Shining King Megaways Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Shining King Megaways Review

Since the classics still capture the hearts and minds of many players, the developers continue to release new classic-themed slots, packing them with modern features, keeping such slots relevant and playable even now. There's been a trend recently to power up good ol' slots with the Megaways engine, and it seems to be pretty popular among players who appreciate the injection of Big Time Gaming's steroids.

Shining King Megaways is yet another slot featuring the notorious Megaways engine, and this time iSoftBet was driven by the trend to release their own Megaways-powered classic-styled slot machine. It's now getting really hard to calculate how many games has this mechanic inspired since we get a couple of new releases a month. When it comes to the classic slots, the reason for enhancing them with the above-mentioned engine is obvious, the providers try to keep the classics in the eye of publicity for as long as possible or even make them eternal so that they hardly ever lose actuality. However, let's find out whether iSoftBet's creating would be able to make a standout from the niche and follow the footsteps of the success of other similar slots.

Shining King Megaways - Design and Symbols

The first thing that catches the eye is that iSoftBet's brainchild certainly lacks personality. The devs tried to keep the original DNA of classic slots, who were designed to look like physical slot machines, and we should really appreciate it, however, it doesn't differ from other games in the niche for sure. The overall look is similar to Runner Runner Megaways from StakeLogic, or another their slot Super Wild Megaways, just to give two examples. It will take a long time to list them all, so the design is obviously not a strong suit of Shining King Megawyas. The soundtrack is rather basic too as a piece of jazz music accompanies you whilst you spin the reels, and paired with the 8-bit sound effects contributes to creating a nostalgic old school atmosphere.

Shining King Megaways Reel Screen

The paytable offers a bunch of recognizable symbols, common to many other classic fruit-styled slots. The pay symbols start at the low end with cherries, lemons, oranges, plums, grapes, and watermelons. Meanwhile, the premiums include bells, stars, dollar signs, and lucky sevens, with the last one being the most rewarding among the regulars. There's also a Wild symbol included in the game, though, it can only appear on the upper row. 

You'll require at least 3 regular symbols on a line to score a win, while the top-star sevens require only 2 instances on a payline, and the highest rewards are given for 6-of-a-kind combos.

Matching 6 low-pays will award from 0.8x to 1.75x of the bet, while the premiums are worth from 2x to 7.5x, and 50x for the sevens.

Shining King Megaways - Technical Info

As alluded to earlier, the game comes with the Megaways engine, thus, true to the style, it's played across a 6 reel layout with varying number of rows and respectively paylines. The number of rows in each reel is determined at the beginning of each spin, and the reels can contain from 2 to 7 symbol positions in height. There's also an extra row above the 4 middle main reels, and the number of ways to play on each spin varies from 64 to 117,649.

Shining King comes with a high volatile math model, so don't expect to be showered in wins. The hit frequency has not been disclosed, though, based on our experience in other classic slots, it won't be too high, so adjust your bets wiser to survive in the long run. Anyway, iSoftBet is helping with the moderate RTP value of 96.11%, which is slightly above the average level within the industry. Moreover, it can be boosted depending on the activated features up to 96.86%.

The betting range also sticks to the average figures, and similar to almost all the Megaways-powered slots, players drop in by setting bets from 0.2$ to 20$ per spin. What is most impressive though about the game is the maximum potential, which is actually decent and promising. You can hope for a whopping win of 37,500x of the bet, which is 750,000$ on a single spin when playing with the max bet option available. 

Shining King Megaways - Bonus Features

When it comes to the features, you'll discover a common set, so don't expect to witness any kind of innovation in terms of the in-game extras.

The features involved in Shining King are common to other slots using the Megaways engine, including Cascading Wins, Mystery Symbols, and Free Spins.

Whenever you land a winning combination, all the winning symbols get removed from the grid to allow new ones to tumble down onto the grid and fill in empty spaces. The feature continues to work until no new winning combinations could be made. This one is extremely lucrative since it allows you to launch a chain of consecutive wins on any spin, which in turn can lead you to massive wins.

The mystery symbols are represented by question mark icons, and they may appear on the reel set on any spin. Should they land onto the reels, all of the instances transform into the same random regular symbol.

Landing 4 or more crown symbols, which are the Scatters, the Free Spins feature will be triggered. You'll proceed to the bonus game with 12 spins to start, and in case you managed to land more than 4 Scatters, you'll be awarded 5 more spins for each extra Scatter, and the maximum number of spins is capped at 27. As soon as you plunge into the action, the progressive multiplier counter will appear to the left of the reels.

You'll start the free round with a 1x initial multiplier, which will increase by 1x after each cascade. Moreover, the multiplier doesn't reset between the spins.

The Free Spins feature can be extended by landing at least 3 more Scatters in view during the feature, which will award 5 more spins while landing 4 Scatters will award 10 respectively. Those who desire to skip the less exciting part and begin the action right away can use the Bonus Buy feature, namely Crown Bet, to immediately get access to the Free Spins. For a cost of 75x of the stake, you will not only get to the precious Free Spins round but also increase the RTP value to 96.86%, so you should really consider it. Unfortunately, it may be restricted by some jurisdictions, so players from the UK won't be able to use the Crown Bet feature.

Shining King - Verdict

iSoftBet skilfully mixes up the classic fruity theme with the Megaways engine, but to be honest, it's not enough to make a standout from the niche. The way they do it is rather simple and we've seen similar slots with similar gameplay so far. There's really nothing innovative to attract a lot of players to give it a try, though, old players won't find anything to end up disappointed either.

As already mentioned above, it really fails to have any originality.

It doesn't differ from thousands of fruit-styled slots except having the extended reelset, though, there are a lot of examples of similar-styled games powered by the Megaways engine. The feature set is rather lame and doesn't manage to offer anything for players to get super fired. All the features included in Shining King were present in dozens of games, so those who seek something authentic will skip the title beforehand for sure.

All up, even though Shining King Megaways won't win everyone's heart for sure, old school players have less to complain about here and will be satisfied with this one. The maximum winning potential is a plus and will be the main reason why players will feel drawn to spin the reels on it.