Free Kick’s design will quickly tell you what it’s about, the action taking place on a soccer stadium, with a match going on. Soccer, or football as most of the world calls it, is the most popular sport right now, with billions of people watching whenever an event like the World Cup is taking place. In this case, Cryptologic has created a slot with a design that is dated by now, suggesting that it’s one of their earlier titles.
With only 5 reels, 9 paylines and a design that looks a bit worn out, Free Kick isn’t a modern title and graphics wise you shouldn’t expect a lot from it. On the other hand, it tries to at least keep you happy if you give it a chance, offering a bonus game, with scatters and wild symbols also available inside. The top jackpot sits at $25,000.
Features of Free Kick
The game doesn’t do that great with its feature list, but it does have two different types of scatters, a bonus game and a wild.
The Ball is a symbol that is recognizable worldwide, and pretty much everyone will be able to tell you from what sport it comes from. As a wild symbol, the Ball can show up on the middle three reels (2nd, 3rd, 4th). From that position, it is able to substitute for the other symbols, as long as they’re regulars (scatters are not included).
Though you get two scatter symbols here, both of them need to appear in consecutive order on the reels starting from the left, a limitation I haven’t seen that often. Each scatter has a different card on it. The yellow card is the lower paying scatter, capable of awarding as much as 100 times the value of the wager when it appears on enough reels. As for the red card, it gets you twice the amount of the yellow card, up to 200 times the wager.
Shots on Goal
Each scatter symbol can trigger this bonus game, but with a different reward inside. Getting at least three scatter symbols with the yellow card gets you 5 shots on goal, while the red card awards 8 shots on goal.
In the bonus game, you kick the balls from the penalty box, sneaking them past the goalkeeper. Each time you get a goal, you win a prize. The Yellow Card feature gives you 3x the bet for each goal, while Red Card has 5x the bet for each goal you score.
Betting options and jackpots
The $0.10 to $5 wager that you can place on every single payline in Free Kick will take the bet up to $45, since 9 paylines are available. Each line only gets one coin, but you are free to use fewer coins/lines if you don’t mind the lower chances of a payout.
There is a 5,000 coins jackpot that you can go after in Free Kick, translating in up to $25,000 cash with a bit of luck. It depends on the coin value though, so if you used lower denominations than the $5 maximum, expect proportionally lower prizes.
Design and symbols
The theme of Free Kick is the game of football, called soccer by Americans. Unfortunately, the design in use inside seems to be one from a few years back. A quick example would be the background image of a stadium, where all the spectators are simple blobs of color in the stands. Another would be the people that appear on the symbols, each one having just enough detail to suggest the face, but not realistic enough to make them appealing (looking more like an oil painting).
Symbols: Ball (wild), Red Card (scatter, 200x the bet), Yellow Card (scatter, 100x the bet), Football Player (5,000x), Goalkeeper (1,000x), Referee (500x), Fan (500x), T-Shirt (300x), VIP Pass (300x), Football Shoes (150x) and Whistle (150x).
Is It Worth Playing?
The bonus game is interesting enough, but the slot doesn’t do as well when it comes to graphics and the variety of features. I would only recommend it if you’re a big fan of the sport.
The Free Kick slot machine is offered through the Cryptologic platform, so if you want to play it for real or just to practice, look out for casinos that use it.
