Starz Megaways Slot Review

Released in June 2020, this game can be played at online casinos such as Guts, Unibet or Mr Green.

Theme and general information

Despite the funky spelling, Starz Megaways takes us out into the far reaches of the galaxy, settling us somewhere among the stars. It’s quite beautiful and showcases the talent that the designers at Pragmatic Play have. The colourful nebulae, the planet in the distance and glowing stars are nicely done.

The soundtrack is a bit cheesy, though, but it’s still easy to listen to at a low volume.

Of course, this slot is quite obviously inspired by Starburst, one of NetEnt’s all-time classics. But this is not merely a copy as we will see.

On the reels we find planets and gemstones, though the latter are the more valuable items, paying up to 4x our stake for 6 on a payline.

Employing the Megaways engine licensed through Big Time Gaming, we get 6 reels in this game and each reel can come with 2 to 7 symbols. That gives us a minimum of 324 ways to pay and a maximum of 117,649.

You can play this game from 0.20 to 100.00 per spin.

Expanding wilds and all ways pay

The yellow and red star-shaped symbol is the wild in the game and it only lands on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5. Whenever it does so, it will expand to cover the whole reel. However, we don’t get a free re-spin here. Once a spin is completed, the stacked wild will disappear again.

More importantly, this game pays all ways from left to right and right to left. As long as three matching symbols are lined up on adjacent reels, a win is possible. That’s always handy to have, especially on the middle reels.

Free spins with sticky expanding wilds

Three bonus scatters are required to trigger the free spins. When we get three of them, we do actually get a free re-spin to potentially land further scatters. The more scatters you get, the more free spins you get.

• 3 scatters = 6 free spins
• 4 scatters = 8 free spins
• 5 scatters = 10 free spins
• 6 scatters = 15 free spins

Most of the time you will play with 6 free spins, mind you. But that’s not a problem because free spins are triggered surprisingly often.

In any case, whenever a wild lands during the free spins, it will expand across the whole reel as usual. But now it will remain fixed in its position for the duration of the spins. Just two reels of them can yield regular great wins thanks to the all ways pay feature.

Unfortunately, free spins cannot be retriggered.

Verdict: Starz Megaways may cash in on the popularity of Starburst but takes things much further than the original

The theoretical RTP (Return to Player) for Starz Megaways is 96.48%, which is excellent. This slot does get maximum Pragmatic Play volatility, though, so do be sure to watch your budget. That said, with the all ways pay engine, wins are not super elusive, but in Turbo Mode we managed to rush through 20 spins without a win.

That said, when we tested this game for you, we managed to trigger the free spins unreasonably often, sometimes even within a few spins of each other. Wins are not always impressive, and we only ever got 6 free spins at the time. But overall, they helped keep us afloat and we found this slot with its features are marked improvement to the original Starburst slot, which can simply be a bit boring in the long run.

Starz Megaways is far from a cheap rip-off and quite enjoyable to play, especially if those free spins keep coming. If they don’t, you might want to move on, though.