Wild Portals Megaways™

Theme and Design

In the BTG canon of online slots, where visuals are concerned, Wild Portals sits alongside games like Megaclusters for its simplistic design. It has a futuristic feel, from the techno-electro soundtrack that builds in alignment with the pace of the game, to the space-ship style backdrop with its gleaming metals and neon lights. The style matches the sleak, sci-fi style theme and gamplay too. In fact, I found it helped me to focus solely on the one thing that mattered here – landing Portals and unlocking free spins.

In short, this is not a complex game, and neither is the production. But altogether, it works well.

RTP and Variance

Wild Portals has an RTP of 96.58%. That is well above average for an online slot game which is about 96%. It is also higher than popular Big Time Gaming slots like Bonanza (96%) and Danger! High Voltage (95.67%).

It is without question a high variance slot so it can be highly unpredictable, but that is the nature of this kind of slot. Expect long runs of slow paced payouts with little or no return. The flip side of course is that Wild Portals can also kick out astounding win sequences triggered by the features we will come onto next.

Maximum Win

The top payout from this game is 116,030x. That is huge. Few online slots top the 100,000x mark and this is right up there amongst Big Time Gaming’s highest paying games. That list includes recent releases like Max Megaways 2 (147,620x) and the awesome Wild Flower (114,100x).

If you want to play more slots with super-high potential then check out our list of the highest paying games.

Symbols and Paytable

So, if you are familiar with Megaways then you won’t have any problems understanding how the Wild Portals engine works. It utilises the standard 6 reel set up with between 2 and 7 rows per reel on each spin. The number of rows is chosen at random. The important part is that it is a Win Ways game. That means, wins are triggered by landing 3 or more identical symbols across adjacent reels from left to right, regardless of their row position.

That gives you up to 117,649 paylines per spin (7x7x7x7x7x7).

When loading up the game I noticed one difference between Wild Portals and other Megaways games. This one does NOT have an additional 1×4 row above the middle three reels. It doesn’t affect the win ways, but worth noting.

As far as the paytable goes, the values of symbols are low, but that is offset by the power that comes with the Wild Portal itself. That feature can significantly boost the value of a standard win as multipliers come into affect. So don’t be too concerned about base symbol values.

Low value icons are represented by the cards, 9 through to Ace. They are valued at from 0.1x for 3 10s up to just 0.5x for 6 Aces. Premiums are classic BTG gemstones in purple, green and red. These are valued at from 0.25x for 3 greens up to 10x for 6 purples.

I was unimpressed by those numbers, but then I saw how the portal worked. This always lands as a 2x2 wild symbol and it is very powerful as I will explain in the features section. Meanwhile, keep your eyes out for gold scatters too, 3 or more of which trigger the free spins.

Features and Gameplay

Firstly, I should say that whilst I love the innovation here, Wild Portals is not a feature-rich game like the latest Nolimit City slots, or even some of BTG’s own more complex early releases.

Instead, it’s all about just one key event – the Wild Portal itself. That means, no Cascading Wins, which may put some off, but in truth, it doesn’t detract from the thrills and I wasn’t overly concerned that this classic feature has been omitted because the Wild Portal itself triggers something similar when it lands.

First of all, note that the Wild Portal only appears on reels 2 to 5. When it does, after any wins are paid out from the spin, it will reveal one of the low paying symbols. ALL instances of that symbol are then removed from the visible reels and replaced with new ones. And for each instance of the symbol that is removed, the Wild Portal progressive multiplier increases by 1x.

At this point, wins are calculated, and any that include the Wild Portal itself (which acts as a wild) are subject to the multiplier value.

Once this cycle has completed, then the Wild Portal reveals a new symbol. Again, any instances are removed and new ones drop in to replace them. Each one increases the multiplier by 1x.

And so on.

The feature stops only when no instances of the symbol revealed by the Wild Portal are visible on the reels.

That is the basics. Essentially your goal is to keep growing that multiplier as high as possible, scoring wins as you go. But there is more … a free spins round.

Free Spins With Guaranteed Wild Portals

This is where things can really go off and it's no surprise that triggering this round is very, very tough.

You’ll need THREE gold scatters to trigger 8 free spins (with 2 extra spins for EVERY additional scatter that drops). When you get there, Wild Portals are GUARANTEED on EVERY free spin, with multipliers carried over between free spins. They DO NOT re-set. That is massive because those multipliers can just become huge and keep applying to every win during your free spins.

What is more, Free Spins can be re-triggered by landing three extra scatters during the round, with another 2 spins for each extra scatter after the third.

If you have been playing BTG slots, or indeed any high variance slots with big multipliers, you will probably understand the mind blowing potential of that configuration!!