Treasures of Aztec vs Megaways: How Two Win Multipliers Step Up

Two mechanics, two ways of turning a single spin into a chain reaction. On one side, PG Soft’s Treasures of Aztec, a cascading slot built around an Aztec temple theme where the win multiplier climbs as symbols keep tumbling. On the other, the Megaways engine from Big Time Gaming, licensed to studios like Pragmatic Play, which hands you a variable reel set and, in many of its titles, a multiplier that only moves during a free spins round. Both are everywhere right now, and both get described the same vague way in lobby copy: “multipliers that keep growing.” That phrase hides a real difference in how the number actually steps up, and that difference changes what a session feels like.

How Treasures of Aztec steps its multiplier

The core loop in Treasures of Aztec is a cascade. Winning symbols are removed, new ones drop in from above, and if the new arrangement pays, the process repeats — all inside the same spin. The win multiplier sits alongside this loop and steps up each time a cascade continues. The help file lists the exact steps, and that list is the authority; the animation that plays on screen does not replace it. If the game shows a fancy counter climbing, the underlying value you are paid is whatever the help file says it is.

The second rule matters just as much: when the cascade ends, the multiplier does not carry over — unless the help file explicitly says it does. So a run of four cascades in a base spin gives you a multiplier that applies to the wins in that spin, then resets for the next one. This is the defining shape of the feature treasures approach in PG Soft’s catalogue: the multiplier is a within-spin reward for momentum, not a permanent account balance that grows across the whole session.

What Megaways does differently

Megaways, originally from Big Time Gaming and now licensed out widely, starts from a different problem. Instead of a fixed grid, each reel holds a random number of symbols per spin, so the ways to win change from spin to spin — up to 117,647 in the classic setup. The multiplier question then splits in two.

In most Megaways titles, the base game multiplier sits at 1x and does nothing. It only begins stepping during a free spins round, and it typically goes up by one after every win in that round, without a cap. That is a fundamentally different design from Treasures of Aztec. The multiplier in Megaways is a free-spins-only feature that persists across the entire bonus round, so a long streak of wins inside free spins can push it far higher than anything the base game offers. Pragmatic Play’s Megaways titles follow a similar pattern, sometimes adding their own twist — a starting multiplier for the bonus, or a retrigger that adds extra spins.

Side by side

The comparison comes down to when the multiplier moves and how long it lives. Treasures of Aztec moves it during base-game cascades and resets it at the end of the spin. Megaways leaves it dormant in the base game and lets it climb across an entire free spins round. One rewards short bursts of momentum; the other rewards surviving long enough to trigger the bonus and then riding it.

Volatility follows from this. A game where the multiplier resets every spin has to hit harder within that spin to feel rewarding, so the wins tend to be chunkier but less frequent. A game where the multiplier carries through free spins can afford to give you small stepping stones early, because the payoff is the accumulated value at the end of the round. Neither is better. They just feel different in the hand.

Coin values and what they actually change

Coin values sit underneath all of this and are easy to misread. In most modern slots, the coin value is a display layer over a total bet; changing it scales your stake proportionally, and the multiplier steps stay the same either way. What changes is the absolute size of what those steps pay. A 2x step on a small coin value is a small number. The same 2x on a large one is not. This is worth keeping in mind when comparing sessions across games, because a multiplier that looks impressive on paper may be running on a much smaller stake than you assumed.

Reading the help file

Both games publish their multiplier rules in the help file, and in both cases the help file overrides whatever the animation suggests. If you want to know exactly how far a multiplier can step in Treasures of Aztec, or whether a particular Megaways title caps its bonus multiplier, the help file is where that lives. The on-screen counter is decoration; the list is the contract.

That habit — reading the list rather than trusting the animation — is the single most useful thing to carry between these two mechanics. It applies to the feature treasures loop in PG Soft’s cascades and to the free-spins multiplier in any Megaways title from Pragmatic Play or anyone else. The numbers are published. They just do not always look the way the animation implies.

Closing

Treasures of Aztec and Megaways both sell the same fantasy — a multiplier that keeps going up — but they build it on different foundations. One is a within-spin cascade engine that resets when the tumbling stops. The other is a free-spins feature that carries across an entire bonus round. Knowing which one you are playing tells you what to expect from a session, and where the real leverage lives. Check the help file, watch the steps, and let the design do what it was built to do.