Play Demo
Land a win and a reel locks yellow with a satisfying Ding. Win again and a second reel lights up. Keep the cascades coming and the colour spreads over the grid until the screen zooms in on the last reel and a crowned king pops up, spins his own little reels and sends you into a free spins round. That sequence into the bonus is the heart of Reel King Megaways, the Inspired Gaming slot that drops the Novomatic pub favourite onto a six-reel Megaways layout.
Every winning combination clears the symbols that made it and lets new ones drop into the gaps, with fresh chances to land more. A run carries on while new wins keep dropping in.
The reels use the Megaways setup, two to seven symbols high on each of the six columns, for as many as 117,649 ways. The grid reshapes on every spin. A separate horizontal reel sits across the top and feeds four more symbols into the columns beneath it.
Each cascade lights one reel yellow, working from the left side. That is the road into the bonus, and lighting all six starts the Reel King feature.
Inside it, one or more kings line up above the grid, each turning a mini-reel. A free spins trail runs across the top and shows the spins it can award. Every time a king’s reel lands yellow, you move a step along that trail, and where you finish sets the free spins you carry into the round.
Those mini-reels pay on their own too, at 1x for mixed Sevens, 2x for blue, 5x for yellow and 10x for red. A king bows out once it lands a blank with under 3 lit reels of its own, and the feature runs on while any king remains.
How far up the trail you can get depends on the tier you trigger, and an extra cascade on the way in bumps you to a richer one.
Play to the end of the king’s round, and a wheel offers a choice. Take what you have, the free spins marked on the trail plus any win collected, or spin for the chance of more.
The wheel splits green for a win and red for a miss. A win pays the higher free-spins total, and a miss can shave spins off or wipe them. Up to 25 free spins are on offer through this gamble.
The free spins round swaps the blue backdrop for black and turns the reels red. A win multiplier starts at 1x and ticks up one for every cascade, with no upper cap and no reset as the round runs on.
Cascades light the reels one at a time, and the last one brings a king back to the grid to add 1 to 3 more spins and 0 to 3 to the multiplier. Lit reels stay lit, so progress is carried over rather than restarting each spin.
A win needs matching symbols on adjacent reels, built out from the leftmost one. It pays from just two side by side, where most games ask for three. The symbols per reel shift each spin, so the ways figure swings anywhere up to 117,649.
The job of any normal spin is to string cascades together. The lit reels clear at the end of each spin, so only a single run that keeps cascading can light all six and open the bonus. Stakes run from $0.20 up to $20 a spin, and the free play demo runs the full feature set without needing to make a deposit.
The headline number is a 12,500x maximum win, and the gamble wheel can push the swings higher still. The RTP is 96.23%, though operators can run lower builds.
Controls are sparse, with sound on or off, a left-hand layout toggle, and an autoplay you open by holding the spin button. There is no turbo option, which some players will miss.
The money bag is the top symbol, paying 50x for six and the only one to land from just two side by side. The crowned royals come next, the ace well ahead of the king and queen, while the fruit and card faces fill the lower rungs. Every value listed below is a multiple of your stake.
| Symbol | 6 reels | 5 reels | 4 reels | 3 reels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Money Bag | 50x | 25x | 10x | 5x |
| Ace | 7.50x | 2.50x | 2x | 1x |
| King | 2x | 1.50x | 1x | 0.25x |
| Queen | 2x | 0.75x | 0.50x | 0.25x |
| 10 | 1.75x | 0.60x | 0.40x | 0.20x |
| Jack | 1.75x | 0.60x | 0.40x | 0.20x |
| 9 | 1x | 0.60x | 0.25x | 0.20x |
| Watermelon | 1x | 0.50x | 0.25x | 0.15x |
| Plum | 0.90x | 0.50x | 0.25x | 0.15x |
| Cherries | 0.80x | 0.40x | 0.20x | 0.10x |
The money bag also pays 2x for a pair side by side. The jester wild substitutes for everything and turns up only on the bonus reel up top, in normal play and the free spins alike.
Set this beside the pub classic and the appeal is easy to read. Inspired kept the bit people remember, the kings that pop up to spin their toy reels, and wrapped it in the variety of a Megaways grid where cascades feed the bonus. The look will not win any awards. The symbols are flat and the package has the feel of an older cabinet, but it makes that back in variety, and the layered bonus does more work than the visuals suggest. It earns its score on how that bonus plays out, not on first impressions.
The bonus is the reason to stick around, and it pays off because it arrives in stages rather than the one-and-done of most slots. Lighting the reels has a rhythm to it, the dings building as you near the end of the row. The king round, the gamble choice and the free spins then each add a stage of their own.
In our demo session, the free spins multiplier kept climbing. It reached 8x for an $89.60 win on one spin, then 10x for $55.75 on the next. We also lit all the reels red once, adding +2 spins but no multiplier to our round, and the whole thing added up to a $193.15 finish. Watching it stack up with each cascade is what gives the round its pull.
The audio gets old fast. The spin jingle loops every few seconds and starts to grate well before the short royal tune in the king round does the same. The pacing tests patience too. Standard play can sit quietly for a while, which is expected on a medium-high volatility game, but everything hangs on cascades arriving to light the reels, so a cold patch leaves you watching a board that never gets going. With no turbo and few settings, the pace is whatever the game decides. Finally, the gamble can add a sting of its own, since spinning for more can hand back fewer free spins than the safe option would have.
The Reel King brand sits on more than 3 billion lifetime plays, and the draw is the mix of old and new. The kings, the fruit ladder and the gamble are pure nostalgia, the sort of machine people grew up feeding coins into. The Megaways spread and the cascades are the modern hooks that keep it on the shelf next to newer releases. The pile of coins and coloured gems heaped along the screen’s base leans into that arcade memory, and the crown framing around the top reels keeps the regal joke running.
Against the Novomatic original, the upgrade is more than a coat of paint. That game ran five reels and 20 paylines for a 94% return and a 500x top win, with the kings appearing at random and a straight double-or-nothing gamble. This version raises the return to 96.23% and the top win to 12,500x, and swaps the coin-flip for the free spins wheel.
Cascades and the lit-reels build give the bonus a shape the original never had, and the free spins round, with its unbounded multiplier, is new ground. None of it reinvents the brand, but it gives a classic a reason to sit on a Megaways menu, and you can see why its fans came with it. It is a faithful revival with a more entertaining bonus than most Megaways games we have put through review, and the demo is worth a spin in its own right.
