Starz Megaways Slot Review

Starz Megaways Game Details

RTP:	96.48%
Reels:	6
Paylines:	117,649

Jackpot:	10,000 x Stake
Progressive:	No
Bonus Round:	Yes

Free Spins:	Yes
Auto Play Feature:	Yes
Scatter Symbol:	Yes

Where To Play Starz Megaways

SlotJoint

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Starz Megaways is the second release from Pragmatic Play to use Big Time Gaming’s Megaways mechanic – and, I’m going to be completely honest here; I love what the software provider has done with the game.

Yes, it’s clearly a clone of NetEnt’s Starburst, but the addition of the Megaways engine completely changes up the game, and I’m a huge fan that the game developer has managed to build a free spins bonus round into the slot.

How To Play

Something I personally love about Pragmatic Play’s slots is the fact that they’re so easy-to-play. Starz Megaways, despite using Big Time Gaming’s Megaways mechanic, utilises Pragmatic’s classic user-interface, and this makes actually playing the game incredibly simple.

The first thing you’ll need to do is select the amount of money you actually want to stake on each spin. This is easily achieved using the + and – buttons to the right-hand-side of the screen, and you can just scroll through the different bet options available to you until you find one that you’re comfortable with.

Once you’ve chosen your bet, you simply need to hit the big spin button – and the game will begin! It’s that simple – and playing Starz Megaways really couldn’t be any easier!

Like all video slots today, Starz Megaways also offers an autoplay function. When activated, this automatically plays up to 100 spins for you, preventing you from having to manually click every time you want to play a new game. You’ll see the autoplay button directly below the main spin button – and you can also set it up so that it stops automatically, when hitting a pre-set loss/win limit, for example. Pragmatic Play also lets you “slam stop” the reels.

When a spin has started, you can simply press the spin button to immediately stop the reels – drastically reducing the amount of time between spins and allowing you to play significantly more rounds per hour than you would otherwise!

Symbols and Payouts

Before I start talking about the symbols you’ll find in Starz Megaways I want to cover something very important; unlike conventional video slots, which require you to line-up symbols from left-to-right, Starz Megaways is a win-both-ways machine. This means that wins are formed from both left-to-right and right-to-left – essentially doubling the chances of you hitting a winning combination of symbols on each spin. It’s great – and I, personally, am a big fan!

The game doesn’t use any non-gem symbols, and you’ll see these presented in 6 colours; pink, blue, purple, red, and green, with payouts worth between 1.2X and 5X your stake for lining up a 6-of-a-kind combo. That may not sound like much, but when you consider all symbols are stacked on all reels – and that it’s a win-both-ways slot – you soon see where the game’s win-potential lies.

There’s also a funky-looking wild symbol in Starz Megaways – and this is represented by the yellow and red star. The wild lands on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5 only – and when it lands in view, it automatically expands to cover the entire reel it’s on, helping to increase wins. There’s also a scatter symbol, which is represented by the Ball of Fire. The scatter is key to triggering the main free spins bonus round, details of which I’m going to talk about below.

Bonus Features

Aside from the expanding wild feature I just told you about, Starz Megaways has one main bonus round – and it’s delivered in the form of a free spins bonus round. I’ll cover details of this bonus – and how it works – below.

Free Spins

The free spins bonus round in Starz Megaways is triggered by landing 3, 4, 5 or 6 of the scatter symbols anywhere in view during the base-game. The scatter symbols, remember, are the Balls of Fire, and they appear on all 6 reels.

Landing three scatter symbols awards you with 6 free spins, while landing four or five scatter symbols awards you with 8 and 10 free spins respectively. If you manage to land all 6 scatter symbols, you’ll win a whopping 15 free spins – which is a massive amount.

During the free spins, you’ll want to keep a close eye out for the wild symbols. Whenever one of the wilds lands in view, it will expand – covering the entire reel it lands on. Most crucially, however, it will lock in place – essentially meaning the entire reel stays wild for the duration of the bonus! This is why it’s so crucial to get a good amount of free spins to begin with – and if you can get a few wild reels early on in the bonus, you can expect to walk away with some massive hits!

Jackpot and How To Win

Like most Pragmatic Play slots, Starz Megaways has a maximum win cap – and the most you can win from a single spin (or the total for the free spins bonus) is 10,000X your stake. This is a massive amount of money – although I should point out it’s far less than the slot is technically capable of producing.

I wasn’t able to produce a jackpot win during my review, but a handful of decent returns did come along, as a result of the free spins rounds. This was one of the best.

In order to hit the 10,000X win-potential, you’ll need to trigger the free spins bonus round and get a few of the reels transformed into wilds. It’s then a case of lining up 6-of-a-kind combos of the highest-paying symbols – and with enough Megaways, it’s more than possible to achieve this win-potential – so Starz Megaways does a good job in ticking the boxes when it comes to offering players the ability to win big!

Software

Unlike some of Pragmatic Play’s earlier video slots, Starz Megaways – along with all of the games they release today – is fully mobile-optimized, and this means it’s perfectly playable from all mobile devices. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that the game developer’s new HTML5 software is superior to that used by even some of the biggest software providers – so you won’t have any issues if you’re looking to play Starz Megaways from your mobile device.

Nothing really changes in the mobile-optimized version of Starz Megaways, although a few of the game’s options/settings have been nestled away under one main navigation menu instead of showing themselves right on the main slot screen.

While I was putting this Starz Megaways slot review together, I tested out the game for a good 30 minutes on my mobile devices – and that includes an Android phone and an Apple iPad. My WIFI connection wasn’t particularly strong, I’ll admit – yet even then, Starz Megaways worked incredibly well – and I didn’t run into any significant lag or freezing – something that I’ve found is common with some game developers (Quickspin being a good example.)

So, in summary – it doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to play Starz Megaways from a desktop computer, laptop, or mobile device; you’ll be able to play the game and enjoy it, without constant freezing, lagging or glitching, as we see in some of the so-called “mobile-optimized” slots today. Pragmatic Play has done an excellent job here, and the software is solid.

Summary

Starz Megaways is an excellent release from Pragmatic Play – I feel. It’s rare you’d hear me (or anyone in the online gambling industry) say that about a video slot that is built around NetEnt’s Starburst – but the addition of the Megaways mechanic, combined with the free spins bonus round helps put the slot into a league of its own – and I’m really impressed with everything, from the visuals and creative elements of the game to the way in which the bonus actually works.

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I also really like that you’re able to win up to 10,000X your stake – and it’s an amount that actually feels achievable, unlike other Megaways slots that just feel impossible to ever win on! Starz Megaways is a great release from Pragmatic, and I’m pleased to see it’s getting a lot of play-time at online casinos as I feel it’s a really well thought out and well-made game.

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Author
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Alex Smith

Alex has worked in the iGaming industry for more than 8 years. He's an expert at crafting in-depth, impartial reviews - and covers everything from slots and casinos to sportsbooks and game guides. In his spare time, he likes to pick up a guitar - and he's currently (trying) to learn Chinese!