Article Supplied
A product of Big Time Gaming (BTG), the Megaclusters gaming engine was launched on June 24, 2020 to everyone’s curiosity and excitement. It’s a fairly new concept which expands the symbols on the screen, giving the players a chance to score big wins.
This technology seems to have everything going for it when it comes to revolutionising online slots yet again. It has been introduced as a part of BTG’s latest release Star Clusters Megaclusters. Although it doesn’t hold the same winning potential as some of the biggest progressive jackpot slots out there, it does have its own charm and rewards. Let’s go over the chances of Megaclusters actually going on to become the next big hit of the iGaming industry in the near future.
How We Got Here.
To understand what’s so great about Megaclusters, it’s bets to take a quick look at its immediate predecessor, Megaways, which really set the stage for this latest technological revolution in gaming. Megaways was created by BTG and released in 2015 with its groundbreaking Dragon Born title. With the release of Bonanza the following year, Megaways really exploded into the mainstream, taking this small development house in Australia to all-new heights.
Though it appeared to be yet another online slot machine, Megaways actually took a revolutionary approach to the old favourite. No longer would you need to line up symbols to win big, now it’s all about matching certain symbols and numbers on adjacent lines. This creates a far greater amount of ways to win on any given spin – some half-a million ways on some games that use the Megaways system, like Holy Driver with its massive bonus game payouts.
Megaways was a serious success for the company with numerous developers creating games on the Megaways engine. Bonanza was the big break through and Holy Driver has proven itself to be the MacDaddy of big payout slot machines but Megaways has also proven to be the chosen platform for some great, highly creative movie and TV tie-in slots. Rick and Morty, Beetlejuice and Survivor have all been huge hits based on Megaways. Even Hasbro got in on the action with a Monopoly slot based on the engine.
It was on this massively popular engine that BTG took the next step in slot-gaming with Megaclusters.
How Megaclusters work?
Majority of online slots have a specific number of symbols that constitute the winning combinations. For instance, a 3 row and 5 reel online slot game makes up a 5 x 3 grid and offers 15 winning combinations. Megaclusters on the other hand works quite differently as explained below.
Cluster pays – Anyone who has played a cluster pays online slot in the past wouldn’t have problems figuring out the workings of Megaclusters. There aren’t any conventional pay lines in a cluster pay game. Rather, you get a square grid. For instance, the Star Clusters Megaclusters features a 4×4 grid, and you score wins by getting clusters of matching icons in horizontal or vertical directions. Every cluster must comprise of at least five symbols.
Avalanche wins – Whenever these occur, you witness new icons dropping down from above and filling-up the vacant spaces. The reels are re-evaluated to figure if there are any new wins. As is evident, Avalanche creates the possibility of more winning combinations by unlocking additional positions. The feature continues till the time there aren’t any more pay-outs possible.
One position becoming four – Normally, an avalanche would result in new icons dropping from the top and simply filling up the empty spaces. But in Megaclusters things work a little differently. The symbols of winning combinations do vanish, but 4 new icons emerge to replace each one of them. For instance, after you get 10 symbols in a specific winning combination, every symbol involved in creating the winning combination would vanish, getting replaced by four new icons for each one of them. Hence now you would have 40 new symbols, creating the possibility of more winning combinations.
Continuously expanding grid – The game begins with a 4×4 grid (64 possible positions), which continues expanding with more avalanches.
Bonus feature – The game awards two free spins each time you score five consecutive avalanche wins
Will Megaclusters prove to be a big hit?
Megaclusters comes with plenty of potential. Going by the success of BTG’s Megaways in the past, wherein the reels hold on to different symbols, it is evident that players love seeing the changing grid sizes. The Megaclusters engine also involves such grid-changing aspect. Although the game starts with a simple 4×4 set up, it expands fairly quickly even if you score just one payout. A five symbols cluster expands to 20 positions, leading to the possibility of many more clusters. BTG has added many extras like gold multipliers, free spends etc. to spice up the gaming action even more.
On the whole, Megaclusters engine seems to have all the possible ingredients to make it a huge success for BTG yet again. A few years ago, the prospects on Megaclusters might have been much more up in the air but BTG has engendered plenty of goodwill with Megaways, with developers, casinos and players alike, that it’s hard to believe that their anticipated followup won’t also make a gigantic splash. That the first game using this new tech has taken only half a decade since the original launch of Megaways is another sign of coming success as BTG has wisely decided to hit while the fire is still hot.
So, yes, it is, as always, a gamble to release new tech and most especially in the current climate but Megaclusters is a decidedly safe bet. It’s radical but familiar. It comes from a trusted source. And it’s mechanics are even more attractive than its predecessor. What’s not to love?
Article Supplied
