Football Star Slots

Football-StarMicrogaming has created a football themed slot machine in Football Star, but the action revolves around the game also known as soccer, not American Football. It’s actually the more popular of the two football games, enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The slot’s action seems to simply be about football, not about certain stars of the sport, like the title might suggest.

Being a slot machine with 243 ways to win, it’s naturally a 5 reel title. It’s also populated not just by a lot of good looking symbols, but also by features that you haven’t seen anywhere else, like the Rolling Reels, the Striking Wilds, free spins and multipliers. It even has a decent top payout of $12,500, which is not a given in slots with this many ways to win.

Features of Football Star

Football Star isn’t shy about offering features to its players, and it actually has quite a few of them which are not that common. There are stacked wilds on the reels, a feature called Striking Wild with a random trigger, Rolling Reels, scatter symbols, free spins and multipliers that can go up to 10x. All in all, not a bad collection of features to try out.

The game uses ways to win, 243 of them being offered inside. Instead of having paylines which are on predetermined paths through the reels, the ways to win system simply takes into consideration if matching symbols exist on neighboring reels, appearing from left to right in consecutive order. For example, if you have a Referee symbol on the first, second, third and fifth reels, the combination will be formed out of the ones from the first three, since the fifth one isn’t a neighbor to them (the fourth one is missing and breaks the connection).

Rolling Reels is another important feature to take into account. It goes by all kinds of names in the industry, some calling it Avalanche, others Exploding Reels, each developer having their own trademarked title. It basically allows the symbols that are part of combinations to fall off the screen once the first round of payments is made, so that new symbols can come take their place. These new symbols can create new combinations, and these will also roll off the screen with new ones coming in. This will keep happening until the symbols that come in no longer create a combo. During free spins, these Rolling Reels will have a multiplier that will keep going up with each consecutive win that comes from that initial combo. Up to 10x multipliers can be achieved through this feature, but only during free spins.

The wild symbols make appearances in stacked positions on the last three reels (3 to 5), and their image is that of the Football Star Logo. Additional wilds were added to the reels, for an increased chance of getting one to appear.

Football-Star-wild

Another wild related feature is called Striking Wild. It’s triggered at random, and when it does activate it will turn one of the three middle reels into a wild reel, also giving you a guaranteed prize.

Next on the list we have the scatter symbol, the one that has the football on it. This symbol pays up to 250 times the bet you placed, though for the minimum number of three symbols you will only get 5x.

Football-Star-scatter

Free Games Feature

These football scatters are responsible for the start of the round with free spins. For 3, 4 or 5 scatters, you will get 15, 20 or 25 spins for free, respectively. One advantage of these spins (besides the fact that they’re free) is the appearance of the multipliers in the Rolling Reels feature. Up to 10x the usual prizes can be won, if they’re obtained through the Rolling Reels.

Betting options and jackpots

Like every other slot machine with ways to win, Football Star uses virtual paylines when it comes to betting, so you don’t have to cover every single way to win individually with a bet. Instead, you use the equivalent of 50 lines here, and they’re all selected. The line bet uses 1 to 10 coins, denominations being only between $0.01 and $0.10. You can spend up to $1 per line, the full betting range being between $0.50 and $50.

The scatter symbol will award the slot’s biggest payout, offering 250 times the bet as a reward when five of them are present. That means up to $12,500 cash, while regular symbols can only give you up to $500.

Design and symbols

The action in Football Star takes place on a huge stadium, the kind that would host a huge event like a World Cup final. You can see the field, the huge crowds and the lights of the stadium right behind the reels, while on them you will find a mix of football related images, mostly of players that are in the middle of the action. The quality is very nice, it definitely shows that it’s a slot that was recently released.

Symbols: Football Stars Logo (wild), Football (scatter, 250x the bet), No 19 Player (500x), No 8 Player (250x), Black and Yellow Player (200x), Goalkeeper (175x) and Black and Red Player (150x).

Football-Star-paytable

Is It Worth Playing?

As a fan of football, I certainly enjoyed my time with this game. It has some impressive features, some of them that you haven’t seen before, and from top to bottom it’s different from slot machines that have been released in the past. Give it a shot, you’re not going to regret it.

Football Star can be found at any Microgaming casino, where you get a chance to play it for real money or in free mode.