Megaways Slots Explained: Changing Reel Heights, Way Counts and Cascades

Megaways slots are reel games in which every reel changes height on every spin. One reel may show two symbols, the next seven, and your ways-to-win total is whatever those heights multiply to. Many pair that with cascades, so winning symbols vanish and new ones fall into the gaps. That is a lot of motion for one stake, which is why it helps to know what the counter is really counting before you board.

How megaways slots count their ways

A way is any path of one symbol running reel to reel from the leftmost reel, using any row on each. So the number of ways is simply every reel’s symbol count multiplied together. The examples below are plain arithmetic, not figures from a particular game:

The count swings from dozens to six figures between spins, while your stake stays the same. A spin with 117,649 ways costs the same stake as one with 64. The count describes paths across the reels, not your return.

Megaways versus fixed ways to win

Not every game with a large way count changes its reels. Compare three shapes this site has figures for:

1. Golden Empire (JILI). JILI’s own page prints “32400 megaways” beside a 2000x ceiling and a LOW-MED rating. In free games the multiplier builds with each elimination and, in JILI’s words, “is unlimited”. No RTP is published.
2. Treasures of Aztec (PG Soft). Up to 32,400 ways across six reels of five rows, with cascades; its multiplier climbs one step for each cascade in base play and two steps a cascade once free spins start. PG Soft’s published RTP: 96.71%.
3. Lucky Neko (PG Soft). Also up to 32,400 ways on 6x5, but its oversized Gigablox symbols can cover the grid as one block, which shrinks the evaluated ways while each surviving way gains value. RTP 96.73%.

Problem: you assume two “32,400” games behave alike.

Fix: read whether the reels change height, whether wins cascade and where the multiplier builds, because those three answers decide how a session feels.

Finding the Megaways shelf on the lobby

747 Live’s casino screen prints a Megaways category among its shelves, next to Buy Bonus, Jackpots and Video Slots. Big Time Gaming carries 43 entries in the lobby’s game list, and Pragmatic Play, with 492, is the deepest row overall. Open the shelf, then open any title’s rules screen for two numbers: the maximum way count and the maximum win.

Cascades are the other half of the shelf. A tumbling grid like Gates of Olympus 1000’s refills after each win, much as a Megaways reel set does, but on fixed reel heights and a pay-by-count rule. For a contrast with a plain fixed-line game, Big Bass Bonanza’s ten lines never change shape at all.

What to carry onto a Megaways game

• A stake set before the counter moves. Way counts change every spin; the stake should not.
• The symbol rules. How a wild symbol substitutes and scatter symbol trigger counts both apply here; check on which reels each may land.
• A price check on any feature buy. If a title also sells its feature, bonus buy slots and what the purchase costs explains the trade.

The studio behind the deepest row is on the Pragmatic Play slots page, and every shelf is on this site’s slot games list. Account steps stay on the brand’s own host: logging in there and the register steps there.