Shining King Megaways Slot – Free Demo

A crown theme on an engine that counts to 117,649

Nothing much was heard about the Shining King Megaways slot until now, and I'm a bit surprised to see iSoftBet granting the Megaways engine a plain king-and-crown theme, something that is a bit atypical of them. The win condition underneath is the ordinary Megaways one: matching symbols on adjacent reels, counted from the leftmost. I don't object however, as I normally like playing their slots. I played 490 spins of it at a stake of 1.00, starting from a balance of 1,000.00. But I worry a bit it might impact the "hand built" feel of quality of their games.

Shining King Megaways slot is a 6-reel slot with 2 to 7 symbols per reel and up to 117,649 ways in the base game, featuring a 96.11% RTP and playable on all devices from 0.20 to 20 credits. The ways count changes from spin to spin as the reel heights vary between two and seven symbols, so a figure like 7,056 ways is what the counter reads on an ordinary spin rather than the 117,649 headline.

What the Crown reveals

The Wild symbol stands in for other symbols, and the Scatter symbol is depicted by a Crown.

But hold on, there's more: there are also Mystery Symbols with concealed surprises, and all of them on screen show as the same randomly selected symbol. On spin 60 a mystery reveal ran four cascades and paid 32.00 at a stake of 1.00. Then the board pays. That was the largest win I got outside the free spins in all 490 spins.

Crown Bet against four crowns

There is a Crown Bet obtainable here at 75x the stake. What 75x buys is entry to the feature; the base game hands over the same feature for the price of one spin whenever four crowns land. It purchases straight into the bonus and raises the RTP to 96.86%, so you don't have to pursue it naturally. I never touched it, and all three of my bonuses came out of the base game. 4, 5, 6 or 7 Crown scatters anywhere on the reels triggers the Bonus round, granting you 12, 17, 22 or 27 free spins respectively. iSoftBet run the same engine under Morgana Megaways and Fu Fortunes Megaways.

The multiplier only travels one way

Cascading Wins apply through the entire game. Winning symbols are cleared and new ones fall in, so one spin can pay multiple times over, and in the free spins a win multiplier begins at 1x and rises by 1 after every cascade, with no declared ceiling. Because it only moves upward, the closing spins of a long feature are worth more than the opening ones. It persists across spins for the entire feature. On spin 339 it reached 14x before the feature closed. 3 or more additional Crowns retrigger the free spins game and grant 5 extra free spins; 4 or more grant 10, and there is no declared limit. Both of my 27-spin features retriggered once, which took them to 32 spins each.

The Minty Take: Three features in 490 spins, and 55% of everything I won came out of them — the base game is where you wait, with a 26-spin dry stretch in it, and the cascade multiplier that climbed to 14x is the whole reason to sit there.

Where the 490 spins landed

Something that is more or less anticipated by now, the Shining King Megaways slot is yet another high volatility beast from iSoftBet. The 490 spins bore that out: 98 of them paid anything at all, and 45 of those paid under 1.00. In other words, Shining King Megaways is all about the free spins. My balance never dropped below 972.10 across the session. That of course boosts the volatility.

The bonus is not simple to trigger, and initially I resolved to do a 100 bonuses piece. The Crown Bet would have made that piece possible at 75x a go, but I wanted to see what the base game did on its own. I dropped the idea after having played 166 spins attempting to trigger the first bonus. The balance sat at 972.10 when it finally arrived, the lowest point of the session. When it finally landed, it paid 132x with the multiplier up at 9x by the final cascades. The base game on that same spin paid 1.20 before the feature opened. Over 490 spins at 1 credit I got three of them and ended on 562.10 won against 490 wagered, the free spins alone accounting for 55% of everything won. The gaps between the three ran 166 spins, then 20, then 153.

What the base game costs in waiting

Shining King Megaways is simplistic in styling but a beast under the hood. The session closed at 1,072.10 from 1,000.00, a return of 114.7%. The base game can admittedly be a bit sluggish; my longest dry stretch went 26 spins. It ended on spin 486, four spins from the end of the run.

The multiplier collecting feature is not a novel thing in the world of iGaming. The session peak of 1,175.70 came off the feature that reached 14x. But it functions very well here, helping build up tension during the free spins game as every cascade drives it one step higher.