Ancient Island Megaways

Ancient Island Megaways: Slot Overview

Do you think that people, before there were phones, maps, or boats, who lived in the middle of the ocean thought their island was the only one in the world? Or did they have some sort of inbuilt intuition telling them there were other lands beyond the horizon to discover? Something to ponder as we delve into provider Pragmatic Play's online slot Ancient Island Megaways, a game steeped in island life, culture, and some potentially potent full-reel wild action.

Thematically, Ancient Island Megaways has a sort of Aztec meets Southeast Asian cultural thing happening around and on its gaming grid. Vines drape the reels to create a lost in the bush for 500 years vibe, while the background paints a warm, inviting, light blue beach scene. In-theme tunes tickle the aural sense, and Ancient Island Megaways is, on the whole, an attractively laid-out game if you like this sort of style, the seaside location making a nice break from being deep in a forest.

Ancient Island Megaways is a highly volatile slot that players can stake 20 c to $/€240 per spin on. Running on a Megaways game engine, each game round sees 6 reels spin, landing 2 to 7 symbols on each one, producing up to 117,649 ways to win. The top-level RTP, however way you choose to play Ancient Island Megaways, is 96.55%.

Ancient Island Megaways' pay symbol list is made up of 10 through A card ranks and 5 exotically designed premium paying symbols. Royals award 0.5-0.8 times the stake for a 6 OAK hit, while the high pays award 1x to 5x for 6 OAK. Wilds replace any of the regular paying symbols and appear on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Ancient Island Megaways: Slot Features

The features in Ancient Island Megaways include wild and top modifiers, free spins, and a bonus buy option. There's also a tumble feature that removes winning symbols from view and replaces them by tumbling symbols in from the top.

Wild and Top Modifiers

When a wild symbol hits, it expands to vertically fill all positions on its reel. On top of the main grid is a special horizontal reel where random modifiers may hit in random positions. When a wild symbol expands under a modifier, that modifier is awarded.

• Cash Prize - awards a bet multiplier prize of 2x to 100x.
• Multiplier - awards a random multiplier of x2 to x100, which applies to all winning combinations on that spin. If more wilds are part of the same win their multipliers add to each other.
• Max Ways - increases the number of symbols on all reels to the maximum amount by adding new symbols to the bottom of each reel.
• Replace Non Winning Symbols - before wins are evaluated, symbols that do not form a winning combination or on a wild reel in the current configuration are replaced with other random symbols.
• Extra Wild Reel - a fully expanded wild is added to the middle 4 reels at random. If a modifier is above this wild, it is awarded.

Free Spins

The free spins round is triggered by landing 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols, which awards 12, 14, or 16 free spins, respectively. During the bonus round, all positions on the top horizontal are guaranteed to be filled with a random modifier. An extra spins modifier may land as well, granting 2, 3, 5, or 10 extra free spins when won.

Feature Buy

It is possible to buy into the free spins round, triggered by 4, 5, or 5 scatters for 100 times the bet. The RTP is the same when playing Ancient Island Megaways this way.

Ancient Island Megaways: Slot Verdict

Generally speaking, Pragmatic Play's Megaways releases don't tend to hit like its bigger non-Megaways releases, but the studio does have a knack for working interesting extras into them. This often has to do with wild symbols in some way, such as Power of Thor Megaways' neat wild-making Mjolnir symbol or the multiplying wilds of Buffalo King Megaways. Since Megaways has an inherent ability to throw a lot of symbols and a lot of ways to win on the board, wilds can be instrumental in linking matching symbols together. Few to none more so than wilds that expand to cover entire reels.

This expansive wild effect is available in Ancient Island Megaways' base and bonus rounds and might have been enough on its own to carry the game. Well, maybe working hand in hand with another side feature. But expanding wilds' power is bolstered by the feature reel and its list of modifiers, which brought to mind AvatarUX's LooneyPop if you like this sort of feature reel thing. Here, it's a case of hitting a wild, watching it expand, then triggering a feature if one happens to be above it. Some features are more desirable than others. Cash prizes are okay, Max Ways might get interesting, multipliers are always a boon, and who's going to say no to an extra wild reel or the removal of non-winning symbols? Hitting combinations of effects is possible as well, and since the feature reel is always full in free spins, that's the place to be.

It was hard to find any glaring faults in Ancient Island Megaways. Full reel wilds in a Megaways game are dandy on their own, but pile in the extra features they're able to trigger in this game, plus a handsome 10,000x win cap, and you've got a pretty sound slot on your hands, set in an attractive offshore environment no less.