Pompeii Megareels Megaways

Pompeii Megareels Megaways: Slot Overview

One of the most famous volcanic eruptions in history has made its way to the reels, though not for the first time, in the online slot Pompeii Megareels Megaways from developer Pragmatic Play. For those who missed the history lesson at school, Pompeii is a preserved ancient Roman city near Naples, which was buried beneath 4 to 6 m of ash and pumice when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. An absolute tragedy for the city's inhabitants, its preservation nevertheless has given later generations a snapshot of life in ancient Rome, and the site receives around 2.5 million visitors every year.

Pompeii Megareels Megaways, a little grimly, captures the city of Pompeii in the midst of the volcanic eruption. Lava spews forth through the streets, wrecking buildings in its wake. Fortunately, Pragmatic Play has kept people out of the background as if they've all run to safety rather than perish in the catastrophe. Apparently, most of the inhabitants managed to escape after the first phase of the eruption began, which was a pumice rain lasting around 18 hours. One can only imagine the panic and fright the townsfolk must have felt back then when things like warning systems or swift transport to flee were not available in the ways they are now. Insurance is a biggie, too, because back then, you had to take what you could; otherwise, how was stuff going to be replaced?

On Pompeii Megareels Megaways' gaming matrix, things look a lot more calmly ordered. The grid has 6-reels, each of which lands 2 to 7 symbols, altering the number of available ways to win up to a maximum of 117,649. Winning combinations pay from the leftmost reel onwards over adjacent reels, while the math model is highly volatile. Bet 20 c to $/€240 per spin, and the RTP is 96%, rising to 96.06% when buying free spins or 96.02% when buying free spins with the double multiplier option.

Every winning combination is removed from the reels when it hits. This leaves empty spaced on the grid that are filled by symbols tumbling down into them. After the symbols tumble, if a new win is formed, the tumble mechanic repeats until no new win appears. As for symbols, ten to Ace card ranks begin the paytable inspection, followed by a coin, a shield, a chariot, armour, and a Roman character as the high pay symbols. When winning ways of 6-matching low pay symbols hit, the rewards are 0.5 to 1 times the bet, or 1.25 to 5 times the bet is paid out for hitting a way of 6 identical high pay symbols. Volcano pictured wilds substitute for all regular pay symbols, appearing on all but the leftmost reel.

Pompeii Megareels Megaways: Slot Features

Pompeii Megareels Megaways is pretty basic; there's not a lot to grasp here. The features are tumbles, free spins with a multiplier, and buy free spins.

Free Spins

Hitting 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols in the base game is how players win 15, 20, or 25 free spins, respectively. During free spins, each win is multiplied by a number equal to the total number of symbols which exploded in the current tumble. For example, a 3 OAK win is multiplied by x3. Free spins cannot be retriggered.

Buy Free Spins

Since the base game is so devoid of extras, getting to the free spins round is a top priority. To buy the round, players can pay 100x the bet to buy regular free spins triggered randomly by 3 to 5 scatters or fork out 300x the bet to trigger the round randomly by 3 to 5 scatters, but where all wins are multiplied by double the number of exploded symbols in the current tumble.

Pompeii Megareels Megaways: Slot Verdict

Aside from a single interesting free spins feature, there is very little else about Pompeii Megareels Megaways to get fired up over. The theme is relatively unique, if a bit dark. Imagine a future online slot based on the Haitian Earthquake, the Boxing Day Tsunami, or Hurricane Katrina. That'd be odd to the point of bordering on being ghoulish. Perhaps it's because the Pompeii disaster happened so long ago, time has built an emotional barrier around it, hard to say. The event is sanitised in Pompeii Megareels Megaways to an extent, but still…

Moving on, we get to the mechanical side of Pompeii Megareels Megaways, and its base game is about as dormant as they get in a Megaways slot. No minor modifier, no taste of a bonus round feature, not even a mystery symbol is on hand to add meat to the base game bones. Tumbles are here, okay, but that's it. Moving on once more, we get to the bonus round, where the multiplier feature has its merits. Multipliers in a Megaways slot's free spins round are about as standard as it gets, but they don't usually function like this. Instead of drip-feeding the win multiplier after each tumble, here, the number of winning symbols directly creates the multiplier value. Operating this way puts a heavier emphasis on wanting to get as many symbols on the reels, then hitting a win that involves as many of them as possible. It does feel a tad more all-or-nothing volatile this way, perhaps, though effective, as attested by the 10,000x the bet win cap.

If you'd thought you'd seen all there was to see when it comes to multipliers in a Megaways game, then Pompeii Megareels Megaways helps reset that assumption. It doesn't do so in an enormously compelling way which completely overshadows the regular rising win multiplier method, but it provides some variety for Megaways followers or those suffering from fatigue.