Mega Mine Nudging Ways

Mega Mine Nudging Ways: Slot Overview

As the name suggests, developer Relax Gaming is taking players below ground in a mining themed slot called Mega Mine Nudging Ways. It's the first use of their trademarked Nudging Ways feature which appears in the base game and bonus round, squeezing more symbols onto the reels, thereby creating more ways to win. Features that nudge are running red hot at the moment, so if you're up for some pick axing, prospecting, and whatever else it is that goes on beneath the earth's surface, let's tunnel in.

Mega Mine Nudging Ways stirred up memories of a couple of games when it first appeared on the screen. One was Yggdrasil's Temple Stackz because of all the big blocky gem symbols on the 5-reel grid. The other was Relax Gaming's previous mining themed slot TNT Tumble, though the two games function in totally different ways. Mega Mine is a less complex mining game and one where most of the time is spend above ground in an idyllic mountain setting surrounded by pines, rocks, and fast-moving clouds. Relax's sound team has paired the visuals with an excellent, full-blown Western track which gets hectic when the momentum's building, in a good way. The music would be perfect in a gunslinger game, and at times it outshines the peaceful mountaintop environment as well as the activity occurring on the reels.

Mega Mine packs huge winning potential and quite a volatile math model to match. The game has two RTP forms, depending on how you approach it. In the naturally triggered free spins way, the standard RTP comes in at 96.12%, rising a few levels to 97% when buying free spins. You get the impression the game might have been custom designed with bonus buys in mind since free spins are reasonably priced and where Mega Mine really steps it up a notch. Either way, the game may be played on any device, where bets of 10 p/c to $/€20 may be selected.

Matching symbols landing in any row across three or more adjacent reels, starting on the left, forms a pay win. In the regular 5x4 set-up, this means 1,024 ways to win, though due to the Nudging Mystery Stacks, there can be anywhere from 32 to 32,768 ways in play. Regular pay symbols are all gems, consisting of five smaller lower value gems and five big square higher value symbols. Landing a five symbol ways win made up of high pays returns a payout of 1 to 5 times the stake. There is also a golden detonator wild symbol, not so prevalent in the base game as it lands in the same way as regular symbols, but more useful in free spins, as you'll see. At all times, wilds substitute for any pay symbol type when evaluating wins.

Mega Mine Nudging Ways: Slot Features

The features in Mega Mine are dominated by Relax' new Nudging Ways feature, which pops up in the base game and in free spins. The official name in the paytable is Nudging Mystery Stacks. Nudging Mystery Stacks always nudge to cover the whole reel and reveal the same symbol type. Whenever these symbols appear, they display a value between 2 and 5, which increases by +1 for each row it nudges until it is fully in view. The maximum value they can reveal is 8. The number displayed when the nudging is done results in the number of symbols that each stack reveals. Mystery Stacks can land on all reels, creating up to 32,768 ways to win.

As well as regular pays, Mystery Stacks can also reveal scatter symbols. Revealing 2 or more scatters symbols awards 6 free spins, plus an extra free spin for each additional scatter triggering the Mega Free Spins feature. In Mega Free Spins, Nudging Mystery Stacks land more frequently than in the base game and may also reveal stacks of wild symbols.

The third extra players may come across in Mega Mine is the feature buy option. It costs 70 times the stake to activate and guarantees at least one Nudging Mystery Stack will land to reveal scatter symbols to trigger the Mega Free Spins game.

Mega Mine Nudging Ways: Slot Verdict

It took a little while before Mega Mine began to dazzle, despite being covered in all sorts of precious stones, large and small. One reason was the main Nudging Ways feature has been put to such good use by the likes of Nolimit City, it deadened some of the new feature sheen. What did keep spirits up was the dramatic Western soundtrack that keeps your foot tapping and your hopes alive. As to what was happening on the reels, it took time for Nudging Ways to finally open up and demonstrate their potential.

Like actual mining, you ain't gonna find the rich stuff hanging about above ground. You've got to dig deep and uncover the riches that lie beneath the surface. So it is with Mega Mine, where the above-ground base game roars along at a fair pace, but scanty Mystery Stacks and no other features means it is difficult to strike pay dirt up there. Once the game moves on down the mine shaft for free spins, whether bought or not, is where Mystery Stacks get a chance to put together some decent wins, especially so when one or more stacks of wilds hit. Or not, as the returns from bonus games varied wildly from pitifully disappointing to pretty good. Mega Mine failed to deliver truly great results in test runs, yet it can technically reach massive proportions to the tune of up to 50,000 times the stake, making it another Relax Gaming potentially big win slot.

To sum up, Mega Mine has decent stats, huge winning possibilities, and a semi new-ish feature to test drive. It wasn't kind to us during our sessions, but if you do catch it when the mine's being fruitful, it's unlikely you'll be regretting your slot choice.