Big Time Gaming

When it comes to product releases, BTG may not be as prolific as some of their rivals, but in this case, quality definitely counts over quantity. In total they have more than 40 slots in their catalogue spanning standard formats and their trademark Megaways™, Megaquads™ and Megapays™ titles.

This studio began life with a series of slick games that attracted attention but didn’t do much to set them too far apart from the competition. Early slots titles like Gold and Lucky Streak showed a game studio finding its feet with nice designs and gameplay, but it wasn’t until they showcased their Megaways™ engine in Dragon Born that slots fans began to notice something different was going on!

Dragon Born, Queen of Riches and Starquest were the first BTG slots to include the Megaways™ expanding reels, capable of super-powering a game to unheard of levels with 100,000s of paylines active on a single spin. But it was the release of Bonanza in December 2016 that really put BTG on the map with a ferocious mix of high intensity reel play with up to 7 rows per spin and a cash-busting mix of free spins and multipliers in the bonus round.

Since the release of Megaways™ and the unstoppable rise in popularity of Big Time Gaming slots their influence can be seen across a new breed of up and coming slots studios specialising in this kind of high risk stuff including No Limit City, Relax Gaming and Fantasma.

MEGAWAYS™ SLOTS

You can read more about these games, as well as full reviews, on our Megaways™ slots pages. In summary, Megaways broke new ground by creating a randomised number of rows on each reel on every spin. Depending on how many rows are on display the number of paylines in play changes. Typically a Megaways™ slot will have six reels and between 2 and seven rows. The games pay out for three or more identical symbols on any adjacent reels which means when seven rows show on six reels, 117, 649 paylines are active!

The Megaways™ boom has spread across the slots universe as rival developers signed up to license the software. Big players like Blueprint, Relax, Quickspin, NetEnt and Scientific have all grabbed a slice of the action as Megaways™ goes supernova.

Here are five of our favourite Megaways games:

• Bonanza Megaways – 117,649 paylines, 26,000x top payout, 96% RTP
• White Rabbit Megaways – 248,832 paylines, 17,420x top payout, 97.24% RTP
• Who Wants To Be A Millionaire Megaways – 117,649 paylines, 72,310x top payout, 96.27% RTP
• Extra Chilli Megaways – 117,649 paylines, 16,877x top payout, 96.26% RTP
• Holy Diver Megaways – 586,971 paylines, 20,500x top payout, 96.39% RTP

MEGACLUSTERS™ SLOTS

After the unparalleled success of their Megaways™ game engine, BTG provided a similar shot of adrenaline into the grid slot market with Megaclusters. Most grid slots follow the classic Cluster Pays model where payouts are triggered by groups of identical symbols landing adjacent to one another. Clusters can consist of anything from 5 icons upwards, with greater payouts distributed for bigger clusters. Cluster Pays games usually use a Cascading Reels feature too. After a winning spin, then the symbols in each cluster are removed and replaced with new ones. This may create more wins so that the process can repeat, until no more win clusters are formed.

The difference with Megaclusters comes with the Cascades. Now, when each winning icon is removed, then the space left behind is filled not with just one symbols, but with three or sometimes even four more. In this way, the grid size expands and so there is more room for Clusters to form and therefore the potential for bigger payouts.

Of course, this being Big Time Gaming so a healthy mix of multipliers and free spins is added to the mix and a chaotic succession of wins can lead to some massive payouts. Check out Star Clusters for a good example.

MEGAQUADS™ SLOTS

You’d think BTG were done by now, wouldn’t you? Well, think again because following the success of Megaways and Megaclusters, they dropped Megaquads on us too! This four reel extravaganza was first aired with their Slot Vegas Megaquads game featuring four 4×4 grids each offering 256 win ways.

The unique part of the Megaquads engine is the ability for the four reels to merge. Landing special Wilds on two reel sets simultaneously causes them to join together to create an 8×8 grid game with 65,536 paylines in play.  Of course, it’s also possible to merge all FOUR grids into one mega grid with 16,177,216 paylines on it!

16 million ways to win is classic BTG and it turns four grids into one seismic event where once again, free spins and multipliers combine to turbo charge the gameplay. It’s early days for the Megaquads series but the signs are good that this could make a big impact on the slots market in the same way that their other trademark features have.

