Astro Rumble

Astro Rumble Review

Who knew that interstellar car racing involving ETs would also involve nitro-boosted hot rods from the post-WW2 era. Well, that’s exactly what you get in Astro Rumble from Bullshark Games, a slot game that plays out on a racing track with an impressive cosmic backdrop. A purple alien is burning rubber next to the 5x4 grid in car number 1, which is the only racing car you’ll see in this game. With a funky soundtrack and charming, cartoon-style visuals, Astro Rumble takes you on a cosmic ride with plenty of modifier action.

To start with the basics, you can choose between bet levels of €0.1 to €100 per spin, catering to both penny punters and high rollers. You win by landing 3 to 5 matching symbols from the leftmost reel to the right across up to 14 paylines, and the Nitro symbol is the top-tier payer in this game. It’s followed by energy boosters, microchips, med kits, and stopwatches. These premium symbols award 20x to 5x your stake for 5 of a kind, while the royals all pay 1x for the same. The Wild symbol substitutes for pay symbols while also paying 20x for 5 wilds on a payline.

Astro Rumble Slot - Reels Screen

Outside of regular wins and wild wins, the base game offers a Pot feature triggered randomly via the Cosmic Boost feature. Whenever a cosmic boost hits, up to 3 of the pots seen above the reels get activated, adding their respective modifiers to the reels. These modifiers consist of extra nitro symbols, extra wilds, and multipliers that attach to pay symbols to boost wins. The pots cannot trigger without the cosmic boost feature, at least not in the base game.

The regular Rocket Race bonus round takes things up a notch, though, as activated pots do their thing on each free spin. And not only that, the pots also increase their modifier value per symbol collected. One of the pots starts with a random value, while all 3 pots are assigned a random starting value in the top-tier Galactic Rush bonus round. Astro Rumble is a highly volatile game (4 out of 5), and it boasts an above-average top-tier RTP of 96.39 %. A lower RTP setting of 94.30 % is also a possibility to be aware of, but you can win up to 10,000x your stake regardless of the RTP version.

Astro Rumble Features

You need the random cosmic boost trigger to get pot feature action in the base game of Astro Rumble Bullshark Games, and you can look forward to even more of these modifiers in both bonus round tiers. Let’s check it all out!

Pot Features & Cosmic Boost

This is a core mechanic in the Astro Rumble slot, which involves the 3 pots you see above the reels. These Pots are linked to Nitro symbols, Wild symbols, and Multipliers. In the base game, these pot features are triggered by the random Cosmic Boost feature, and up to all 3 can trigger on the same spin. Here’s an overview of how the Pot modifiers work:

• Pot of Nitro Symbols - awards a minimum of 2 to 10 Nitro symbols for that spin, with the minimum determined by the number displayed in the red pot.
• Pot of Wilds Symbols - adds 2 to 10 Wild symbols to random positions, and a wild landing on another wild adds +1 to the Pot of Multipliers. Wilds cannot land on scatter symbols.
• Pot of Multipliers - adds a randomly chosen multiplier of x2 to x100 to 2 to 10 symbols, and multipliers are added together if more than one lands on the same symbol. All multipliers involved in a win boost the win accordingly.

Rocket Race Free Spins

The Rocket Race Bonus Round triggers when you land 3 or 4 scatter symbols on a base game spin, awarding 8 or 10 free spins, respectively. A random Pot starts with a random value of 2 to 5, and the value of the Nitro and Wild pots is increased by each Nitro and Wild symbol that appears. Symbols with multipliers add +1 to the Pot of Multipliers after each free spin, and you win +2, +3, +4, or +5 extra free spins from landing 2, 3, 4, or 5 scatters, respectively.

Galactic Rush Free Spins

The Galactic Rush Bonus Round triggers when you land 5 scatter symbols on the same base game spin, awarding 12 free spins. It plays out similarly to the Rocket Race feature, except that all 3 pots start with a random value from the get-go instead of just one of them.

Astro Rumble Slot - Free Spins

Astro Rumble Bonus Buy (not UK)

The Bonus Buy menu is available via the blue button down to the left, but only for eligible players. It contains the following options in Astro Rumble:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins - pay 3x your stake to increase your bonus round chances by 5 times.
• Cosmic Boost FeatureSpins - pay 50x your stake to get at least 2 Pot modifiers for the spin that follows.
• Rocket Race FS - is priced at 100x your stake.
• Galactic Rush FS - costs 300x your stake.

Theme & Graphics

The Astro Rumble game transports you to a galaxy far away from Earth, where an epic space race is about to start. Not the kind of space race we had here on Earth in the 60s, though, but rather a race track with nitro-fuelled hot rods manned by drooling ET creatures. Set against a stunning backdrop of planets and nebulae, the ambient soundtrack adds to the charming and otherworldly atmosphere. The cartoonish style serves the theme well, but there are no actual race animations other than the car next to the grid.

Pros and Cons of Astro Rumble

Our Verdict

Bullshark Games has a diverse portfolio with plenty of interesting installments, and Astro Rumble marks their first off-world effort. The cartoonish visuals are nicely done, but I still feel that a bit more could’ve been done with the cosmic racing theme to truly make it stand out. Why not add some high-octane racing animations or cut scenes to get the adrenaline pumping, or at least some kind of intro to put the gameplay into context.

Instead, Bullshark has decided to get straight down to business after the initial splash screen, but the drooling alien driving his hot rod is admittedly an amusing touch. As for the gameplay itself, Astro Rumble offers a decently entertaining experience. Instead of collecting symbols to activate the pots in the bonus round, like in so many games of a similar nature, you get to benefit from up to all 3 pot modifiers also in the base game.

The downside is that you need the randomly triggered Cosmic Boost for this to happen, and it does not come about all that frequently. Without it, the base game is mostly a grind, and as you may expect, you need the cosmic boost to keep yourself afloat between patches of dead spins and smaller wins. It’s therefore a tad disappointing when the cosmic boost doesn’t deliver. It does shine on occasion, however, and not least when you get all 3 pot modifiers going.

This brings us to the main attraction, which is the bonus rounds. Both feature tiers can deliver solid payouts of up to 10,000x your stake, which, at least in theory, is also possible in the base game. It’s far more likely when you get all 3 pots going on each free spin, which happens from the start in the top-tier Galactic Rush bonus. The regular Rocket Race bonus is more of a hit-and-miss kind of thing, since you never know how many pots you’ll activate. Overall, Astro Rumble is a decent space-themed release, but nothing too extraordinary either.