StarScape Pokie Machine
Sci-Fi themed pokies are all the rage, with loads of games that feature planets, stars, aliens and spaceships. Microgaming have added StarScape to their range and it’s a fairly typical of the genre, with 5 reels, 25 paylines and a couple of simple bonus features to hopefully send players bankrolls into orbit.
Bright, bold graphics, a good bet range and an easy to understand format makes this a good choice for players looking for a straightforward game, but anyone looking for lots of bonus features and flashy animations may be a little disappointed.
To StarScape…And Beyond!
The background to the reels sums up the game title and consists of thousands of stars, while they also twinkle behind the symbols on the reels. The payline indicators to each side of the game show where each line starts or finishes and add some colour, while the control buttons beneath are designed to look like they are part of a spacecraft and are equally colourful.
The bet range should be suitable for all budgets, with players able to activate just a single line for a 0.01 spin, although obviously, any winning combinations that fall across the other 24 lines won’t count, so to play across all of them will cost 0.25 per spin.
The value of a coin is displayed in a little holographic globe and can be raised to a maximum of 2.00, while 10 coins can be played per line for an overall maximum possible stake of 500.00.
As this is a relatively simple pokie, the payouts are all listed on a single screen, which reveals what each symbol is worth and how the bonus features work. Wins are made up of the same type of symbol coming to a rest across an active line on adjacent reels, with the line needing to start from the left hand side.
Like many Microgaming pokies, the lower wins are earned by lining up 9, 10, J, Q, K and A symbols which are brightly coloured but not really in keeping with the theme, as they are the same style as seen across much of Microgaming’s collection of pokies.
The job of making StarScape look appropriately spacey is taken up by the images of various planets, moons, stars and comets that make up the higher value symbols and really give StarScape its’ atmosphere, even if the objects in space don’t have any of their own.
Starscape
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Extra-terrestrial Extras
Like many games, StarScape has a wild symbol that helps to complete winning lines by acting as any other base symbol. The game logo is wild and doubles the amount of any win it helps to create, while it’s also the highest value symbol when landing across a line.
The single bonus round is launched by the space ship scatter, which will also pay out wins of 2x, 3x, 10x or 100x the total stake whenever 2, 3, 4 or 5 appear in any positions on the reels. This game takes place on a second screen that’s filled with a picture of the stars and planets which is divided into a 5 x 5 grid. The aim is simply to click on each section of the grid, revealing different symbols until 4 are matched, when a prize will be paid out and the round ends.
The amount that can be won is displayed on a table next to the game and it’s possible to win up to 37,500 coins by finding the top-paying symbols before lower value ones are revealed.
A Shining Star Or A Black Hole?
In some ways StarScape is a well-designed and exciting pokie, while in others, it’s really plain and simple. The images of stars and planets are very nicely presented and the bonus game looks good, plus it can pay out some great winnings.
On the other hand, the playing card symbols are just the standard ones seen across so many Microgaming pokies, and there’s no free spins game, which many players now like to see.
But these are fairly minor issues and players looking for a pokie themed around space adventures should find this one to be a pretty good example.