 that had spent its first few years making decent but unremarkable slots. The mechanic first appeared in Dragon Born and was then refined into Bonanza, a gold mining themed game that became the studio’s breakout hit and is still in most lobbies today.
BTG patented the engine and then licensed it out, which is why you now find Megaways online across games from Blueprint, Pragmatic Play, Red Tiger and many others rather than only from the original developer. Evolution acquired Big Time Gaming in 2021, so the patent now sits inside that group. Big Time Gaming’s own page for Bonanza still sets out the patented system and the cascading reel mechanic that arrived alongside it.
How the reels actually change
A conventional slot has a fixed grid. Five reels showing three symbols each gives you fifteen positions and a fixed set of paylines running across them, usually twenty or twenty five, sometimes 243 ways if the game pays on adjacent symbols rather than defined lines.
Megaways replaces the fixed grid with a random reel modifier. Six reels, and each one independently displays between two and seven symbols on any given spin. You might get three, five, two, seven, four, six. Next spin it is something else entirely.
Mechanically this is done by running each reel strip at variable speed against a window that can show a different number of positions. Visually it means the game board grows and shrinks in front of you, which is most of why the format feels different to play even before you understand what it is doing.
Doing the sums
Wins pay on adjacent symbols from the leftmost reel rightwards, with no fixed lines. The number of ways to win on a spin is simply the symbol counts on each reel multiplied together.
Land three, five, two, seven, four and six and you have 3 x 5 x 2 x 7 x 4 x 6, which is 5,040 ways. Land the maximum of seven on all six reels and you get 7 to the power of 6, which is where the famous 117,649 figure comes from. Some titles push further by adding a horizontal reel above the grid, and White Rabbit gets to 248,832 that way.
A point worth keeping in mind. A spin showing 117,649 ways is not a better spin. More ways means more low value combinations qualify as well, and the paytable is balanced against the average. The big numbers are a presentation choice as much as a mathematical one.
Cascades and the bonus round
Nearly every Megaways game pairs the engine with cascading reels. Winning symbols are removed, the ones above drop into the gaps, and new symbols fill from the top. If that creates another win, it happens again, and it keeps going until a drop produces nothing.
The two mechanics feed each other. Because the reel heights change with each cascade, a single paid spin can run through six or seven consecutive evaluations with a different board shape each time.
The free spins round is usually where the format earns its reputation. Many titles apply a win multiplier that increases by one with every cascade and, crucially, does not reset between spins for the duration of the feature. That is how you get the enormous results people post clips of. It is also why the base game feels comparatively flat, because a lot of the return has been moved into a feature you reach infrequently.
What it feels like to play Megaways Games
High volatility, in a word. The maths concentrates the return into rare large outcomes, so a two hundred spin session that never triggers the bonus is entirely normal rather than bad luck.
That suits some players and not others. If you enjoy long stretches of small returns and steady play, a classic twenty line game will give you a better time. If you are content to sit through dry spells for the chance of something substantial, the format is built for you.
Practical advice. Stake smaller than you would on a low volatility game, since you need session length to reach the feature at all. Check the published return figure in the game info panel, because licensed versions vary between studios even on the same mechanic. And treat the ways counter as decoration rather than a signal, since it tells you about board shape and nothing about value.
Most of these titles were built mobile first and play perfectly well in portrait on a phone. Our rundown of the best apps and mobile sites for slots players covers where they run best.
