Wins of Nautilus Megaways

Wins of Nautilus Megaways: Slot Overview

Deep breath players, developer Fantasma Games is taking you on a 20,000-league journey beneath the waves in their online slot Wins of Nautilus Megaways, inspired by the writings of Jules Verne. If you otherwise didn’t know, 20,000 leagues equate to around 80,000 km, or nearly twice the Earth's circumference. The book plots the travels of the Nautilus submarine under its commander Captain Nemo, who is a sort of billionaire seeking to remove himself from and be beyond the reach of any government. As such, Nemo can pretty much do whatever he wants down there. Fortunately, his desires revolve around gaining scientific knowledge rather than being some Dr Evil type, taking his frustrations out on civilisation by trying to destroy it.

Anyhoo, that brings us to Wins of Nautilus Megaways, which plants players aboard the Nautilus as it rests beneath the ocean's surface. Full wall portals reveal a murky undersea vista made up of wrecked ships, weeds, and plenty of fish floating around. For the most part, Wins of Nautilus Megaways is pretty rousing, in a 19th century way, with loads of brass about the place and a stirring soundtrack to inflame any adventurous spirits. It wouldn't have hurt to have gone a bit heavier on the Jules Verne, but what Fantasma went with has plenty of pluck.

Wins of Nautilus Megaways' setup is fairly standard, played on a game grid made up of a 6-reel main panel, with a 4-position horizontal reel running along the top - a rather typical Megaways set up in other words. The symbols appearing on the main reels change with every spin, producing 324 to 117,649 ways to win each time. There are no qualms over stats, including good potential, and a decent RTP of 96.1%, with 69.59% going to the base game, 26.51% to free spins. The gaming is quite pacey, thanks to a hit frequency of 30.76%, leading into an Avalanche feature, making for a fairly eventful journey beneath the waves.

All ten pay symbols require at least three to form a winning combination, starting from the leftmost side of the panel. Low pays are J-A card tiles worth up to 0.75 to 1.25x the bet, mids are anchors, shells, and diving helmets worth 1.5 to 2x, while high pays are three unusual characters that payout 3 to 5 times your stake for six of a kind. Onwards to the features.

Wins of Nautilus Megaways: Slot Features

Avalanches are the most common extra to be found in this deep-sea dive and are accompanied by Countdown Bombs, Full Reel Wilds, Respins, plus Deep Sea Free Spins.

Avalanches

Every winning combination kicks off the Avalanche mechanic, which removes the respective symbols from the reels. The remaining symbols drop down into the empty positions giving players another chance to win. Avalanches keep going until no new winning combination forms.

Countdown Bombs & Fully Stacked Wilds

Countdown Bomb symbols appear on the top reel or on reels 2-5. Each one appears with a number on them from 1 to 4. Whenever an Avalanche is activated, the number on all Countdown Bombs in view decreases by 1. When a counter reaches zero, it explodes and creates a full reel wild symbol with a multiplier equal to 2 times the starting counter value. If this occurs to two Countdown Bombs on the same reel, their initial values are added together before being multiplied by 2 and given to the full reel wild.

Respins

Respin symbols appear on reels 2-5 in the form of a grinning shark and activate the Respin feature when in view. Each Respin symbol removes itself plus 2-10 random pay symbols, thereby triggering an Avalanche.

Deep Sea Free Spins

Scatter symbols appear on any reel in the base game or in free spins. They are collected on the Bonus Meter during an Avalanche sequence, and if at least 3 accumulate, then 12 Deep Sea Free Spins are awarded. Collecting more than 3 adds +5 free spins per additional bonus symbol. Free spins can be retriggered in the same way during the feature. Now, most rules remain the same for free spins, with the added bonus of a win multiplier that starts at x1 and is increased by +1 following each Avalanche.

Buy Free Spins

If possible to buy free spins, the cost is 60x the bet, which starts a game round guaranteed to activate Deep Sea Free Spins. RTP increases to 97% when doing so.

Wins of Nautilus Megaways: Slot Verdict

After Caravan of Riches kind of lost us, we're back on firm ground again in Wins of Nautilus Megaways. Fantasma returns to making a playable Megaways slot with a good number of interesting aspects. Wins of Nautilus might not be one of Fantasma's experiential Megaways games like Flower Fortunes, or Heroes Hunt 2, though it loses nothing for being more conventional. As mentioned, it wouldn't have hurt if the studio got even more Jules Verne-y, maybe dropped in a Kraken, or used more exotic undersea scenery. But there is enough brass gadgetry and electrification buzzing around the screen to scratch some of the Steampunk itch. Plus, there are loads of Kraken games out there anyway.

It helps that the features Fantasma has included complement the game nicely. Countdown Bombs provide a measure of tension as they slowly tick down through Avalanches, and the ensuing Full Reel Wild multipliers can be highly useful. Wilds directly led to the best results during the test run, when they were created in free spins alongside the progressive win multiplier. Having more than one at once is an exciting proposal as well, though this never managed to materialise while we were playing. Like Nemo searching for wrecked bullion, double wilds are no doubt out there somewhere and would be a boon to have when chasing down Wins of Nautilus Megaways' max win of 10,000x the bet.

So no, Wins of Nautilus Megaways isn't as wildly experimental as they can be from Fantasma, but that's a non-issue. Players get a well-made Megaways game, which performs well while offering an attractive setting for its wholesome mix of features, stats, and potential.