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In a way, it is surprising that we don’t see more slots based on football. After all, the Beautiful Game remains the world’s most popular sport. So we were excited when we saw that Microgaming had produced their Football Star game, and added to the small selection of soccer slots that you can find in online casinos.
So did Microgaming put a real shift in and produce a winning performance that was truly different class? You’ll need to read this Football Star slot review to find out!
| Football Star Details | |
|---|---|
| House Edge: 3.55% | Return to player: 96.45% |
| Autospin: Yes | Softwares: no download - instant play, mobile |
| Released: January 1, 2014 | Min Bet: 5 |
| Max Bet: 50 | Scatters: Yes |
| Gamble: No | Max Coins: 10 |
| Reels: 5 | Paylines: 243 |
| Spins: Yes | Bonus Rounds: No |
| Wild: Yes | Software: Microgaming |
| Football Star comparison | ||
|---|---|---|
| Football Star | AVG | |
| Rating: | 5.0 | 4.2 |
| House Edge: | 3.55 % | 3.68 % |
| Return to player: | 96.45 % | 96.32 % |
| Paylines: | 243 | 25.0 |
| Bonus Features: | 3 | 3.6 |
The Football Star slot game is played on a grid with 5 reels, 3 rows and 243 paylines. The usual minimum bet for SA players is 50p and the maximum is R5,000, though this may vary slightly depending upon which online casino to use. The game uses Flash technology and can be played on a range of mobile devices with no compromise in quality.
The game was released by Microgaming in May 2014, just ahead of that year’s World Cup tournament in Brazil. You can win prizes when symbols line up adjacently on the reels as this game does not have a conventional payline structure. This is useful in the Rolling Reels feature that we’ll discuss later in this review. There is an autoplay feature that is triggered when you hold the spin button, as well as a fast play button that can speed matters up for you.
The Football Star slot RTP is 96.29%. This is a pretty typical figure for a slot of this variety, and it’s also pretty standard for a slot from Microgaming. Ant And Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, for example, has an RTP of 96.35%, while Gopher Gold’s RTP stands at 96.79% and Lara Croft Temples and Tombs has an RTP of 96.05%.
The game has medium variance, so your chances of frequent smaller wins should be roughly about the same as your chances of spinning in the really big prizes. You may have to show some patience when waiting for the feature, but it is likely to deliver big wins when it occurs.
As you might expect from a slot from Microgaming, the Football Star slot looks very classy. It’s graphics are rendered in a sophisticated cartoon style that is much more like a graphic novel than an episode of The Simpsons in terms of style. The reels are framed in front of a simple soccer stadium backdrop, with the colours being fresh and vibrant. The pitch is a gorgeous deep green colour and there are plenty of primary shades of red, gold and pale blue on the reels.
The sound effects are pretty subtle. When a win spins in, you are treated to a little trumpet fanfare and you also hear the roar of the crowd as though you had just scored a goal. We were pleased with the music and sound effects in the game as they were unobtrusive. When they did appear, though, they added to the immersive nature of the game without ever grating on our ears. This slot certainly has a subtlety when it comes to sound that not many other games share.
As you might expect, the symbols on the reels all relate to football in some way. The higher value symbols are football players. The most valuable of the high-value player symbols is the guy wearing red and green. This looks suspiciously like a Portugal kit, which would make sense given the character’s passing resemblance to Cristiano Ronaldo. There are 4 other players there too, including a goalkeeper. The other symbols apart from the players are a referee, a stadium, a replica shirt and a pair of football boots.
The game’s logo is the wild symbol, and this will appear stacked on the third, fourth and fifth reel. It can substitute for all other symbols to create winning combinations for you. The game’s scatter is the flying football. We’ll see how this symbol and the wild can bring you big wins via the games’ features in the next section of this Football Star Slot review.
There are 3 features for you to enjoy in the football star slot machine. They range from a modified wild symbol to a full free spins feature. We’ll take a closer look at them for you here now.
This feature can occur at random in the base game. When it occurs, it turns one of the middle 3 reels entirely wild. If no win occurs on that spin, the wild symbols will remain locked in place until a win does occur.
You have probably see this feature used in other slots that you have played, such as classics like Gonzo’s Quest. The symbols in any win will disappear and are replaced by new symbols. This process will continue indefinitely until no new wins appear. You can benefit from very long streaks, if you’re lucky, that will bring big prizes. This feature can become very exciting if you manage to get on to a lengthy winning streak, with plenty of action occurring on the screen.
The football scatter symbol is what you need to watch for when it comes to the free spins feature in the Football Star slot. If 3, 4 or 5 of the ball symbols appear anywhere on the reels you will trigger the free spins. For 3 symbols, you get 15 spins, for 4 symbols it’s 20 spins and for 5 spins it’s 25.
The Rolling Reels feature also applies during these spins, so you can soon see the wins mounting up once the bonus spins kick in. As well as Rolling Reels, there is also a prize multiplier in operation. You can see a scale above the reels that tells you the size of the multiplier. Each consecutive win boosts the multiplier, so, again the potential for some really lucrative wins is massive. Sadly, though you cannot retrigger the free spins during the feature, so make sure you use the spins you get wisely.
These 3 features add up together to really boost the appeal of this game. While they are not the most involved features we have ever seen, and there is not much real interaction from the player required during them, they are still good fun. When the Rolling Reels are triggered it can be very exciting indeed to watch the wins mount up.
We’ll end this Football Star slot review on a largely positive note, by saying that we really enjoyed the game’s bonus features. The graphics and sound effects are also a lot of fun. The game has a fresh feel to it that’s helped by its clean design and vibrant colours. The features offer plenty of opportunity to win big prizes, with the Rolling Reels an especially appealing aspect of the game. We recommend you give this game a go, especially if you are a fan of the Beautiful Game.
If you enjoy sports-themed slots, then Bicicleta from Yggdrasil should be right up your street.