Rock The Reels Megaways

Rock the Reels Megaways: Slot Overview

If you're into music, nothing beats standing in a crowd of adoring fans, while heroes or heroines belt out their hits. Past developers have attempted to recreate this feeling on the reels to various degrees of success. Now it's the turn of Iron Dog Studio to have a crack. To boost wattage, they've done so in a slot powered by Big Time Gaming's Megaways game engine – a system they are well acquainted with by now. Will it turn everything to 11, or be the kind of concert people sit down to enjoy? Time to insert earplugs and find out.

For some reason, Iron Dog has decided to use animals in place of human beings to make up the band. That might seem strange at first, but if you're not going to do a branded slot and bring a real group on board, it's less cheesy than setting up a bunch of random models in various 'rocking out' poses. It makes the premise harder to take seriously, despite having a few sweet riffs and lead breaks livening up the place. The grid hovers on stage, sweating under spotlights, while crowd noises enhance the simulation.

The setup is all standard Megaways stuff, consisting of 6 main reels, holding up to 7 symbols each, and a 4 position horizontal reel above the middle 4 main ones. Each spin randomly lands a different number of symbols on each reel, producing up to 117,649 ways to win. A cascade feature triggers after every combination hits. This feature removes winning symbols from the board, allowing new ones to tumble into the empty spaces. Repeat wins continue to fire off coins until no new ones land.

Available on all devices, Rock the Reels Megaways lets players set stakes from 10 p/c at the lower end, going up to $/€50 per spin for the higher rollers. Nestling somewhere between Kenny G and Slayer, players can expect a medium-high volatile game, producing an RTP of 96.20%.

Extra metalness is provided by the low pay 10-A card symbols, which use that pointy angular font slashed across untold album covers in this music genre. High pays rock, too, kind of; where there are guitar picks, an object looking like a tambourine, a mixing desk, a stack of amps, and an 80s style rocker with a Flock of Seagulls hairdo who happens to be a cougar. Values generated from the premium symbols range from 2 to 15 times the stake for six of a kind. Two wild types appear in the game, a normal wild and a multiplier wild. Both appear on the main second, third, or fourth reels to substitute for all other pay symbols.

Rock the Reels Megaways: Slot Features

When it comes to features, Rock the Reels Megaways is equipped with several special symbols which trigger reel modifiers and a round of free spins with a progressive win multiplier. Special symbols land only on the top reel in either the base game or free spins. There are 4 to keep an eye out for, and each appears on initial spins or tumbles:

• Warthog – transforms 2 to 4 symbols on reels 1 to 4 into wilds.
• Octopus - transforms 2 to 4 symbols on reels 1 to 4 into a symbol randomly picked from reel one.
• Flamingo – transforms 3 or 4 symbols on reels 1 to 3 into the cougar symbol.
• Lion – the king of the jungle transforms 2 symbols on reels 2 or 3 into multiplier wilds. Multipliers on wilds in the base game are always x2. During free spins, the wild multiplier increases whenever the lion appears.

The free spins round is triggered when 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters land to award 8, 10, 15, or 25 free spins. During the round, a win multiplier comes into action. It starts at x1 and increases by +1 when tumbles occur. The round is extended when 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatters land to award an additional 4, 6, 8, or 12 spins.

Rock the Reels Megaways: Slot Verdict

Megaways slots drop so frequently now studios have to do something special to make their games stand out before being washed away in a never-ending torrent of new releases. Rock the Reels Megaways does an okay job of accomplishing this goal. Its theme is a bit different for a Megaways slot; although Monsters of Rock Megaways comes to mind, plus there are echoes of Blueprint Gaming's Spinal Tap in there as well, particularly in the font used for the low pay symbols. A game about rocking reels really needs an ear melting soundtrack, and more often than not, Rock the Reels Megaways meets this requirement as well.

Despite that, something's not quite there, or at least could have been cranked harder. It's as if the team had a few laughs, made their game, and moved on to the next. The main problem is, in essence, Rock the Reels isn't anything we haven't played many times before. Maybe if it captured more of the adrenaline, love, or excitement of being at a live music event with ecstatic like-minded fans, it could have made a greater impression.

Moving away from the theme, the gameplay is run of the mill. The innovations, if we can call them that, are the quartet of reel modifiers triggered by certain symbols on the tracker reel. These side features are okay, nothing special though they do produce a win or two here and there. As to the bonus game, well, it's a standard round of free spins with a progressive multiplier. This mix can admittedly turn up the heat, but it is one everyone is well used to seeing by now.

There are a few neat touches sprinkled about the place, the riffs are pretty cool, and the modifying symbols spice things up, but Rock the Reels ends up performing like dozens of other Megaways slots out there. It puts on a pretence of rocking out, but fails to bring anything especially new to the table. Like a garage band of earnest teens, they might change the world with their music in the future; for now though, they're content just holding their instruments properly so they can sound like their heroes.