Pokie Megaways

Pokie Megaways: Slot Overview

Trip to the land down under in iSoftBet's Australian themed slot Pokie Megaways. Be aware that 'pokies' in this instance refers to slot machines in the local vernacular rather than any NSFW cold weather-induced phenomenon. Australia by the numbers is pretty staggering. The country is more than twice the size of India while possessing around 2% of the people. Creeping and crawling their way through the population is all manner of beasties ready to sting, bite, or at the very least, freak out the unwary. The country has its fair share of cute critters as well, and animals of both kinds make it into Pokie Megaways.

As iSoftBet was rounding up and ramming creatures onto Pokie Megaways' reels, they must not have had the time or inclination to squeeze many innovations in at the same time. As such, they've fallen back on reskinning another dust-ridden slot titled Western Gold Megaways, which in turn was essentially a remake of Aztec Gold Megaways, and so the circle rotates. As to the skin then, a 6-reel game panel sits in the middle of the Outback, Ayers Rock on one side, as clouds blow across the sky at fantastic rates and dust skims past underneath. This is wild country, yet not as sunny as you might expect the interior of Australia to be.

Hit the play button, and up to 7 symbols land on each reel, creating up to 117,649 ways to win. Each paid spin costs 20 p/c to $/€20 a pop, or players may buy their way straight to the Hold & Win respins bonus round if they choose to, and the option is there. Volatility wise, players are looking at a medium-high level game, while standard play RTP is 95.98%, upping to 97% when buying the bonus game.

Regular Megaways rules apply, so matching symbols landing left to right from the left-hand side constitute a winning combination. Symbols are led off by 9-A old school pokie looking icons, followed by koala bears, crocs, an Outback hat-wearing chap, and the Roo Casino logo at the top. Landing six low-value symbols across the reels result in a payout of 0.5-1.5x the bet, or 2-25x the bet for six premiums. The wild symbol appears only on reels 2, 3, 4, or 5, substituting for all other symbols except for the scatter.

Pokie Megaways: Slot Features

In the base game, players can look forward to features such as cascades, Max Megaways, and a Bonus Add. Scatters are also there as the gateway to Pokie Win Cash Respins.

Cascades

Each win in the base game trips the cascade feature, which removes the winning symbols from the board and fills their vacated spots with new symbols from above. This may lead to consecutive wins from the same spin, ending when no new win forms.

Max Megaways

This feature may trigger on any paid spin. When it does, each reel is filled with symbols, so players get the full number of Megaways.

Bonus Add

On any paid spin, there is a chance the Bonus Add activates, giving players the chance to win Pokie Cash Respins – this is not a guaranteed outcome, by the way.

Pokie Win Cash Respins

This one's the biggie and awarded when at least 5 scatter symbols hit in the base game. Triggering scatters are held to the reels while all other symbols fade away. The bonus is played on a set of reels that lands only scatters symbols (which possess bet multipliers) and jackpot type scatters. These could be the Mini, Major, or Mega scatters worth 10x, 25x, or 50x the bet, respectively. Now, 3 respins are awarded at the start, which is reset whenever a new symbol lands and locks to the reels. Also, if a reel is filled with symbols, the values of those symbols are multiplied by the number of positions on the respective reel.

Bonus Buy

Those not in the mood to bake in the virtual desert waiting for scatters to organically hit may be able to buy Pokie Win Cash Respins instead for the cost of 50x the total stake.

Pokie Megaways: Slot Verdict

Having enjoyed Aztec Gold Megaways, then been less impressed by its follow up Western Gold Megaways, the reaction to Pokie Megaways was decidedly tepid. At least iSoftBet didn't decrease the payouts the way they did between the first two Gold Megaways slots. Instead, they just ploughed directly into a straight reskin, choosing to focus more on the Aussie audio-visuals. They're not bad either. Players get a taste of down under, which feels a little unrepresented in the slots world given the popularity of betting in Australia.

Hopefully, the full-on Crocodile Dundee graphics are enough to win you over because there's nothing new going on with the gameplay. The base game chugs along until the bonus game hits, where a fairly regularly streak respin round plays out. The Gold games' claim to innovation is the use of multipliers when reels are filled with symbols, which is pretty neat when it occurs. Seeing the same feature repeated several times has lessened the thrill, though, it has to be said. Still, potential is here, where players can walk off with wins as high as 12,000x the bet. For bigger thrills, spills, and chills, you might be better off checking out Aztec Gold Megaways or its upgrade Aztec Gold Extra Gold Megaways – iSoftBet do like their gold.

If spreading the dark goodness of Vegemite over toast is about the best breakfast imaginable, then Pokie Megaways is an absolutely unmissable experience. If not, and Vegemite is one polarising food spread after all, since Pokie Megaways doesn't do anything its predecessor wasn't capable of, it isn't hugely tempting from a purely gaming standpoint. However, Pokie Megawys might be just the thing for armchair travellers to have a quick trip through the Outback without fear of being stung or eaten by the wildlife.