Scrooge Megaways

Scrooge Megaways Overview

It’s that time of year again when slot designers start to bring out their Christmas products in time for the festive gambling period. iSoftBet is one of the first designers to get on this trend this year, producing this Charles Dickens-inspired slot that features the most famous of all niggards – Scrooge.

Indeed, players will be taken back to Victorian London hoping to encounter the ghost of Christmas present and win plenty of coins so they can buy the biggest turkey in the shop window. Mechanically, Scrooge Megaways is a 6-reel game with plenty of features and a massive amount of pay lines.

These features include (as is obligatory with Megaways slots) a cascading reels feature, which gives you multiple chances of scoring wins from the same spin by destroying winning symbols and immediately replacing them with new ones. However, the main feature for this game is the Scrooge Cash re-spins game, which is activated when players land five or more scatters on the reels at the same time.

This game gives you the chance of bringing multipliers into effect and winning some terrific top payouts. Finally, there is also a couple of modifiers called the haunting of Christmas features. All bonuses will be explained in greater detail later on in the review.

Theme and Symbols

The theme for this game is the Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol. Published in 1843, this is quite possibly Dickens’ most famous work with the universal moral lesson that still applies in today’s modern society about being kind to those less fortunate than yourself. Aesthetically, iSoftBet has modeled this particular Christmas Carol depiction on one of the many animated versions. You enter the snowy streets of London, where shop windows gleam and holly-laden wreaths hang in every doorway. On the reels are turkeys, top hats and Scrooge himself, all of which reflect the Victorian era in which this book is set.

The background for this slot is the streets of London in wintery December. The pavements and eves of houses are laden with snow; wood fires can be seen casting a warm glow from each window, and Christmas trees are dotted here and there, standing proudly erect in the street and in people’s houses. The scene is very much a faithful recreation of the opening description of the book, where Scrooge is walking home to his large but very empty home.

The board has been decorated as though to look like a shop window, with the various symbols looking like the wares of each shop.
The symbols are split into low-value, high-value, and special symbols. The low-value symbols are the 9, 10, J, Q, K and A in playing cards (each with a liberal application of snow to their facades). The most valuable of these is the Ace, paying out at 1.5x the bet for the top combination. On the other hand, the higher value symbols are the ball and chain, the Christmas turkey, the top hat, and Scrooge himself.

Scrooge is the most lucrative of the higher value symbols, paying 25x the stake for the top combination. The specials finally comprise the wild, the regular scatter and then the past, present, and future scatters, each represented by a different coloured ghost.

Game Play

Scrooge Megaways is played on a 6-reel Megaways board, meaning that the number of symbols in each reel changes with each spin. There is a maximum of 117,649 pay lines available in this game. To win combinations, players must land three or more matching symbols on pay lines moving from left to right, starting from the leftmost reel.

The betting range for Scrooge Megaways is 20p to £20 per spin. To adjust their bet levels, players can toggle their stake up and down using the tool located at the bottom left-hand side of the screen.

Further information, including a short tutorial and a display of the paytable, can be found via the menu button in the right-hand corner of the screen. The spin and auto spin buttons are located in the centre of the screen.

Volatility for this slot is rated in the medium range. The return to player percentage for Scrooge Megaways is 95.98%, which is below average. The biggest payout that players can win on one spin is 12,000x your stake.

Features

The first feature in this game is the cascading wins feature triggered every time a player triggers a win. When this happens, the successful symbols are blasted off the reels, and new symbols drop into their positions to replace them. A new payout follows the replacement. The process only stops when the new set of symbols does not form a win.

The next feature is the Scrooge Cash re-spins game. This feature is triggered when players land five or more of the regular scatters on the board at any time. You will then be granted three re-spins with all of the triggering symbols remaining frozen to the reels. If a new scatter falls onto the reels during one of your re-spins, it too will be frozen to the board, and your re-spin tally will be reset to three.

All of the scatters when within this round, come with a stake multiplier value. When you have exhausted your re-spins, all of the multiplier values on these scatters are cumulated and paid out together as a lump prize.
There are, however, special scatters that you also need to be aware of. These are the scatters that represent the ghosts of Christmas, past, present and future. These come with different awards of 1x, 25x and 50x your stake, respectively.

Filling the entire board with scatters then brings a game multiplier into play. This multiplier will be equal to the number of symbols on the reels it lands on. This helps boost your overall win when you run out of re-spins.

Finally, there are a couple of modifiers in this game that can trigger on any spin, these are:
The Max Megaways feature. If this modifier should trigger, you will be granted one spin with the maximum number of pay lines available.

The Bonus Award Feature. If this modifier comes into play, an extra range of scatter symbols will be added to the reels, boosting your chance of triggering the Scrooge Cash re-spins feature.

Conclusion

Will you learn your lesson and give generously to others, or will you be miserly and keep all your winnings for yourself? At the end of the day, that is your prerogative, and it all depends on if you get some winnings to start with. Although the features are great here, and the theme is uplifting, the RTP gives a little cause for concern. Then again, with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future with you, who needs luck.