88 Fortunes Megaways Slot

88 Fortunes Megaways Slot Overview

SG Digital’s original release of 88 Fortunes enjoyed quite a bit of success. The slot become quite popular, particularly because of its distinct style and jackpot prizes. And now the developer has seen it fit to release a Megaways version of the game, with the dynamic reels breathing new life into the ageing title.

At first glance, 88 Fortunes Megaways looks a bit different to the game I had originally played from SG Digital. The visuals seem to have been significantly toned down. Sure, you still have well-designed symbols and backdrops, but some of the flair that made the original so memorable seems to have disappeared.

And the feature list has also seen quite a change. There is no sign of any jackpot prizes, although the Megaways system has added more ways to unlock the free spins bonus, as well as win multipliers which can push your rewards towards the maximum win cap of 10,000x your bet.

⚡ RTP	96.06%-96.27%
🎲 Volatility	Medium – High
💰 Paylines	117,649
🔼 Maximum Bet	88
🔻 Minimum Bet	0.88
⭐ Bonus Features	Wilds, Scatters, Free Spins, Win Multiplier, Pick Me Feature, Bonus Reel

88 Fortunes Megaways Slot Game Free Demo

You may have played your fair share of the original game, but you should still check out the 88 Fortunes Megaways free demo before playing the game for real. The demo gives you a space to test out all the changes that the remake brings to the table, without ever putting your funds on the line. It can also be essential in helping you decide just how many gold symbols you want to have in play and the bet levels that will best suit your gambling budget.

Pro Tips:

88 Fortunes Megaways is a pretty customisable game and you’ll need to pick the settings that best suit your budget. This applies to both the bet levels and gold symbols that make it into the game. The slot has a medium to high level of volatility and with cascading reels, you get even better chances of landing winning combinations. I recommend picking a decent bet level that buys you enough playing time while also helping you push for bigger wins.

88 Fortunes Megaways Slot Bonus Features

So, right off the bat, the first huge difference you get here is the Megaways mechanic. It’s not the biggest number of Megaways I’ve ever played with in a game, but you get 117,649 ways to win which can lead to some incredible rewards nonetheless.

This massive number of ways to win is made possible through the six reels and seven rows, which we’ve come to expect from similar Megaways setups. You also get an extra horizontal reel at the very bottom with four symbols.

Cascading reels accompany the Megaways reels, so whenever you hit a winning combination, the winning symbols are removed from the reels. The empty spaces are filled up with more symbols, creating new winning combinations in the process. This system repeats until there are no more wins on screen. While this lets you put together more frequent wins, it does affect symbol payout values, which are lower than those of non-Megaways games.

Speaking of which, at the lower end of the paytable, you get royal card symbols from nine to A, as well as Asian-themed symbols like bowls, turtles, junk boats and jade sculptures. These can be worth up to 0.6x your bet for six-of-a-kind symbols. Moving further up, you’ll find the gold symbols. It’s up to you to pick just how many of these come into play. There can be up to five gold symbols in play, although this affects the cost of every spin.

You start with one symbol which can score you wins of up to 8x your bet. But the more symbols you add in, the higher that potential win gets and it can cap at 88x your bet when five gold coins are in play.

These may seem like rather low payout values but land a few consecutive wins through the cascading reels and they’ll add up to a more respectable figure.

Wilds

The game’s Fu Bat symbol takes on the role of wild. It steps in for any missing symbols on a payline and in my case, it managed to turn quite a few near misses into brilliant wins. It can also enhance existing wins to give you even better payouts. The wilds can serve as any symbol in the slot, except for scatters.

And that’s not all. Whenever Fu Bat symbols land, they add coins to the game’s Coin Pot and can randomly trigger the picker feature. Whenever this happens, the screen changes and displays 15 gold coins. You’ll then need to pick through the gold coins until you uncover three identical symbols which award you with one of three free spin bonuses:

• 10 free spins and a 6x win multiplier.
• 12 free spins and a 4x win multiplier.
• 15 free spins and a 2x win multiplier.

Scatter symbol

But the pick bonus isn’t the only way to unlock free spins. You also get gong symbols which serve as scatters in 88 Fortunes Megaways. Land four, five or six of these and you activate 8, 10 or 12 free spins. You can also land these during the bonus rounds to increase your free spin tally.

Free Spins

Free spins play out in a very similar way to the base game, although the biggest difference in gameplay is the addition of a win multiplier. It starts at 1x and increases by a value of one with every win you make, including those put together from cascading reels.

If you trigger free spins from the picker feature, you get an even higher starting win multiplier. This is the best way to push for the biggest wins that the game has to offer.

RTP & Volatility of 88 Fortunes Megaways Slot

Volatility has been clocked somewhere between a medium and high setting here, but RTP will vary based on the number of gold symbols you have in play. So, it can sit anywhere between 96.06% and 96.27%. Overall, it’s a pretty even math model, which suits the game’s Megaways system and cascading reels.

The slot is developed by SG Digital, a provider with a great track record for releasing excellent games that are also fair and safe to play. So, you can rest assured that 88 Fortunes Megaways is a legitimate game, which you can enjoy safely as long as you play at equally secure online casinos.

88 Fortunes Megaways Slot on Mobile

Fire up 88 Fortunes Megaways on mobile and enjoy all the slot has to offer on both Android and iOS devices. All the same graphics, features and win potential are here, so get an identical experience across all platforms. You can also play in both landscape and portrait mode thanks to the intuitive design which makes sure you get the best interface setup possible based on your screen size.

Conclusion

Remakes should always build on their forebears’ success, taking all that made those slots great and injecting them with some fresh new concepts. But that’s not quite what I experienced with 88 Fortunes Megaways.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel like the Megaways treatment suits the slot very well, but my biggest gripe lies with the actual execution. The visuals have been toned down a lot, resulting in a generic, empty board that could easily be mistaken for one of the thousands of other Asian-themed slots that exist. This attitude seems to have been used across the feature list too. Gone are the jackpots, replaced by a second way to activate the free spins bonus.

It’s pretty disappointing to have all of this chopped out of the remake, although that’s not to say that the Megaways version doesn’t add anything of note. First off, the 117,649 ways to win are a massive improvement and the cascading reels create more winning opportunities. The payouts are quite low but if you manage to rake up a good enough win multiplier in free spins, you stand to score some amazing rewards.

Speaking of which, win potential is still very satisfying. Although some features have been cut, the max win potential remains unchanged at 10,000x. The journey may be less exciting, but it can still be just as rewarding this time around.

Ultimately, 88 Fortunes Megaways feels like a trade-off of features rather than a distinct upgrade over the original game. The slot improves on some aspects but also digresses in other areas.