Starburst

Released in early 2012, Starburst is an extremely popular online slot that has captured the hearts of countless players over the years. It was a staple in welcome offers for many years, being the game of choice for free spins.

With only one bonus feature, Starburst still manages to offer fast-paced excitement that anyone can discern in the first couple of spins. To this day, it is not uncommon to see it in online crypto casinos' “most played games” feed.

If you've never tried Starburst, you likely haven’t gambled online.

With this much success, one might assume NetEnt would try to cash-in with sequels left and right, but that is not the case and this is something that potentially contributed to the game’s longevity. In the summer of 2018, NetEnt released BerryBurst (MAX), a kind of fruit themed sequel to Starburst, but even though it was never a big hit with players, it is still a decent game. It took almost ten years before finally in 2021 the official sequel came out, with the release of Starburst XXXtreme.

Starburst is a classic online slot game with 5 reels, 3 rows and 10 fixed bet lines that pay both ways. It’s great in its simplicity as there is only one bonus symbol to look out for in Starburst, and that is the rainbow-patterned star known as the Starburst Wild. When it lands, it expands to fill the reel and triggers a re-spin, and it substitutes for all other symbols. Even though this game is over 10 years old, it manages to not look or feel outdated. The visuals are nothing to write home about as most symbols are different colored gems. But we feel that this is something that ties in nicely with the simplicity of the gameplay.

The music stands out as the most star-inspired aspect of this game, with spacey synth sounds and a tense melody. The sci-fi beeps when you spin enhance the theme of this game, balancing out the classic slot whirring of the spinning reels and light clicks when they come to a stop.

FAQ

There are 10 paylines in Starburst that win both ways. In other words, wins pay out when they are consecutive from left to right, but also from right to left. Wins on any of the 10 bet lines must start from the leftmost or rightmost reel to pay out.

If you have multiple wins on the same payline both ways, the highest of those will pay out. If, however, you have multiple wins on different paylines, those are added together. As for the symbols, the BAR symbol is worth the most, followed by the 7, then the gems of yellow, green, red, blue, and finally purple color in descending order of value.

Everything in Starburst revolves around the Starburst Wild symbol which can stand in for all other symbols in the game to help you win as much as possible. It can land on reels 2, 3 and 4.

If a wild symbol lands on the reels, the symbol expands to cover the entire reel. The reel, now made up entirely of wild symbols, stays in place after any winnings are paid out, while a new spin starts on the rest of the reels. A feature that behaves this way is called the Sticky Wild Re-spin.

If another wild symbol lands during the re-spin, it too expands across the entire reel and stays with the first one for another spin, giving you even greater chances of winning thanks to the two wild reels.

You can get a maximum of 3 re-spins during a single round of the Starburst Wild Feature, i.e. when you have filled the three middle reels with wilds. This is also what you need to do to achieve the maximum win.