Star Pops - Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Star Pops Slot Review

Electric Elephant’s Star Pops appears to be an attempt to fit as many colours as possible into a video slot. You’ll find 8 reels and 8 rows, each filled exclusively with one bright balloon after another. Unlike many slots, there are no paylines. Instead, you win by collecting clusters of matching symbols. There are still bonus features, however, including free spins and multipliers. Here’s our Star Pops slot review.

Soaring High

If you’re feeling the urge to leave the earth behind, taking off into the Star Pops slot is certainly an option. The background is pure sky, a pleasant blue crossed by white wisps. There’s a stiff breeze blowing, keeping those clouds in motion, and you can almost feel the air on your face. Lively disco music keeps things moving.

All the Colours

Why are we so far up in the sky? Because that’s what happens with balloons! Take your eye off them for a moment and off they go, floating into the atmosphere. Blue balloons, green balloons, yellow balloons, purple balloons, red balloons... there are even star-shaped ones like rainbows. As for the title, sometimes these balloons do pop, so be aware if that makes you wince.

Star Pops RTP and Variance

The Star Pops slot has an RTP of 96.59%. The variance is high. It’s not far off the Holy Hand Grenade slot.

How to Play Star Pops

Slots may vary in format, but most still have a spin button:

1. Pretty much all of the buttons here float on the right. The top one will take you straight to the paytable, explaining the payout potential for all available clusters of winning symbols.
2. When you’re in the paytable, the other buttons are still visible. That includes your bet settings and a sound settings page where you can separate sounds and background music.
3. Bet and sound are on the main screen, so you can change them whenever you want. Your bet should reflect your budget as well as your comfort with risk.
4. Some casinos allow demo play to let you get a feel for a slot, but even if not, it’s good practice to maintain sensible budgeting and betting. It keeps you in control.
5. With all settings and budgeting sorted, it’s time to spin. Don’t expect to make money in slots. You don’t know if you’ll find winning symbols.
6. That means it’s a very bad idea to chase losses. Your focus should be having fun and stopping when the fun is over.
7. Always play responsibly.

How to Win at Star Pops

There aren’t many slots with an 8x8 layout, but don’t panic. Yes, the win mechanism is a bit different from finding paylines, but it’s not too complicated. The Star Pops slot has cluster pays, which means you need a cluster of at least 5 symbols to win. They have to be adjacent, but they could connect horizontally or vertically. The star balloon is both a wild symbol and a scatter symbol, acting as a substitute and triggering bonuses from anywhere on the reels.

Top Wins

• It’s clusters of 25 or more symbols that will score you the biggest wins.
• Interestingly, every regular balloon symbol has the same value.
• That means the minimum win multiplier is 0.25x your bet and the maximum is x5.
• Where the big prizes in this slot lie are in combinations of increasing multipliers, up to x1000.
• The max win overall is x14,165.

Bet Range

The minimum bet in the Star Pops slot is 0.2. The maximum is 50.

Star Pops Bonuses

Broadly speaking, Star Pops bonus features fall into one of three categories. There are the cascading symbols, the increasing combined multipliers and the free spins. You could see your total win grow, but as with all slots, no payout is ever promised. Cascades and multipliers are in the base game as well as the free spins round.

Cascading Symbols

Winning balloons pop (not that surprising, considering the title) and new ones cascade (or should we say float?) into place. That means an extra chance of filling a cluster. With every successful cascade, the win multiplier attached to each balloon increases by +1, starting at x1. The highest individual multiplier is x100, but when combined, they can go up to x1000.

Destroy Feature

There is another type of cascade that happens on non-winning spins. Sometimes a non-winning balloon will randomly pop of its own accord, setting off a chain reaction in the symbols that surround it (a bit like a cluster). When they’re done, new balloons need to float in via another cascade.

Star Wild Connector

Star wilds can float like other symbols after wins, but they can also move left or right if there’s no space above it. A wild that’s in two clusters at once can make multipliers combine.

Free Spins

This is when the wild acts as a scatter symbol, with three of them triggering 7 free spins. It’s like demo mode, except wins still pay for real. During free spins, wilds are sticky and remain in place.

Max-win 14,165x

Volatility High

Top RTP 96.6%

Star Pops Review - Our Verdict

If we had to use one word to sum up the Star Pops slot, it’d be colourful. Really, there’s no better way to describe it. This Electric Elephant slot is about more than those eye-popping (pardon the pun) colours, however, with cascades that can occur both after wins and non-wins, plus free spins and those increasing multipliers. 

Disclaimer: Star Pops trademark / license is owned by Electric Elephant. This site is not endorsed by Electric Elephant.