Merlin's Secret Maxways Slot by Microgaming

Before a single free spin plays, a wheel decides how many you actually get. Four scatters award 10 spins, five give 14, six give 18, and the scale continues up to 30 for nine or more. But the gamble wheel lets you push for the next tier - win and the count jumps, lose and you walk out with zero. The green segment shrinks each tier, so gambling from 10 to 14 is a reasonable shot while pushing toward 30 is close to suicidal. Buying in at 150x your total bet triggers the feature directly, and the wheel still applies. You can spend 150x and leave empty.

Six reels shift height every spin. Reels 1 and 6 run 2 to 7 symbols tall, while reels 2 through 5 range from 2 to 6. An Extra Reel sits above reels 2-5 and spins independently from right to left. At minimum expansion the grid produces 64 ways. Fully stretched, 117,649. The counter in the top-right corner updates live. Cascading reels clear wins and drop fresh symbols in from above, and during free spins each cascade pushes a persistent multiplier up by 1 with no ceiling. Base game cascades don't carry a multiplier at all, which keeps things flat outside the bonus.

The Extra Reel occasionally drops a Lightning symbol. When it does, every instance of one randomly chosen symbol type across reels 2-5 converts to Wild. If a cascade removes that Lightning and a new one falls in, it fires again on a different symbol type. Two Lightning activations on one spin flood the grid. During free spins, with the multiplier already sitting at 5x or 8x after a few cascades, a single Lightning conversion across a wide grid is where the 40,000x ceiling comes from - a number Microgaming hadn't touched before this release.

Individual symbol values stay deliberately low for a game with this many ways. The Enchantress, top of the paytable, pays 20x for six of a kind. Merlin pays 5x. Black Cat, Owl, and Potion sit at 2.5x, 2x, and 1.5x. Card symbols range 0.6x to 1.25x. Only the Enchantress pays for two of a kind. Dark enchanted forest backdrop, candlelit study behind the gamble wheel scene, detailed character portraits on each premium - the art holds up against anything else in Microgaming's catalog. Retriggers during the bonus add 4 spins when 3 scatters land.