Shogun of Time

Microgaming Online carries Shogun of Time, a title built by studio partner Just For The Win around a female samurai warlord and her digital, cyberpunk counterpart, staged against a neon-lit, future-set Tokyo skyline rather than a period one.

The base game runs on four reels across 81 paylines instead of the usual five, and the missing fifth column only joins play once a trigger unlocks it. A set of neon-tinted royals, ten through ace, shares the paytable with coins, fans, armoured chest-plates, masks and samurai helmets. Five of the game's own logo along an active line pays 12x the stake, the richest prize on the board, and a cyberpunk heroine works as the wild at that same value, standing in for every other paying symbol she lands beside.

A four-of-a-kind result anywhere in the base game freezes those four reels in position and slots a fifth into the middle of the set for one re-spin, giving the locked combination a shot at growing into something bigger before the round settles.

Scatters open the door to the main event: four of them hand out sixteen free spins, while three bring eight instead. Once the round begins, all five reels are active, wins can form running either direction, and the centre reel locks in as a wild column stacked from top to bottom for every spin left in the feature, turning the layout into a 243-way format for the duration.

Shogun of Time returns 96.02% at medium volatility, tops out at 2,717x the stake with a €271,174 cap, and takes wagers between 0.10 and 100 per spin — figures that only apply once a respin or the free spins round has pushed the game past its restricted four-reel start. Because the early game is capped at four reels until one of those triggers lands, the opening spins run tighter than the wider, wild-stacked spins that follow once the feature hits.