MEGAPAYS™ SLOTS

Want more? Ok, here’s another for you! Megapays™ is Big Time Gaming’s answer to the Mega Moolah series from Microgaming. Megapays™ is a progressive jackpot network that is live on a small but growing number of BTG slots. Each one offers FOUR progressives – Mini, Midi, Major and Mega.

The mechanic for Megapays™ works like this:

One symbol is the Megapays™ one for each spin. If one or more of these lands then each instance will lock into place for a re-spin. If more land on the re-spin, then the process continues. The top payout of the Mega jackpot requires a total of 15 Megapays™ symbols to be collected. This jackpot is seeded at £300,000 so it’s well under what you get with the Microgaming and NetEnt Mega Progressives but expect that number to increase as more games are added to the network.

Currently the Megapays™ games available are Bonanza Megapays™ and Who Wants To Be a Millionaire Megaways™. We will surely see more of their most popular titles given the progressive jackpot treatment in the near future. Danger! High Voltage Megapays™ anyone??!!

In total there are 40 and counting Big Time Gaming slots on the market right now. Here are five of our favourites:

DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE

One of the original rock slots from BTG, Danger! High Voltage takes 4,096 win ways games to new places with an insanely catchy soundtrack to match. The free spins rounds are called My Desire Free Spins and Danger! High Voltage Free Spins and offer super-sized multipliers of up to 66x. There are also tons of wilds and sticky wilds to boost wins up to 15,746x.  At medium-high variance this is a great entry point into the world of BTG slots.

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

This space-age counterpart to Danger! High Voltage also plays out with a classic 4,096 paylines engine behind it. But this being BTG, of course things feel very different to a normal slot. The soundtrack engergises every spin and a Reel Clone feature synchronises up to 4 reels on a spin whilst 2×2 roaming multiplier wilds add to the fun. In the Heading for Venus round multipliers of up to 888x are available!

LIL DEVIL

There are slots fans out there who were introduced to 80s band, The Cult, through this delicious game, referred to by Big Time Gaming themselves as, like Bonanza and Danger High Voltage had a baby…” !! Once again, this is a 4,096 win ways slot, packed with thrills and spills including two free spins rounds both of which carry wilds and re-triggers as well as benefiting from win cascades!

STAR CLUSTERS MEGACLUSTERS™

Always trying to push beyond the boundaries of convention, BTG turned their attention to the grid slot model with their new MegaClusters™ engine in 2020. Much like its sister format, MegaClusters™ works by expanding the number of win ways available. This time after each winning cluster single icons break up to be replaced with FOUR more. An 8×8 grid becomes a 16×16 grid with much bigger win potential as a result.

WILD FLOWER

Another 4,096 payline game from BTG, Wild Flower is beautifully produced and comes with two free spins rounds, one with unlimited re-triggers and the other with Sticky Wilds, and two super-powered versions of those rounds where additional progressive multipliers of up to 800x are on offer. This game uses the classic BTG strategy of progressively building wins to a roaring climax using a super high-risk maths model.

The great appeal of Big Time Gaming’s slots is their mix of maths and engaging gameplay. And some might expect that somewhere in there the Return to Player would suffer. But that is not the case. Generally, BTG slots have a higher than average RTP. Wild Flower itself has an RTP of 96.52%, Lil Devil goes up to 96.43% in the bonus round, and Survivor rests at 96.47%.

Of course, the stand-out facet of the majority of these games is their super-high volatility and it should be noted that there is some trade-off in all high risk slots where to enjoy those thrilling times when everything comes together and the multipliers, sticky wilds and free spin re-triggers all hit at once you’re going to have to sit through some frustrating periods of gameplay with little to no reward. So, keep this in mind if you do plan on taking these games for a ride. There are also a few lower variance BTG slots if you prefer that format. Opal Fruits is one example, a game that was touted as a rival to NetEnt’s ubiquitous Starburst. That offers a 36,600x top win and 96.75% RTP!

Big Time Gaming products are amongst the best on the market, but with all that on screen action, how does the experience translate to mobile? Well, you might think that with expanding reels and four-grid gameplay it might get a little squeezed!

In fact, that’s not so and we can recommend trying any of the games from BTG on your mobile device. The developers from Big Time have produced all their work in HTML 5 which means that the games respond to your screen size whether you are on a desktop, table or mobile device. Having said that, for the full BTG experience, you can’t beat watching some of those big win sequences play out on a big, high resolution Mac screen! If you have one, give it a go!

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