Vegas Dice Megaways

Vegas Dice Megaways: Slot Overview

Macau might rake in more revenue than its major American counterpart these days, but for many players, the capital of gambling has been and always will be viva Las Vegas. The audacity of setting up shop in the middle of a desert, Fremont Street, Vegas Vic, The Strip, the countless ways to spend a bit of dough. No wonder the city has appeared in numerous online slots. Here we have another one called Vegas Dice Megaways, courtesy of UK designer Iron Dog Studio.

Vegas Dice Megaways has been built on Iron Dog's Branded Megaways foundation which is like a template that casino operators can use to add things like logos, backgrounds, and reel colours to create a 'bespoke' experience. In regards to Vegas Dice Megaways, bespoke means whacking a night-time view of Vegas in the background and some dice on the reels. The soundtrack is catchy, more so when the reels are not spinning, when the bass guitar hooks brought to mind Flea jamming to the Night Court theme song.

From there, it's on to bet selection, where stakes range from 20 p/c to $/€20 per spin. Iron Dog has marked the game as 'very high' in terms of volatility, while the math model pushes out a theoretical return of 96.2% when playing in the normal mode – the value changes when buying free spins. The action itself is held on a 6-reel Megaways grid, each reel holding 2-7 symbols each, creating anywhere from 64 to 117,649 ways to win.

Winning ways are formed when matching symbols land in adjacent reels from the leftmost side, then trigger a tumble feature. Dice make up every single symbol in Vegas Dice, starting with six dice showing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 pips as the low pays, then three Asian characters displaying dice, and a Lucky 7 dice as the highs. When landing combinations of 6 matching symbols, payouts are worth 0.6-2x the bet for the lows and 2-25x the bet for the highs. Wild dice appear on all but the first reel during both phases of the game to substitute for any symbol. There is a chance wilds land with an x2 multiplier – up to three can land on the same spin. When more than one wild multiplier is used in a win, the values multiply each other.

Vegas Dice Megaways: Slot Features

If you're familiar with the Branded Megaways concept, then nothing we cover here will be of any great surprise. Let's start with the tumble feature, which removes winning symbols from the reels and replaces them with new symbols. If the new symbols create a new win, another tumble is triggered.

Free Spins

When at least 4 consecutive tumbles occur, free spins are awarded. The precise number is 8, 10, 12, or 14 free spins when 4, 5, 6, or 7+ consecutive tumbles take place. A win multiplier is used in free spins, which starts the round on x1, and increases by +1 following winning tumbles. The win multiplier does not have a limit and does not reset between free spins. During free spins, if seven symbols land on a reel, the reel is locked at that height for the rest of the round and adds +1 to the multiplier. One way of getting extra free spins is when 4 or more consecutive tumbles occur. When this happens, +2 free spins are awarded, plus 2 extra free spins for every consecutive tumble past four – up to 14 at the most. Also, if a reel locks on the final spin, one additional free spin is awarded.

Feature Buy

If this option is available, players can buy 6, 8, or 10 free spins with 0 or 1 starting locked reel. Prices vary from 30x the bet for 6 spins and no locked reel (RTP 95.79%) up to 130x the bet for 10 free spins with 1 starting locked reel (RTP 96.07%).

Vegas Dice Megaways: Slot Verdict

Branded Megaways slots tend to be quite samey as the features and gameplay are often identical. A good business idea, perhaps, but the production line approach can be boring from a player's perspective. Vegas Dice Megaways is a little dry for this very reason. It starts off alright, by jammin' out a wicked bassline as Vegas lights up the night in the background. However, a trip to the paytable confirmed that Iron Dog stuck with the default features, which are basically what they used in Pirate Kingdom Megaways - the studio's first Megaways game. Hey, some might appreciate the consistent loyalty Iron Dog shows towards the features and gameplay it likes.

Hopefully, players are down with getting the same things over again as well. Otherwise, it will be hard to squeeze much joy out of Vegas Dice. It would be easier to do so if Iron Dog had added something new or had been a bit more creative with the theme. There is more heart here than VIP Branded Megaways, though not a whole lot, and apart from the poppin' bass line, the Vegas treatment feels almost as lacklustre as the recycled features do. They can produce thrilling results, and locking reels in conjunction with a progressive win multiplier was a good idea all the way back when Pirate Kingdom introduced it. We can't leave out the max win, either, which is 40,000x the bet - though if this number is actually achievable is up for debate.

And so, Vegas Dice Megaways is theoretically capable of doing good things, but overall the experience was a tad hollow. There just isn't much soul here. It felt coldly clinical as if Vegas Dice was made as quickly and cheaply as possible. Perhaps this assessment is way off the mark, or Vegas Dice is actually some sort of covert indictment on how corporations threaten the life of Las Vegas. Maybe, but it's hard not to get the impression Vegas Dice was a relatively low effort release built from a ready-made engine rather than a wild expression of Las Vegas' extremes.