It's funny; the science behind rocketry is relatively simple – gas escapes from one end of a chamber, propelling a rocket in the opposing direction. The engineering side of things, well, that stuff's pretty darn tricky indeed. Despite landing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969, we humans haven't done much to really match that 'giant leap for mankind' in the proceeding 60-odd years since. Science fiction has blossomed, but we are yet to fully translate our imaginations to reality. In the meantime, here's a game with a bit of imagination, and rockets. Titled Rocket Blast Megaways, it comes from Pragmatic Play and gives players a chance to interact with a group of extraterrestrials while having a punt.
Space is big; sorry to state the obvious, but so big and vast there is no way of telling where Rocket Blast Megaways may be set. In our galaxy, the Milky Way, or the countless others within view of our scopes or even beyond? Somewhere an alien species resides, as off-world critters make up half the paytable, hence their presence all over Rocket Blast Megaways' game grid. Surrounding it is more space stuff – a shooting star on repeat, swirling nebulas, stars - all the romance of the universe. Capping everything off is a boppin' electro out-of-this-world soundtrack, which does a really good job of giving Rocket Blast Megaways a solid groove, sorta Rick & Morty-ish but with extra funk.
When you're ready to blast off, bets of 20 p/c to $/€240 may be picked, and there's a bonus buy costing 100 times the bet. When bought, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 scatters will land to trigger free spins. The RTP when playing Rocket Blast Megaways is 96.01%, rising to 96.09% when buying the bonus round. The game is highly volatile, like riding the Saturn 5 on take-off? Maybe not so wild, but prepare for possible bumps.
For its active gaming area, Rocket Blast Megaways uses a 6-reel grid, where each reel randomly lands 2 to 7 symbols on each spin. This alternates the ways to win up to a maximum of 117,649, and winning ways pay left to right, beginning gorm the leftmost edge. Five aliens make up the high pay symbols and are joined by 5 gemstones as the low pays. The rewards for landing a 6-of-a-kind winning way comes to 0.5 to 1x the bet for the gemstone lows and 1.5 to 20x the bet for the alien premiums. A Nova Corps helmet-looking 'W' symbol is the wild. Wilds appear on all but the leftmost reel and substitute for any regular pay symbol.
For the most part, the features covered here are the usual Megaways extras, such as tumbles and free spins with a rising multiplier. A couple of slightly lesser used mechanisms are the pre-feature gamble, and a new-ish Rocket Feature.
The Tumble mechanic removes winning symbols from the grid. The resulting empty spaces are filled by symbols above them tumbling down, and if a new win is created after the drop, the Tumble feature triggers again. When no new win lands, the total win from the tumbles is awarded.
When a Rocket symbol lands, all symbols underneath it are transformed into wilds. The Rocket blasts off and leaves a wild symbol in the position it landed in. Following this, these added wilds nudge down one position on each winning tumble, whether they were part of a win or not. When wilds nudge downwards, a new symbol appears at the top of the respective reels. Added wilds either nudge off the bottom of the grid or are removed at the end of a free spin when no more wins hit.
Hitting 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 scatter symbols triggers 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, or 35 free spins, respectively. Next, players are given the choice of gambling on a red and green gamble wheel for more free spins or collecting and moving on to the bonus round. Up to 35 free spins can be warded from the gamble feature. Losing a gamble forfeits all free spins.
A growing win multiplier is added to the free spins round. The multiplier starts at x1 and rises by +1 following each winning tumble. The multiplier does not reset until the end of the bonus round. Landing 3 scatter symbols while the round is going means players get an extra 4 free spins.
Landing a person on the moon proved to be extraordinarily difficult, not to mention an expensive task, and getting to Mars feels almost like a pipedream. As such, going even further, blasting free of the Solar System, hopping to other galaxies is going to take the sort of paradigm shifts in thinking and technology that we may not even be capable of. Not writing homo sapiens off, though. We've proven to be pretty inventive, not to mention extremely curious to know what lies just over the horizon. Perhaps one day in the future, keen minds will crack the problems of interstellar travel, how to survive long-term in a spaceship (or whatever the transportation device happens to be), and of course, how to make a buck or two when we reach the other side of the universe. Judging by the imagination on display in Rocket Blast Megaways, that day is still some way off.
That might have sounded mean, but it really wasn't meant to be. The good things about Rocket Blast Megaways made it enjoyable to test run. The space theme has been handled well, the aliens have charm, and the soundtrack really keeps the pace flowing along. As mentioned, the features are old hat for the most part – tumbles, free spins, a rising win multiplier; all starter pack Megaways stuff. The main innovation is the Rocket symbol creating wilds before blasting off. It's a little bit like the wild transformations in Power of Thor Megaways (and related slots) and reminiscent of the meatball wilds in Spicy Meatball Megaways. By no means is it exactly the same, though, and it was good for loading repeat tumble wins from time to win. Especially when there are, say, 2 stacks of nudging wilds on reels 2 and 3.
At full blast, with each booster firing, Rocket Blast Megaways is theoretically capable of hitting wins as high as 10,000 times the bet. Not the biggest Megaways potential we've come across, yet it feels fair with everything else Rocket Blast Megaways has to offer. That is, not the most inventive slot, technically speaking, but the Rocket symbol antics and lively presentation make Rocket Blast Megaways good for a take-off or two.
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