Hey, up there in the sky, is it a chopper? Is it a drone? No, it's… Supermania? Yep, Supermania is a superhero online slot from fecund developer Pragmatic Play. One of the keys to the studio's fecundity is the willingness to drop a hit slot and then copy the living daylights out of it. The original release, in this instance, is Gate of Olympus, a scatter pays slot which has gone on to sire a stack of follow-ups and reskins. Supermania is another one offering the same list of stats and features while swapping out the character accompanying players and providing a different location in which to experience it all.
The chap in question is Supermania, presumably, the beardy, neatly quiffed hero in the purple jumpsuit, red cape a-blowing in the breeze. Flaunting his Infinity Gauntlet-like glove, he bobs up and down on a glowing pole device. Not really sure what it is supposed to be, but it is high up in the air. Anyway, it's a fine day for super-heroing above some urban location. The graphics have a light, bright, clear look about them that makes them easy on the eyes, and the superhero theme makes a refreshing change.
There are little to no refreshing changes anywhere else, though, and stats are one thing which has stayed the same. This means Supermania is a highly volatile online slot, producing a default RTP of 96.5% no matter how players choose to tackle the game – betting 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin, activating the Ante Bet, or buying free spins. When switching the Ante Bet on, the stake increases by 25%, doubling the chance of triggering free spins. Should you choose to buy free spins, the cost is 100 times the bet.
Supermania is a scatter-paying slot, so it does not use ways or paylines to create wins. Instead, when there are 8 or more identical symbols in view anywhere on the 6x5 gaming grid, a win is created. For low pays, Supermania has high-tech-looking 10 to A card royals, and for highs, there are 4 superhero-type accessories. When hitting an 8-9 of a kind scatter win, players are awarded 0.25 to 10 times the bet, increasing in value to 2 to 50 times the bet for landing a 12-30 symbol scatter win. Wilds are absent from Supermania's board at all times.
Time to fly into the feature where we've got tumbles, multiplier symbols, and free spins left to inspect.
After winning scatters appear on the grid, the tumble feature removes all of the symbols involved in the win. The spaces this creates are filled by symbols tumbling downwards from above. Tumbling continues until no more winning combinations appear on the reels. There is no limit to the number of tumbles possible.
Multiplier symbols are present on all reels and randomly land on spins or tumbles in the base game and in free spins. When multiplier symbols land, they do so with a value of x2 to x500. When a sequence of tumbles ends, the values of all multiplier symbols in view are added up and applied to the total win.
The superhero guy is displayed on Supermania's scatter symbol. Landing 4, 5, or 6 scatters awards 15 free spins plus a payout of 3x, 5x, or 100x the bet, respectively. During free spins, when a multiplier symbol lands and the spin results in a win, the multiplier value is added to the global multiplier. For the full round, whenever a new multiplier symbol lands and a win occurs, the global multiplier is used to multiply the win. Hitting 3 or more scatter symbols during the free spins round awards an additional 5 free spins.
Ho hum, by now, after ploughing through a good number of these Gates of Olympus-type games, it's a challenge to get excited by yet another one. No faulting Supermania's gameplay, which is as good as ever, but you know, do the same thing again and again, and the novelty shock is probably going to wear off eventually. Maybe not always, but broadly speaking, repeating the same thing over and over can get a tad tiring. Supermania's pleasing presentation does its best to hold boredom at bay, but really, this is the same as it was in Gates of Olympus, Grace of Ebisu, and so on and so forth.
As stated, the gameplay remains good, so it's not hard to see why Pragmatic Play keeps reusing the original slot's blueprints again. And again. The sweet interaction between scatter wins, tumbles, and multiplier symbols returns, with the added oomph of having a total multiplier in free spins. Impressive multiplier values are theoretically possible, as are jolly game moments. One wonders what winning potential could have been, what with multipliers of up to x500 possible, but payouts are kept in check, to a degree, by a win cap of 5,000x the bet. From a technical standpoint, Supermania functions as well as any of its predecessors.
Still, this kind of means, at best, Supermania is as good as the games that came before it, but no better. As such, it's hard to be anything more than apathetic about its release. It does look pretty neat, but beyond that, Supermania provides the same old same old stuff.
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