Machina Reloaded Megaways: Slot Overview

Machina Reloaded Megaways feels like a return to familiar territory for Kalamba Games, since the original Machina Megaways marked the studio’s first Megaways release back in 2019. With this refreshed edition, Kalamba Games has largely followed the same core design, refining certain elements and giving the presentation a facelift while retaining many of the original mechanics. If you didn’t play the earlier Machina Megaways, you’re still getting staples such as Cashpots, free spins featuring a symbol upgrade mechanic, and four HyperBonus choices where the option is available.

Starting with the look and feel: the game is set in a futuristic downtown packed with skyscrapers, neon lighting, and Asian-style signage. For a quick film reference, think along the lines of Bladerunner 2049, Total Recall (the newer non-Arnie one), or, at a push, The Fifth Element. It’s the sort of cityscape you might imagine a few years from now—maybe when hover cars are the norm. Wherever it’s meant to be, the visuals are strong, and the world in Machina Reloaded Megaways comes across as more fleshed out than in the previous version, which is a good sign.

Machina Reloaded Megaways runs on a grid of 6 vertically scrolling reels with 2-6 symbols per reel, plus an extra tracking reel across the top that holds 1 extra symbol per column. This format creates between 729 to 117,649 ways to win. Built as a highly volatile slot, Machina Reloaded Megaways offers an RTP of 96.2% in standard play, with the return increasing to various higher levels when purchasing one of the free spins rounds via the HyperBonus menu. Fully compatible across devices, aspiring cyborgs can choose stakes from 25 p/c to $/€50 per spin. One thing to note: to play with max ways, the minimum bet becomes 50 p/c, which isn’t ideal for anyone trying to keep spending low.

To land a win, you’ll need at least 2 premium symbols starting from the left on consecutive reels, or at least three low-paying symbols. The low symbols are the futuristic-styled 9-A card ranks, paying 0.8-1x the bet for six of a kind. The five premium symbols—listed in the rules as the purple man, turquoise woman, green woman, red man, and the Cyborg—pay 1.5-2x the bet for six of a kind. Golden wild symbols can replace any standard paying symbol to help form winning ways.

Machina Reloaded Megaways: Slot Features

In broad terms, most of the mechanics discussed here also appeared in the first Machina Megaways, though a number of specifics have been adjusted in this version. Here’s how it works.

Cashpots

To begin with, there are Cashpots, tied to the top regular pay symbol—the Cyborg. In the base game or in free spins, if 10, 12, 16, or 19 Cyborg symbols are visible, players collect the Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum Cashpot, paying 5x, 12.5x, 300x, or 15,000x the bet, respectively.

Free Spins

The free spins bonus activates when 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols appear, awarding 10, 12, 15, or 18 free spins, along with a win of 2x, 5x, 10x, or 15x the bet. During free spins, scatter symbols are collected whenever they land. After collecting certain totals of bonus symbols, lower premium symbols are upgraded to the Cyborg, and additional free spins are granted. In total, 4, 8, 13, or 18 collected scatter symbols are required to upgrade each of the four lower premiums (purple man, turquoise woman, green woman, red man) into Cyborgs. Whenever an upgrade happens, +2 free spins are added to the remaining count. After that point, every 5 collected bonus symbols awards +2 free spins.

HyperBonus

If the bonus buy option is available where you play, you can use the HyperBonus button to select one of four free spins packages. The prices are 56.92x for 10 free spins (RTP 96.4%), 105.94x for 12 free spins (RTP 96.51%), 240.3x for 15 free spins (RTP 96.6%), or 466.84x for 18 free spins (96.7%).

Machina Reloaded Megaways: Slot Verdict

It’s definitely a reload, credit where it’s due, though it’s not a total rebuild down to every last sinewy microchip. The theme arguably lands better this time around, with a darker, more intense vibe—something like Cyberpunk 2077 on a rainy night in the base game. During testing, plenty of future-themed pop culture comparisons came to mind. The golden Cyborg, for instance, brought up memories of the film Ex Machina, the tech thriller where the CEO of Blue Book orchestrates an experiment involving an employee to test the sentience of the robot Ava (played by Alicia Vikander). By the end, the employee becomes taken in by Ava’s appeal and unknowingly helps her/it break free, creating a thought-provoking exploration of consciousness, AI, humanity, freedom, and seductive robots.

Back to Machina Reloaded Megaways, which may not aim for that level of reflection but still has appeal for the right type of player. As noted, the theme is executed very well; the non-Cyborg characters don’t quite command the same presence as their mechanised counterpart, though the free spins biodome-on-an-alien-world angle is a nice touch. From a gameplay perspective, Machina Reloaded Megaways doesn’t stray far from the original framework. The grid has been enlarged to boost the number of ways, Cashpots have been made static, and much of the rest remains broadly as it was. Notably, even with more ways available, the maximum win has moved the other way, dropping from 26,000x in the first game to 15,000x in Machina Reloaded Megaways.

Overall, the move from Machina Megaways to Machina Reloaded Megaways isn’t exactly a mind-bending paradigm shift. Still, there’s clear entertainment here for the right audience. That might be players who loved the futuristic style of the first release, those drawn to symbol upgrade mechanics in a Megaways slot, or anyone who can’t get enough visions of the future to chew over.