88 Fortunes Megaways Slot Review

88 Fortunes Megaways is a video slot from Shuffle Master, developed for Scientific Games, with 6 reels and the Megaways engine that allows for up to 117,649 ways to pay. Released in October 2019, this game can be played at online casinos such as Unibet, LeoVegas or Guts.

Theme and general information

88 Fortunes Megaways is an Asian themed slot. The original 88 Fortunes looked very similar to this new version, though perhaps a little lusher and more intricate.

Here we get a relatively plain red background with some faint Asian symbols. The reels are framed in gold, which gives the setup a rich feel. The low value symbols are plain 9 to A playing card symbols. The higher value symbols are a turtle, bowls, a traditional boat and a jade sculpture. They pay out between 0.6x to 6x our stake for 6 on a payline. Upgrade the four high value symbols to gold symbols and they are worth between 0.9x and 11x our stake for such a win.

We found the background music somewhat annoying and eventually turned it off.

Below the regular 6 reels, which can come with as many as 7 rows, you get an additional 1×4 row, which simply adds to the number of paylines available, but doesn’t carry special symbols beyond that.

Also, the slot comes with cascading wins, which means that symbols in a winning combination are removed from the reels to make room for new symbols falling in from above.

You can play this game from 0.08 to 88.00 per spin, depending on how many gold symbols you have activated.

The Picker Feature

Besides the regular symbol, there is also the Fu Bat, a flowery sort of symbol which can land anywhere on reels 2 to 5 and trigger the Picker Feature. Also, when a Fu Bat lands on the reels, the coins are usually added to a pot atop the reels.

The coins added to the pot don’t trigger the Picker Feature, mind you, only the Fu Bat does. When it does get triggered, you’ll be looking at a screen filled with 15 gold coins.

Below it, you see your free spin options, which are activated depending on your picks. You need to pick three laughing children of the same kind to activate the free spins. Your options are:

• 10 free spins with a 6x multiplier
• 12 free spins with a 4x multiplier
• 15 free spins with a 2x multiplier

Whilst these free spins cannot be retriggered, you can activate the regular free spins during these free spins.

The Free Spins

The regular free spins are triggered when you get at least 4 gong scatters on four consecutive reels starting with the left-most reel. In that case, you receive 8 free spins which start on a 1x multiplier. With 5 scatters you get 10 free spins and with 6 scatters you’ll have 12 free spins.

Each win during these free spins will increase the multiplier by 1x. There is no limit as to how high the multiplier can climb. If you trigger the free spins during the Picker feature, the multiplier will start at the same multiplier the Picker feature started.

Also, you can retrigger the free spins by getting 3, 4, 5 or 6 more scatters on the reels. Once again, they have to land on consecutive reels starting from the first reel. Then you receive 8, 10, 12 or 15 free spins.

And it is possible to trigger the Picker feature from the free spins as well. Then you would get 10, 12 or 15 free spins without an additional multiplier, however. You would simply continue with your current multiplier.

Conclusion: Could have been better than the original if it weren’t for the lack of jackpots

The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) of 88 Fortunes Megaways is 96.06 to 96.27%, depending on how many gold symbols you play with. That is decent value for a Megaways slot. This game comes with a medium to high volatility, meaning you will still need to budget carefully.

The unconfirmed maximum payout for this game is 10,000x your stake, however, it is supposedly capped at 250,000, which is still a massive win, mind you. But it’s never great to see a cap.

Be that as it may, we found this slot to be somewhat lacklustre. It’s just not very captivating. Perhaps we were also missing the four jackpots that the original game comes with, which always adds a little thrill to the gameplay.