Starmania 2 Slot – Free Demo

Ten Lines, Read Both Ways

Gamers set off by choosing wagers from 10p to $/€1,000 per spin on any device, and the RTP is fixed at 96.01%. 94% and 92% versions are also present, and volatility is low to moderate. Starmania 2 is the sequel to Light & Wonder's Star Mania, and like NetEnt's Starburst it pays both ways, here on 10 fixed paylines read left to right and right to left.

Minor pays consist of planets. Five of a kind of the Blue, Red or Green Planet pays 5 times the stake. The premium pays are stars, and here I discover the Purple Star, the Blue Star, the Red Star, and the Green Star, and amounts in this group span from 10 to 50 times the stake. Five Purple Stars pay 50 times the stake, five Blue Stars 20 times, and five Red or Green Stars 10 times each. The golden star is the wild, which also substitutes for all symbols on the reels except the Bonus symbol. In the base game it lands only on reels 2, 3 and 4, the stretch the game calls the Hot Zone, and spin 217 of my session paid 25.5 times the stake with two Wilds on reel 3.

Three Collectors Above the Hot Zone

Gamers do receive a feature during the base game though. It slays two birds with one rock: one, it brings a shred of a rush to the base game, and two, it softens the blow of not hitting quite enough Bonus symbols to trigger the main feature.

It’s named the Wild Collection feature. It is triggered when Wilds land on reels 2, 3 and 4, and each Wild is kept in a collector above its reel, up to 25 per reel. Once a collector is full, further Wilds move on to the other collectors. Loading all three collectors launches Free Spins with 6 spins, and when the round begins, the collected Wilds are put on the grid. Up to 75 collected Wilds can be added to the three reels of that round.

Rockets on the Multiplier Reels

The major one is the Free Spins round. I triggered it twice in 300 spins at a 1.00 stake, on spins 204 and 253. It is triggered when 3 or more Bonus symbols land, and a fresh 3×3 grid with 27 ways glides onto the screen, alongside two Win Multiplier Reels. The round begins with 6, 8 or 10 spins for 3, 4 or 5 Bonus symbols. My first round came from 3 Bonus symbols and ran 6 spins, and the second came from 5 and ran 10. The paytable doubles, and whenever extra Bonus symbols drop during the round, the round retriggers without restarting the Wild collection. Neither of my two rounds retriggered. The feature finishes when there are no further spins remaining, and during it reels 4 and 5 hold blanks, multipliers and Free Spins Rockets, like so:

• Reel 4 – scales wins by 1x to 10x.
• Reel 5 – scales wins by 1x to 15x.
• Free Spins Rocket – grants 1, 2 or 4 free spins.

Suffice to state that both reels engage on every win. Between them my two rounds paid 49.00, which was 24% of everything I won over the session.

Sixty-Seven Cents on the Dollar

Despite the Wild Collection feature, it’s still all about the elusive Free Spins round, and it can require a considerable quantity of time to trigger the feature naturally. Over my 300 spins I wagered 300.00 and got 201.00 back, a session return of 67.0%. As an illustration, it required 204 spins during testing to trigger it the first time. The longest run without any win lasted 8 spins, though 74 of the 116 paying spins returned less than the stake. The notion of having to possibly wade through a lengthy drawn-out slog was more than a little intimidating after a Free Spins round that returned 20x the stake. The second round, on spin 253, paid 29 times the stake, and with 0.30 from the base game on the same spin it was the biggest win of the session.

The Minty Take: The incentive end of the deal are the prizes, and wins of up to 4,861 times your stake are achievable.