BerryBurst

Colourful? Check. Fruity? Check. Trying to emulate what might be the most successful slot NetEnt has ever released, which still tops rankings even today? Definitely check. The developer may have dragged their feet on making a sequel to the popular Starburst, but now it’s finally here and they’ve decided to make it up to players by not only releasing a spiritual successor, but by releasing two versions of it. One, a more high volatility offering for people who want to bet big and win bigger, the other, more true to the Starburst formula, with a low to medium variance and smaller jackpots.

Today, we’re taking a look at the latter, simply titled Berryburst. It gives gamblers a 5×3 playing field with cluster wins instead of paylines, and a single special feature to occupy their time and minds – expanding Wilds that grant a single re-spin afterwards, with the possibility of chaining several together to really make something cool happen. But does Berryburst’s attempt to follow in the footsteps of its predecessor work? Come with us and let’s find out together.

Visually speaking, the title keeps to a simple idea and fleshes it out. The backdrop offers a myriad of different colours, brighter on the sides and darker in the centre to draw your attention to the reels themselves, and the action going on there. There are also small bubbles rising upwards, making the whole thing look like some kind of colourful soda with fruit floating inside, though perhaps we’re simply overthinking things.

On the gameplay side of things, this version of Berryburst performs much better than the Max one. While the idea of a Max version certainly makes sense, it doesn’t really draw the same appeal as Starburst, whereas Berryburst does. Like the original, this slot is also a more low to medium volatility offering, which means its one and only feature is activated far more often, for wins that aren’t as big, but are far more frequent, allowing your nest to slowly build up and you end up in a net positive despite a string of ups and downs. If you need to choose between these two versions, we’d recommend this one.

You can play Berryburst for as little as $0.10 up to $200 per spin, meaning that your wager can go just as high in both the regular and Max versions of the title. However, where the two games do differ is in the maximum win you can take home. For Berryburst Max, the highest jackpot sits at 6,000x the bet, while regular Berryburst only goes up to 3,000x, which is still nothing to sneeze at, but certainly, not nearly as eye-grabbing as the first. For your troubles, you are given a slightly higher RTP, and, in our opinion at least, a title far more favourable for your wallet in the long run as a result.

While the symbols themselves are simple in concept, the artists at NetEnt must really like their fruits if they spent all this time not only drawing them to look like you can just reach at your screen to grab them and put them in your mouth, but also give them a light, floating animation that makes them look much more livelier than normal. Slots are still called fruit machines in some places and Berryburst is drawing on that nostalgia factor as well for some people, without doubt.

There’s only one special feature to talk about and those are expanding Wilds. These can appear anywhere and as soon as they do, they cover the entire reel and prompt a re-spin to occur. The expanded Wild itself becomes sticky for the duration. If another Wild lands while the first one is still present, another re-spins is rewarded and both Wilds remain sticky, and this can continue on until you have a board full of Wilds.