Australian game developer Big Time Gaming delivers three popular game mechanics, called Megaways, Megaclusters, and Megaquads. Megaways came first and immediately became a huge success. You can find loads of games from different providers functioning on the Megaways game engine, proving that BTG did an amazing job with this mechanics.

Megaclusters came after that, and also became pretty popular, so Big Time Gaming turned to a whole new concept, called Megaquads, who threatens to be as popular as its famous predecessors. In this text, we will try to explain the concepts of the three game mechanics and to compare them.

Megaways is Probably the Most Popular of the Three

Ever since Bonanza Megaways saw the light of day, the Megaways video slots have become extremely popular among gamers. Up until now, over 80 games function on the Megaways game engine, with the number of developers who are licensing to produce video slots with this mechanics getting bigger by the day.

Megaways video slots usually come with six reels, and some of them have the seventh, horizontal reel, which adds positions on the four central reels on the grid. From 2 to 7 icons can appear on a reel, and players can benefit from 64 up to 117,649 ways to win. Some games offer even more Megaways.

Avalanche feature, or Cascading Reels feature (there are plenty of other names for the same feature) is also present, removing all winning symbols from the gird, adding new icons to fill the blank positions. In most cases, cascades are followed by increasing win multipliers that reset after a non-winning cascade. If a Free Spins feature is present, you get an increasing win multiplier that does not reset.

Due to the fact that there are more and more Megaways video slots on the market on daily basis, Big Time Gaming started to think about a different concept, which could be as successful as the previous one, thus delivering Megaclusters.

Megaclusters Applies on Clusterpays Games

Once they reached the max point with Megaways in video slots that use paylines for creating winning combos, BTG decided to try whether the same concept can be used on games that benefit from cluster pays, delivering the Megaclusters concept. Instead of getting more ways to win by landing more icons on one reel, players have to increase the number of possible clusters by landing winning clusters.

If you had the pleasure of playing Star Clusters Megaclusters video slot, you could see how the mechanic works. To win payouts, players need to land clusters of five or more matching symbols, horizontally or vertically adjacent. Instead of removing winning symbols, the Megaclusters game engine will replace every winning icon with four smaller ones. This is called a Reaction. After that, every time you land a winning cluster with smaller icons, they will disappear and make room for new small icons to land on the reels.

Players begin on a 4×4 reel grid, while during the Free Spins feature, you can play on an 8×8 grid. If there are Gold Wilds, they usually come with multipliers. There are no Scatters that you can use to trigger the Free Spins feature, you need to land 5 or more successive reactions to trigger freebies.

The win multiplier is also available during freebies and every time you fill the multiplier meter, you get extra free spins. What can be a problem is the fact that the number of free spins depends on the number of successive reactions that triggered the feature, so do not be surprised if, from time to time, you trigger a small number of free spins.

Megaquads – The Newest Concept

When talking about Megaquads, the first thing that comes to our minds is Slot Vegas Megaquads, released by Big Time Gaming in September 2020. This is an entirely new concept, where gamers get four 4×4 reel sets, each of them offering 256 ways to win. With the little help of Rainbow Wild Bonus, players can benefit from 65,536 ways to win, while, during the Free Spins feature, there is a total of 16,777,216 ways to win, with the little help of the Rainbow Wild Bonus.

Land a Rainbow Wild on two reel grids that are horizontally connected, and the two sets of reels will merge to produce payouts. In the Free Spins feature, there are two reel grids that can be connected with Rainbow Wilds. To increase win multipliers, gamers need to land 4 of kinds with lucky sevens and diamonds, the top-paying symbols of the game. All multipliers from the base game are combined together in the Free Spins feature and applied on all wins. The bad part of the story is that it will take you a while before you boost the win multipliers with high-paying symbols.

Now, it will take a while before we see the full results of the Megaquads video slots, but, in our humble opinion, this just may be the next big hit by Big Time Gaming.

How To Pick The Most Suitable Mechanics?

Well, we don’t have to waste time explaining why Megaways is a good and popular concept, but we do fear that, due to the fact that there are so many Megaways video slots on the offer nowadays, gamers might be fed up with the same mechanics now offered by so many providers.

As for the Megaclusters, the weak side of the concept is the part where you need reactions to get plenty of free spins, which will not be the case every single time you trigger the feature. That can be frustrating.

The current Megaquads video slot also has a frustrating part – the win multiplier that is increased only by landing maximum combos with high-value symbols. This will not happen that often, so the win multiplier in the Free Spins feature will not be very high.

In our humble opinion, Megaways is still the best game mechanics from BTG’s creative kitchen, although Megaclusters have the potential to become just as popular. Megaquads might seem a bit complicated in the beginning, with 4 sets of reels that can be combined, but, after a while, it becomes very interesting.