5 Lions Megaways — Game Details

A Megaways conversion with one decision worth making

5 Lions Megaways follows 5 Lions onto a six-reel Megaways grid, and most of what it does there is furniture. The tumbling wins, the multiplier Wild and the high volatility are parts Pragmatic Play already runs elsewhere. The piece that makes this game worth an opinion is the Free Game's seven-package menu. My argument is that the menu is a good idea with a built-in limit: none of the seven packages takes a Gold Lion Wild past the 40× it can already hold in the base game, so the menu reshapes the bonus rather than raising it. That is competent design rather than landmark design, and the rating sits where a single good decision in a stock frame belongs.

The related games make the placement plain. The five guardian lions are the same ones that front 5 Lions Gold, and the Chinese fortune theme is the one 5 Lions Dance uses, so a series regular sees nothing new on the reels. The engine comes from the other side of the studio's range. Buffalo King Megaways is another high-volatility Pragmatic Megaways slot with tumbling wins and multiplier Wilds, and that description fits this game without an edit. What I am reviewing is a refinement of material the studio already owned, from both directions, and the menu is where it asks to be judged on its own terms.

The base game waits on a Gold Lion

Tumbling wins run in both phases. A winning combination clears, fresh symbols fall into the gaps, and another win can form without a new wager. That adds volume to a spin but not size. Size comes from the Gold Lion Wild, which substitutes for every regular symbol and holds a multiplier from 1× to 40× when it forms part of a win. The spread between those two values is 40 to 1: at the bottom the Wild is a plain substitute, and at the top it turns a small way win into the result the rest of the grid exists to set up. In the base game, a spin whose wins include no Gold Lion pays the paytable at face value however far it tumbles, and at level 5 volatility those face-value spins make up the long, thin stretches between the ones that count.

The 117,649 ways figure is worth one line of arithmetic. It is seven to the sixth power, so the full count needs all six reels at seven symbols on the same spin. That is the grid's ceiling, not its typical board, and more ways add routes to a win without making any single route pay more. Breadth is cheap in a Megaways game. The multiplier on the Wild is what converts it into money.

The Wild's one limit matters more than it looks. It does not substitute for the Yin and Yang Scatter, so a Gold Lion never stands in for one of the three Scatters that open the Free Game. The symbol that makes the base game pay and the symbol that opens the menu do separate jobs, with no overlap between them.

The menu reshapes the round without raising its top

Three or more Scatters open a selection screen with seven packages, each pairing a number of free spins with a Wild multiplier setup. Spin counts on the menu reach 25 and Wild multipliers reach 40×, and the packages trade one against the other: more spins cost multiplier strength, and a stronger multiplier costs spins.

Set that beside the base game and the design shows itself. The Gold Lion can already hold 40× without the bonus, so no package offers a single Wild a higher multiplier than a base-game spin can show. What a package changes is how the multiplier is set up across the round and how many spins that setup gets. The Free Game is a way to choose the shape of the variance, not a door to a Wild the base game cannot produce.

I think that is the right bonus for a high-volatility game, and it is the best thing about this one. A long round spreads the Wild's value across many chances; a short one concentrates it into few. The player picks where on that line the round sits, which is a better use of a bonus screen than a single fixed package that makes the choice for everyone.

Retriggers tilt the trade. Three or more Scatters during the Free Game add further spins to the round, which lengthens whatever was chosen rather than strengthening it. At the 25-spin end, one added spin is 4% of the chosen round. On any shorter package the same spin is a bigger share of the round, and it runs on the stronger multiplier setup that package was chosen for. Spin for spin, a retrigger adds more at the short end of the menu than at the long end.

One price buys seven different bets

Where the jurisdiction and operator permit it, the Free Game can be bought for 100× the stake. The purchase leads into the same seven-package Free Game, so what the buy fixes is the cost, not the round.

Arithmetic shows how far apart those rounds sit as purchases. Taken at the 25-spin end, the buy costs 4× the stake per free spin, and the round has to average that across all 25 spins to return its price. At the other end, a single win worth 2.5× the stake before a 40× Wild multiplies it covers the whole 100× on its own. The first asks a level 5 volatility game for steady returns; the second asks for one good multiplied hit and gives it fewer spins to find it.

The same 100× buys both, so the decision that matters happens after paying, on the menu. I judge the buy useful to a player who has already settled which end of the menu suits them, and a costly way to find out, because Scatters reach the identical selection screen without the outlay. In casinos where the purchase is switched off, those three Scatters are the sole route in.

Pick it for the menu, not for the lions

The game suits a player who wants a say in how a bonus behaves. The menu turns the Free Game into a choice between length and strength, and the buy, where it exists, makes that choice available on demand.

Anyone who already knows 5 Lions Gold or 5 Lions Dance gets the same lions and the same fortune theme again. Someone after a new base game finds the tumble-and-multiplier-Wild pattern that also defines Buffalo King Megaways. A player who dislikes long gaps between meaningful wins should look elsewhere too: level 5 volatility, a Wild that never counts as a Scatter and a base game whose size depends on one symbol add up to a game that asks for patience before it offers its one real decision.

That is how I arrive at the score. One well-judged screen sits inside a frame the studio already had on the shelf, and the screen reshapes the Free Game without lifting what a Wild can do. Competent is the right word for the result, and the menu is the reason the word is not a weaker one.