Merlin's Secret Maxways Slot Review

If you're a fan of dark fantasy themes and high-volatility slots, Microgaming's Merlin's Secret Maxways (released Feb 2026) is probably on your radar. It uses the popular ways-and-cascades setup, and if the mechanics feel a bit familiar, that's because it heavily channels the vibe of Big Time Gaming's Extra Chilli More Chilli.

Getting into the bonus requires four Spellbook Scatters, which awards 10 free spins. But before you spin, you face the gamble wheel. You can play it safe and take your 10 spins, or risk them to climb the ladder for up to 30 spins. The problem is that if you lose the gamble, you lose the bonus entirely.

There's also a Bonus Buy available for 150x your stake. Just a heads-up: buying the feature drops the scatters but still forces you to face the wheel. This means you can pay 150x, gamble your spins, lose, and walk away with absolutely zero. It's definitely not for the faint of heart, and you can visibly see the green "winning" sections of the wheel shrink as you try to climb higher.

Once you're actually in the bonus, the game's potential really shows. Every cascading win increases your global multiplier by 1x, and it doesn't reset between spins. It applies to the total payout of a cascade rather than individual symbols.

There's also a Lightning symbol that can land on the top extra reel, turning a random symbol type into Wilds across the middle four columns. It sounds awesome, but in practice, it can be a bit frustrating. Because wins have to start on the first reel, and the Lightning never affects reel one, having a bunch of Wilds in the middle doesn't help at all if you don't have a matching symbol to connect them on the far left. I had a few transformations that looked amazing but paid nothing.

I gave the Bonus Buy a shot and successfully gambled up to 14 spins. The multiplier did exactly what it was supposed to do, climbing nicely to 11x by my final spin. However, the final payout was a bit underwhelming, I only made back about a third of my 150x buy-in.

That's just the nature of these games, though. The multiplier builds based on the number of cascades, not the value of the symbols. So, if you get a long chain of cheap royal symbols, you'll build a great multiplier, but you still need a premium symbol connection at the very end to actually make it pay off big.

If you're wondering how it stacks up against similar games, the Extra Chilli More Chilli DNA is undeniable. Both feature six variable reels, a four-cell extra reel on top, the gamble wheel, and a free spins multiplier that climbs with every cascade and never resets. The main trade-off here is risk versus reward: Merlin costs more to buy (150x vs 100x) but offers a noticeably higher max win (40,000x vs 30,000x), at a slightly lower 96.04% RTP against 96.39%.

Looking at Microgaming's own lineup, Soju Power MaxWays uses a similar engine but caps at 10,000x and attaches its multipliers directly to the Wilds rather than using a global meter. Then there's a contemporary game like Bass Catch Super Luck, which also charges 150x for a bonus buy, but gives you a guaranteed 8 spins with a fixed 15x multiplier on a static board.

Merlin's Secret Maxways is built for players who love chasing massive potential and don't mind the brutal volatility that comes with it. Having to build your multiplier from scratch and survive the gamble wheel makes it a tough game, but with a 40,000x max win hanging in the balance, it's easy to see why players will keep coming back to it.