Big Time Gaming

Who Big Time Gaming are

Big Time Gaming is an Australian studio, founded in Sydney in 2011 by a group of industry veterans with land-based and online pedigree. For an Australian audience that is worth pausing on: the single most influential slot mechanic of the last decade was designed here, not in Malta or Stockholm.

The studio invented Megaways and released it in 2016 with Bonanza. The mechanic spread so widely that "Megaways" is now treated by many players as a genre rather than one company's trademark. Evolution acquired the studio in April 2021 for around 450 million euros, placing it alongside NetEnt, Red Tiger and Nolimit City in the same group.

BTG's output is small compared with the volume studios — a handful of releases a year rather than several a month — because its releases are engine-level work rather than reskins. That ratio of influence to catalogue size is unusual in this industry.

How Megaways actually works

Megaways is a reel-height randomisation system. On a conventional slot, each reel shows a fixed number of symbol positions, so the number of paylines is constant. In a Megaways game, each of the six reels independently displays between two and seven symbols on every spin, and the number of ways to win is recalculated each time.

The maximum configuration — seven symbols on all six reels — produces 117,649 ways to win, which is where the number you see quoted on Bonanza comes from. That is not 117,649 paylines in the traditional sense; it is the count of possible left-to-right symbol paths through the grid on that particular spin.

Two supporting mechanics almost always accompany it. First, cascading wins: winning symbols are removed and replacements drop in, so one paid spin can chain. Second, an unlimited win multiplier during free spins that increases by one with each cascade and does not reset until the round ends. That combination is the engine behind the mechanic's reputation: the base game is unremarkable, and the free spins round is where a long cascade chain with a climbing multiplier can produce an enormous result.

Many Megaways games also include a horizontal reel above the main grid that adds extra symbol positions, which is why the visible layout looks unusual the first time you see it.

Why other studios have Megaways games

BTG licenses the mechanic to other developers, which is why you will find Megaways titles from Pragmatic Play, Blueprint, Red Tiger, Relax Gaming, Quickspin and many more across this site. The licensing arrangement means the core reel-height system is consistent, but everything around it is not.

In practice, licensed Megaways games differ considerably in the parts that matter most: whether the free spins multiplier is unlimited or capped, how the round is triggered and retriggered, the maximum win, and the return percentage. A Megaways badge tells you the reels will vary in height. It does not tell you the game plays like Bonanza.

If you like the mechanic, it is worth comparing BTG's own implementations against the licensed ones. The original versions generally commit hardest to the unlimited multiplier structure, which is the feature that produces the extreme tails.

Their other mechanics

Megaclusters

Star Clusters Megaclusters replaces paylines with cluster pays on a grid that grows as you win. Winning symbols split into four smaller symbols, expanding the grid from 4x4 up to much larger dimensions within a single spin. It is a genuinely different engine rather than a Megaways variant.

Extending reels

White Rabbit uses a system where collecting cupcake symbols permanently extends reel height, up to a maximum that pushes the ways-to-win count into the hundreds of thousands. The extensions persist through the free spins round, so the round improves as it progresses.

Reel Adventure and bonus structures

Danger High Voltage and Lil Devil use a two-bonus structure where the player's scatter combination determines which round is awarded, each with a different variance profile. Holy Diver and The Final Countdown build feature ladders that upgrade as symbols collect.

The Feature Gamble

Extra Chilli popularised BTG's most distinctive and most dangerous option. When you trigger free spins, you can gamble the awarded spins on a wheel for a chance at more — repeatedly — with the risk of losing the round entirely on any gamble.

The maths is close to fair in expectation, which is exactly why it is worth being careful with. A structurally fair gamble converts a modest guaranteed round into a high-variance coin flip, and doing it several times in sequence means most attempts end with nothing at all. Streamers gamble to 24 spins because the clip is only interesting when it works; the sessions where the round vanishes on the first spin do not get uploaded.

Some titles also offer a Feature Drop or bonus purchase where permitted. Where it exists, the same arithmetic applies as anywhere else: buying compresses a large amount of variance into one outcome and does not improve your position.

RTP configurations

BTG's headline returns sit around the 96% mark, with Bonanza commonly quoted near 96%. As with every large supplier, multiple configurations exist and operators choose which to deploy, so lower builds are in circulation.

Megaways games make the check slightly more important than usual, because the interface is busy and the information screen is buried a level deeper than on a simple three-reel game. Find the menu, open the game rules, and read the return figure before you commit a stake.

