Who Wants To Be A Millionaire is a famous game show, where players answer questions and as they do so they advance on a ladder that goes all the way to a million dollar prize. It’s famous around the world, with variants that were more or less successful showing up in a lot of countries. This game was created by IGT and they seem to have a done a pretty good job at recreating the experience, even though it only uses generic icons to represent the various options from the game show.
With prizes only offering up to $6,250, you’re going to find that the slot doesn’t exactly live up to its name if you only take into account its regular payouts. Go into the Jackpot Ladder bonus game, and things change for the better, with hundreds of thousands up for grabs (with the right bets). You’re going to discover multiple bonus games and scatters, plus wild symbols to enhance the experience. A total of 5 reels and 20 lines are offered in this game.
Features of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
There are scatters and wilds in the game, as they usually are, but there are also multiple bonus games you can take advantage of. Add to that a Jackpot Ladder, and you get the picture of how fun it can be.
First of all, we have the Audience wild symbol, an icon with the silhouette of five people on a black background. In case you haven’t heard of these special symbols before, they are the equivalent of Jokers, as they are capable of taking the place of other icons and will allow for new combinations to form up this way. The wild still needs to be in the right spot in order to contribute, with other matching symbols already on the same payline as it is.
Jackpot Ladder
The first of the three scatter symbols available is the one that has the Jackpot Ladder on it. It’s a scatter, so naturally it doesn’t matter where exactly it appears, as long as you have at least three of them present at the same time. You will get a screen, with 15 steps on a cash ladder, with prizes going higher and higher. You click on the Hit button to advance, with up to three chances to climb to the next step. Each time you can’t do that, and you waste all three chances, one of the three lifelines is consumed. Once all the lifelines are lost, the feature ends and you collect the prize that you reached on the ladder.
Players Choice
The second of the scatters is the one called Players Choice, with the image of three green bars and an orange bar, all stacked on top of each other. Once again, you need a minimum of three of these icons, in any random position. It’s a simple bonus game, where you click on one of the three possible answers and you get the associated prize.
Lifeline Bonus – Free Spins
The Lifeline symbol is the third and final scatter of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”. Getting the usual three or more lifeline scatters pays you a small prize, just the equivalent of your wager from that round, plus access to a bonus game with free spins in it. A total of 10 free games are awarded at the start, with the chance to retrigger them being present as well.
Betting options and jackpots
The betting options are easy to follow, but they’re not cheap. You are free to change the denomination and the number of active lines as you want, the limits being 1 to 20 for the lines/coins and $0.01 to $25 for the denomination. Bets that go up to $500 are allowed.
As I’ve mentioned in the beginning, the real reward comes from the Jackpot Ladder bonus game, a fun feature that gives you lifelines that you can use to advance until you get the bigger payouts. The size of the wager influences the top payout of the feature directly. Through regular combinations you can get up to 250 coins/$6,250 from the slot.
Design and symbols
The design copies the general style and colors that you would see in the studio where the game show is filmed, but the actual symbols don’t use any real pictures. Instead, you get various silhouettes and badly drawn images, all of them with black or dark blue backgrounds. It’s nowhere near as exciting for a fan of the show as it would be to see real photos or at least detailed cartoons with the contestants and the presenter.
Symbols: Audience (wild), Lifeline (scatter), Players Choice (scatter), Jackpot Ladder logo (scatter), Final Answer (250x), Host (150x), Hot Seat (100x), Audience Poll (50x), Millionaire Logo (25x), Question Mark (20x), Timer (15x), Currency (10x) and Cashiers Cheque (5x).
Is It Worth Playing?
You’re not going to find a great theme in this game, but if you’re a fan of the real game show you’re still going to enjoy it. The prizes get really good only if you reach the Jackpot Ladder bonus feature, where things get really interesting.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire
The original game show with this name was launched in the United Kingdom, and as the title suggests, it gives its contestants a chance to become millionaires, getting $1,000,000 if they know the answers to all the questions. The contestants always get four choices, the questions getting harder as they advance. Payouts usually double from one question to the next. Players can take the money and walk away at the end of each round, but if they take the next question and they don’t know the answer, they can lose a big amount of the money won so far. Some portion of the winnings is guaranteed though, as long as they reach that stage.
This slot is based on the original UK version, with the Pound Sign being used as one of the symbols. It aired between 1998 and 2014 in the UK, when it ended after 30 series and 592 episodes.
You will find Who Wants To Be A Millionaire at any online casino which chooses to use software from IGT, playable either for free or for real money.
