Play Football Star (Microgaming) Slot

Football Star (Microgaming) Review

Football Star owes its existence to the ice hockey-themed slot, Break Away. To capitalize on that game’s commercial success, Microgaming followed up with the sports-themed Star series: Football Star was released in 2014, followed by Cricket Star, Rugby Star and Basketball Star in 2015. These four games are based on Break Away, and all feature Rolling Reels, Wild Reels, and a Free Spins bonus with Multiplier Trail. Aside from some minor differences in payouts and maximum win potential, it is only their themes that set them apart from one another. Now that we’ve covered its provenance, let’s take a closer look at Football Star!

Football Star slot reel screen

Football Star Features

Drop symbols

Rolling Reels is a popular mechanism found in many Microgaming titles. Symbols involved in a winning combination explode, and new symbols drop into their positions. If those symbols form part of a new winning combination, they too explode, to be replaced by more symbols. This continues until there are no further winning combinations. Along with Rolling Reels, Football Star also offers the Striking Wild feature and Free Spins with a Multiplier Trail.

Striking Wild

The Striking Wild feature occurs randomly during the Base Game. It turns reel 2, 3 or 4 Wild, and guarantees a win every time it triggers.

Free Spins

Landing 3, 4 or 5 Scatter symbols triggers 15, 20 or 25 Free Spins respectively. The Multiplier Trail, which offers 2x, 3x, 4x 5x and 10x multipliers, increments by one on each successive Rolling Reels win.

The 200 Spins Football Star Experience

It’s time to put Football Star through SlotCatalog’s 200 spin test. Setting our bet at €2.50 per spin, we kick off.

Our first two Rolling Reels drops are anticlimactic, with neither resulting in additional wins. After a few non-winning spins, we land 3 Scatters, which awards 15 Free Spins and a €12.50 win. On the same spin, we also achieve two other small wins. Rolling Reels doesn’t deliver additional wins this time either, but that’s ok because we’re only thinking about Free Spins now!

On our sixth free spin, we land 3 Scatters. It takes us a moment to realise that €12.50 is all we get, because this game doesn’t award additional free spins. Our winning Scatters explode, but again, the symbols that replace them don’t contribute to a win, so we don’t get a taste of what the Multiplier Trail has to offer. A couple of spins later, back to back wins get us a 2x multiplier, but we only win €1.75 - less than our triggering wager. Free Spins is proving to be a disappointment, but then our luck changes: we land a stack of Wilds that complete a 5 of a kind win with the top symbol, making us €77.25 richer! The ensuing Rolling Reels drop wins us - you guessed it - nothing.

We exit Free Spins without having unlocked the Multiplier Trail’s obvious winning potential. Still, we’ve done pretty well, that 5 of a Kind win ensuring that we finish our test with more than what we started with.

Review Summary

The Rolling Reels factor, combined with Stacked Wilds, the Striking Wild feature, and the Multiplier Trail in Free Spins, ensures that Football Star offers entertainment and winning potential aplenty.

Of course, there are some negatives. The first is that Rolling Reels isn’t as rewarding as one might expect. More often than not, the first drop doesn’t result in another win, and when wins do occur, they tend to be small. Secondly, one gets the feeling that Football Star, like the other three titles in the series, was produced quickly. As a result, the game art is very generic, and fails to capture the true essence of the sport it depicts. And in terms of mechanics, the games comprising the Star series are so similar to each other that for most players, if you’ve played one, you’ve played them all.

If you like Football Star, consider these games:

Break Away
The slot that gave rise to Football Star is approaching 10 years old, but thanks to its winning combination of theme and features (Rolling Reels, Smashing Wilds, Stacked Wilds, and up to 25 Free Spins with a Multiplier Trail), it remains one of Microgaming’s most popular games to this day.

Football Star Deluxe
This 2020 release has much in common with its predecessor. Rolling Reels, the Striking Wild feature and Free Spins with Multiplier Trail are all still there, but the Deluxe version offers higher volatility and RTP, a different reel configuration, 88 paylines instead of 243 Ways, Growing Wilds in Free Spins, and a higher maximum win of 3181x.

Gonzo’s Quest
The main attraction is the Avalanche feature with increasing multipliers (this is similar to Football Star’s Rolling Reels and Multiplier Trail). Factor in the Free Falls feature, a maximum payout of 3750x, and the wonderful Gonzo character, and it isn’t hard to see why this 2013 release from NetEnt is such a popular slot.