Break Away

Break Away is an Ice Hockey theme slot that joins a growing list of sports theme slots that Microgaming have released. The game uses the 243 ways format and has several bonus features including free spins and a random wild bonus that can hit at any time.

The game uses the Rolling Reels feature which is the Microgaming version of cascading reels. Every time a win appears the symbols are removed and more symbols drop in from above. This means that every spin can award a lot of consecutive wins.

The Break Away logos are wild and appear stacked on the last three reels. While you cannot get five wilds, the wild symbols are the key to the games biggest wins. Get all three reels wild with at least one winning combination and you get the win on at least 27 ways. Get lucky and you can get several cascaded with all three reels wild.

In terms of jackpots the highest way win on Break Away is 500 coins for the five Red Players. Clearly this is not a huge pay when you play one coin per way but if you play max bet you're looking at a better 5,000 coins.

Get the top pay with the wilds as mentioned above and you're looking at an impressive 135,000 coins. After the top pay the rest of the five of a kind wins range from 250 and 80 coins with the player symbols offering the best of the rest.

During the base game the Smashing Wilds feature can be triggered at any time. Once triggered the reels freeze over and one reel is turned wild (Preview). The feature has a win guarantee so every time it triggers you will always win something. We like the win guarantee as several other games with random wilds (Immortal Romance for instance) can give you wild reels and no win at all.

The third feature on Break Away is the free spins which are triggered by getting three, four or five of the scattered Puck symbols in any position. Getting the five Puck symbols award a very nice 12,500 coins at one coin or 125,000 coins at max bet. Once triggered you win 15, 20 or 25 free games based on three, four or five scatters.

During the free spins the cascades are the key to winning big. Each spin starts off with a multiplier of X1. Each consecutive cascade then increases the multiplier to X2, X3, X4, X5 and X10. Hit the highest pay at the X10 multiplier and you win a huge 1,350,000 coins at max bet. The only negative is that the free spins cannot be re-triggered.

Microgaming have a done a great job capturing the Ice Hockey theme with Break Away. We like the fact that the game offers new game play that had not yet been seen on a Microgaming slot. We also like the big multipliers on the free spins although it would have been nice to have a re-trigger chance. Still the game offers enough in terms of jackpots and features that it should keep most slot players interested.