Cricket Star is one of the few slot machines that are inspired by the sport of cricket, which is quite popular in certain parts of the world, but not very well known in the West. It might not have gotten a lot of attention from other companies, but Microgaming did a good job with this game, and the result should please most cricket fans. The Cricket Star’s layout is comprised of 5 reels which have 3 symbols each one, with a total of 243 ways to win allowing you to form combinations. The wins that you get from Cricket Star will put up to $62,500 in your bank account, though you first need to wager big enough to get to that level. The features look very good, including here the scatter symbols, the stacked wilds and free spins which have Rolling Reels that can apply multipliers of up to 10x.
The bets that Cricket Star will allow you to place are a bit higher than those from other slots with a similar number of ways to win. You need to use the equivalent of 50 lines for your bets, while other slots will use only 25 or 30. You can have up to 10 coins for each of those 50 lines, while coin sizes go up to $0.50. The bets that can be used in this game vary between $0.50 and $250.
The game is entirely inspired by the sport of cricket, and so everything about its design comes from that. You can see in the background a stadium that is filled with fans of the sport, while on the reels there are only symbols which show you balls, players, referees and fans, so nothing that wouldn’t belong in such a game. I found the graphics to be fairly enjoyable, which is something that a lot of other sport themed slot machines can’t claim. It was released within the last couple of years, so you get very good graphics from it.
Microgaming has made sure to include plenty of great features in Cricket Star, but it hasn’t made it a unique title. The exact same features and payouts that you see in Cricket Star I’ve noticed in other slots of theirs, so it looks more of a clone of an existing title in terms of mechanics, with a re-skin of the design. I’m sure that fans of cricket will not complain about this, but it’s worth noting that they have quite a few titles like this, where they don’t invest that much time in giving players something unique gameplay wise. The slot has the Rolling Reels feature active here, which means that whenever you get a winning combo, you also get a chance at additional combinations forming, the game removing the symbols that participated, and bringing new ones in for free. The features start off with the stacked wild symbol, which you may get on the last three reels only. Because of this, you may use a wild symbol to form a combination with its help, as a substitute, but it can’t get you paid on its own. More than 40 wilds are apparently used on those reels, so you have decent odds of landing a win with their help. Wild Wickets is a randomly occurring feature, which can give you one wild reel, out of the three middle ones. That round, with the Wild Wickets wild reel, will have a guaranteed win for you. You don’t get Rolling Reels while this feature is active. You will find that the best rewards offered in this game will come via the scattered Cricket Ball, a symbol which can appear on all reels, and which can reward you with up to 250 times the wager if you get it enough times. 3, 4 or 5 scatter icons will also get you 15, 20 or 25 free spins, in addition to the rewards that I mentioned. The Rolling Reels feature will have a growing multiplier while in free spins mode, reaching a value of up to 10x if triggered enough times during the same spin.
If you look only at the biggest win of the base game, it’s going to be the scatter symbol that brings it to you, offering up to $62,500 cash. Regular combinations can pay up to $2,500 during regular spins, and up to $25,000 during the free ones. We’re looking at an RTP of about 96% in Cricket Star, which makes it a good choice for any fan of the sport, since it’s in line with what many other good slot machines are offering these days.
Cricket Star is not a completely unique slot gameplay wise, but cricket fans will not find anything better looking or with better overall payouts, so I recommend they give it a try.