Catalogue map

Title	Core mechanic	What to expect
Bonanza	Megaways with unlimited free spins multiplier	The reference implementation; high variance
Extra Chilli	Megaways plus Feature Gamble wheel	Extreme variance if you gamble the round
White Rabbit	Megaways with permanently extending reels	Round improves as it runs; high variance
Star Clusters Megaclusters	Splitting cluster grid	Distinct engine; frequent small cascades
Danger High Voltage, Lil Devil	Dual bonus rounds chosen by scatters	Two variance profiles in one game
Holy Diver, The Final Countdown	Upgrading feature ladders	Bonus-dependent; long build-up
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Megaways	Licensed brand with Megaways	Branded; availability varies by market
Apollo Pays	Megaways variant with power multipliers	High variance, multiplier-led feature

Volatility profile

Everything BTG builds is high volatility, and the reason is structural rather than stylistic. When a free spins round carries an unlimited multiplier, the theoretical return has to be concentrated in that round for the maths to balance. The base game is therefore deliberately thin.

What that means in a real session: cascades will keep the screen busy without moving your balance much, feature triggers arrive infrequently, and the majority of triggered rounds end below the cost of reaching them. The rounds that run long are the ones that matter, and they are rare.

Size stakes so your budget covers several hundred spins. Anyone playing a Megaways game at a stake that allows fifty spins is buying a lottery ticket rather than a session.

Branded titles and availability

BTG holds licences for external intellectual property, most notably Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Branded titles carry two practical quirks: they are more likely to be geo-restricted or withdrawn when a licence expires, and their artwork is the most tightly controlled in any studio's catalogue. If a branded game disappears from your lobby, a licence lapse is usually the reason rather than anything to do with the game itself.

Strengths and weaknesses

Strengths. Genuine mechanical invention rather than reskinning; the unlimited-multiplier free spins structure produces the most dramatic tails in mainstream slots; small catalogue means very little filler; Australian-designed, which is a fair point of interest for local players.

Weaknesses. Uniformly high variance with no gentler options in the range; busy interfaces that obscure the information screen; the Feature Gamble is a well-designed trap for anyone prone to chasing; and the "117,649 ways" marketing invites players to believe the odds are better than they are.

FAQ

Reading a Megaways paytable

Megaways paytables confuse people because the numbers look small. A top symbol might pay a modest multiple of the total bet for a five-symbol combination, which seems miserly next to a cluster game quoting 50x. The reason is that a Megaways spin can register the same combination across a very large number of ways simultaneously, so the per-way payout has to be small for the maths to balance.

Three fields are worth locating before you play any Megaways title:

• The ways counter, usually displayed above or beside the reels. It updates every spin and tells you how many paths that particular spin generated.
• The free spins multiplier rules. Specifically, whether the multiplier is unlimited and whether it persists across the whole round or resets each spin. This single rule is the biggest difference between a great Megaways game and a mediocre one.
• The retrigger condition. Some titles allow extra spins from scatters during the round, others do not, and it materially changes the round's ceiling.

Megaways, Megaclusters and cluster pays compared

These three get lumped together and behave very differently.

Model	How wins register	Session feel
Megaways	Left-to-right paths across variable-height reels	Busy screen, thin base game, everything rides on the bonus multiplier
Megaclusters	Touching clusters on a grid that grows as symbols split	More frequent small wins, growth happens within a single spin
Cluster pays	A minimum count of matching symbols anywhere	Position-independent, steadier hit rate, ceiling depends on multipliers

If the constant recalculation of ways in a Megaways game feels like noise to you, Megaclusters is the same studio's answer and it is a genuinely different experience rather than a reskin.

The pre-Megaways years

Big Time Gaming's early catalogue is worth a mention because it explains where Megaways came from. Before 2016 the studio was already building games with unusual reel structures and win-ways counts far above the industry norm, experimenting with grids that changed shape between spins. Megaways was the point where that line of experimentation produced something clean enough to license out, rather than a sudden invention.

That history is why the studio's non-Megaways titles are worth attention rather than being treated as filler. Megaclusters and the extending-reel system in White Rabbit are separate engines developed in parallel, not variations of the famous one, and each has a distinct maths profile.

Stake sizing for an unlimited multiplier game

Games built around an unlimited free spins multiplier need a different budgeting approach from games with a capped bonus, because the value of a round depends on how long the cascade chain runs rather than on hitting a particular symbol.

• Budget for the trigger, not the round. Feature triggers in these games commonly sit in the region of one in a few hundred spins. If your budget covers fifty spins, you are most likely buying fifty spins of base game and nothing else.
• Expect most rounds to underwhelm. A round where the multiplier reaches three or four before the cascades stop is the normal outcome. The rounds that reach double or triple digits are the ones that pay for everything else, and they are rare.
• Do not raise stakes after a drought. The trigger probability is identical on every spin regardless of how long you have waited, so a higher stake only increases what the next drought costs.
• Take a large win off the table. The same variance that produced it will reclaim it if you keep spinning at the same stake.

None of this changes the odds. It changes whether your budget survives long enough to see the part of the game you are paying for.