Golden Nugget Megaways

Golden Nugget Megaways Slot Review

A near-black backdrop streaked with faint light, a bevelled gold frame catching a glint along its top edge, a crown-topped emblem on a red ribbon: Golden Nugget Megaways is dressed like the VIP room of a casino most of us will never be shown into. The high-roller conceit is also the game’s structure. Everything below the surface is a route into one bonus round, and the round itself is the only place the design really stretches its legs.

Golden Nugget Megaways comes from Inspired. It plays on six reels with a variable number of rows, plus an Extra Reel above the middle four, for up to 117,649 ways to win, and it runs at an RTP of 95.56%.

It sits alongside Centurion Megaways, Reel King Megaways and Cops ‘N’ Robbers Megaways elsewhere in Inspired’s catalogue, and the gilding here goes all the way down.

Ways, Wilds and the Extra Reel

Like every Megaways game, the number of symbols on each reel changes with every spin, and the ways to win move with it, up to a ceiling of 117,649. Wins pay left to right across adjacent reels from the leftmost reel. Each win is multiplied by the number of matching symbols on each reel in the combination.

Only the highest award is paid per winning combination; wins on different combinations are added together. All payouts are multiplied by the base bet. It’s the standard Megaways arithmetic, doing exactly what you’d expect of it.

Sitting above reels two to five is the Extra Reel, which adds one extra symbol to each of those four reels. The wild lives there and nowhere else: it substitutes for all symbols and appears on the Extra Reel both in the base game and during free spins.

It’s a small touch, but it means a wild can only ever extend a win across the middle of the grid, never start one on the first reel.

The paytable is built around casino iconography, and it’s a steep drop from the top. The Golden Nugget symbol pays from just two of a kind, while everything below the Roulette Wheel needs at least three:

• Golden Nugget: pays 2.00 for two, rising to 50.00 for six, with 5.00, 10.00 and 25.00 in between
• Roulette Wheel: 3 pays 1.00, 4 pays 2.00, 5 pays 2.50, 6 pays 7.50
• Dice: 3 pays 0.25, 4 pays 0.50, 5 pays 0.75, 6 pays 2.00
• Book/Cards: three of a kind pays 0.25, climbing through 1.00 and 1.50 to 2.00 for six
• K, A: 3 pays 0.20, 4 pays 0.40, 5 pays 0.60, 6 pays 1.75
• Q: three pays 0.20, four 0.25, five 0.60, six 1.00
• J: 3 pays 0.15, 4 pays 0.25, 5 pays 0.50, 6 pays 1.00
• 10: from 0.15 for three up to 0.90 for six (0.25 and 0.50 for four and five)
• 9: the low end, at 0.10, 0.20, 0.40 and 0.80 for three through six

Those values are multiples of the base bet, so a six-of-a-kind Golden Nugget at maximum ways returns 50 times your stake from a single combination. The royals from K down to 9 cluster together at the bottom, and the difference between them is small enough that landing Q instead of J rarely changes anything.

VIP Slot Feature Entry

The route into the bonus round is the VIP Slots themselves, which appear in three grades: VIP, Super VIP and Mega VIP. How many of them land determines which of the three feature levels you enter. Each level carries its own free spins trail, shown as a sequence of steps the round counts up through.

• Mega VIP: 3 to 6 VIP Slots, with a trail of 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 25
• Super VIP: 2 to 3 VIP Slots; the trail runs arrows first, then 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16 and 20
• VIP: 1 to 2 VIP Slots, opening with arrows before stepping from 8 up to 15

Each level also has a minimum number of VIP Slots that can appear when the feature commences, so a Mega VIP entry starts with the most firepower on the board. The arrows at the start of the lower trails are steps the round passes through before the numbers begin.

The tiering is the interesting part. Because the bottom rung opens with a single VIP Slot, the feature has a low bar to clear, and the trail you get scales with what triggered it rather than paying out the same round regardless.

VIP Slot Free Spins

Once inside, the round runs on cascades. Every winning combination pays, the winning symbols clear away, and new symbols drop in. Each winning cascade increases the unlimited multiplier by one.

Winning pays are multiplied by the multiplier value that was showing at the start of that cascade sequence. The twist is the reel-lighting mechanic. Each winning cascade lights one reel white, working consecutively from left to right.

Lit reels stay lit across the whole round until reel six is reached, so the progress carries over from spin to spin rather than resetting. When all six reels are lit, the VIP Slot Bonus appears over the reels and adds more fuel: the number of free spins goes up by one, two or three, and the current multiplier by zero, one, two or three.

Your remaining spins and the current multiplier sit on the right of the screen throughout, so you can watch both climb. The round is built to snowball: the further you get, the more the multiplier and the reel-lighting push each other along, and the VIP Slot Bonus landing mid-run extends both at once.

There’s no maximum win figure for this one.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.1/10

This is a game you play for one round. The base game spins politely enough in its gold-trimmed cabinet, but it’s a corridor, not a destination, and the reason to sit down at all is the free spins and the way reels fill with white one cascade at a time.

That reel-lighting is the best thing here, because it gives a round that could otherwise blur into any Megaways free spins a visible shape, and the bonus that arrives when the set is complete pushes both the spin count and the multiplier at once. The weakness is the paytable: below the Roulette Wheel there’s very little worth landing, and with no published win ceiling, the base game has nothing to sell but the door to the VIP room.

It’s a handsome, well-built slot that rewards patience more than it rewards luck on the reels. Players who like a bonus round with a build to it will be happy here; anyone after rich base game wins or a stated jackpot will find the gold plating thinner than it looks.

Golden Nugget Megaways FAQs

• What is the RTP of Golden Nugget Megaways?

  Golden Nugget Megaways runs at an RTP of 95.56%.
• How many ways to win does Golden Nugget Megaways have?

  The game offers up to 117,649 ways to win, with the number of rows on each of the six reels changing every spin.
• What is the grid size of Golden Nugget Megaways?

  It’s a 6-reel Megaways grid with a variable number of rows per reel, plus a separate 4-symbol Extra Reel shown above the middle four reels.
• How do you trigger the VIP Slot feature in Golden Nugget Megaways?

  The feature is triggered by VIP Slot symbols landing on the reels. One or two VIP Slots enters the VIP level, two or three enters Super VIP, and three to six enters Mega VIP. Each level has its own free spins trail.
• How does the multiplier work in Golden Nugget Megaways free spins?

  Every winning cascade increases the multiplier by one, and there’s no cap on it. Winning combination pays are multiplied by the multiplier value showing at the start of the cascades.
• What happens when all six reels are lit white in Golden Nugget Megaways?

  When all six reels are lit, the VIP Slot Bonus appears over the reels. It increases the number of free spins by 1, 2 or 3, and increases the current multiplier by 0, 1, 2 or 3.
• When is Golden Nugget Megaways released?

  Golden Nugget Megaways’ release date is 19 November 2021.
• Who makes Golden Nugget Megaways?

  Golden Nugget Megaways is made by Inspired, the studio behind titles such as Centurion Megaways and Reel King Megaways.