World Cup

World Cup (TaDa Gaming) Review

TaDa Gaming channels the electric fervor of international football in World Cup, a high-energy slot game release that drops you into a roaring, jam-packed stadium with an Argentinian superstar at the center of the events. A big screen above the grid displays the animated player frozen in mid-strike most of the time, but he springs to life to celebrate wins and even score goals during the bonus round. The soundtrack keeps the energy pumping all the way, and there are multiple features to look forward to as well.

However, before we get to all that, let’s first cover the basics. World Cup plays out on a 5x3 grid with 20 paylines, and you win by landing matching symbols across these paylines, starting from the leftmost reel. The superstar is the highest value pay symbol, followed by the referee, football boots, goalkeeper gloves, and a whistle. These premium symbols award 2.5x to 25x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, while the lower-value royal symbols pay 1x to 1.5x your stake for the same. The Wild symbol substitutes for any pay symbol to help complete or improve wins.

World Cup Slot - Reels Screen

All symbols can land in sizes 2x2 and 3x3 across reels 2, 3, and 4, and these count as the corresponding number of individual symbols when part of a win. This also goes for the scatter pay bonus symbols, which award up to 250x your stake as an instant prize if they land on all 9 middle reel positions. Even a single bonus symbol awards a scatter prize of 1x your stake, so these football bonus symbols are something to keep your eyes peeled for in the World Cup slot game. The full overview of the instant scatter prizes is displayed above the reels.

This brings us to the main event of the World Cup slot, which is the free spins bonus round. You can get up to 22 free spins, and landing scatters during the feature triggers a goal-scoring animation above the reels, culminating in the reveal of a random win multiplier of up to x10. However, this multiplier range is doubled with the ante bet feature turned on, which also gives you random multipliers of up to x3 in the base game. World Cup is a low-medium volatility slot game (3 out of 5 on Tada’s scale), featuring an above-average RTP of 97.03%, a hit frequency of 25.65%, a bet range of €0.10 to €100 per spin, and a max win of 5,000x your stake.

World Cup Features

While we have already given you a brief overview of the features, the time has come to lay it all out in full detail. Before we start, however, we would like to remind you that the World Cup free play demo game is available at the top of this page, where you can check all the features for yourself without risking a dime. Let’s get to it!

Big Symbol

The 3 middle reels are marked with a thick frame on either side, indicating that this is the area where big symbols may land. Big symbols come in sizes of 2x2 and 3x3, meaning they can fill the entire marked area across the 3 middle reels. Any symbol can land in its big version, and these count as 4 or 9 regular-sized symbols in winning calculations or when triggering features.

Instant Prize Bonus Symbols

The football bonus symbols can appear on the 3 middle reels, and these award scatter win instant prizes as indicated by the instant prize paytable above the reels. Landing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 bonus symbols anywhere in view awards 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, or 25x your stake, respectively. Landing 7, 8, or 9 bonus symbols in view unlocks the Mini, Major, or Mega jackpot prizes, awarding 50x, 100x, or 250x your stake, respectively.

Free Spins Bonus Round

The Bonus Round triggers when you land 3 World Cup trophy scatters anywhere in view, and each triggering scatter awards +2 free spins. This means that you get a minimum of 6 free spins whenever this feature triggers, and up to 22 free spins are possible at the most. The bonus round cannot be retriggered during the feature, and you cannot win extra free spins. Instead, landing scatters awards a random multiplier of x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, or x10, boosting all wins in the current round.

World Cup Slot - Free Spins

Extra Bet (not UK)

The World Cup slot does not come with a Bonus Buy feature, but eligible players can increase their bonus round chances by switching on the Extra Bet feature. This will cost you 50% extra per spin, and it comes with 2 benefits. In the base game, you will now benefit from a random win multiplier of x1, x2, or x3 per spin. In the bonus round, the random multiplier range is doubled, meaning you will draw a multiplier value of x2, x4, x6, x8, x10, or x20 each time you land a scatter in view.

Theme & Graphics

After a dramatic intro where what looks like an Argentinean player hits the ball with great power, he finds his place above the reels in a more static pose. A voiceover encourages you to “come on” if you wait too long to get started and occasionally says “great job” when you win. The stadium is filled to the brim, and a rave-like soundtrack is pumping up the energy as anticipation builds. The crowd is cheering you on as you spin the reels, and these are filled with whistles, keeper gloves, football boots, the referee himself, and the aforementioned Argentinian superstar player.

World Cup Free Play

If you want to test the waters before playing for real at one of our recommended casinos, the free World Cup demo is the way to go. It’s the best warm-up you can get before taking on the real deal, allowing you to gauge the volatility and feel out the bonus round hit rate. You can try your luck with the Extra Bet feature turned on and see what difference it makes both in the base game and during free spins. When you are satisfied with your World Cup free play session, casinos carrying this title await below the demo game at the top of this page.

Pros and Cons of World Cup

Our Verdict

The big challenge every developer who tries their hand in the football genre faces is how to incorporate the passion of the sport into a game that’s usually about spinning reels. This goes for any sports-themed slot, for that matter, and TaDa Gaming has tried to solve this issue by adding big-screen football animations above the reels. This solution works okay and certainly better than many other more static football slots we’ve tried. At least you get to see a player in action, and it’s even somewhat relevant to the actual gameplay.

Still, the World Cup slot struggles to capture the raw, electric atmosphere of a real World Cup match (which is hardly possible in the limited slot format) and therefore has to compensate by including a somewhat incongruent rave-like soundtrack. This repetitive tune certainly gets the adrenaline pumping and succeeds in keeping the energy high, albeit in a way that feels a bit artificial. Max out the turbo, and the entire game engine aligns with the heavy thumping beat of the soundtrack in a way that doesn’t really look intentional.

The animated superstar above the reels and the flashing winning symbol animations suddenly lock perfectly into sync with the music. While it feels entirely accidental, it’s undeniably amusing to watch a slot game turn into a rhythmic visualizer. Less amusing, however, is the execution of the turbo function itself. Instead of merely accelerating the reel spin speed, the turbo setting speeds up the entire game presentation, which comes across as a design flaw that makes the game look a bit cheap. It’s an issue with most, if not all, TaDa Gaming slots, but not all of them sync with the beat like this World Cup game does.

We recommend the Extra Bet feature for this game, if available, as getting multipliers in the base game and doubling the bonus round multiplier range does lift the otherwise mediocre experience. The instant scatter prizes are too low to be pulse-raising, and the big symbols seldom deliver anything worthwhile. The bonus round is your chance at landing bigger wins, and even more so with random multipliers of up to x20. World Cup might be a decent game to pull up on your phone during half-time breaks, as at least it will inject you with some vitality to keep your energy going until the whistle blows for the second half.