Expansion

The Betsoft team has given us another sci-fi release called the Expansion slot. This game is all about an alien invasion in a relaxing countryside. The soothing visuals and sounds of nature are contrasted with spaceships, stars, and planets. Expansion introduces a lot of interesting mechanics to the base game in the form of directional wild zappers. If you want a lot of wilds on your reels, this is the game for you. But that is not all the extra mechanics this slot has to offer and we will cover more of them later.

For now, know that the game has a decent RTP value of 96.08% and a maximum payout of 1212x the bet. This might sound a bit low at first but wait until you hear about the wagering range. The game is very stable in its payouts with medium variance but it does have a slight problem with its lower regular symbol payouts. Let us analyse each aspect of this game in our Expansion slot review.

The base game of the Expansion slot is quite entertaining to play due to all of the extra features appearing in it. When you first launch these reels you will notice a relaxing soundtrack complemented by a soothing nature-themed background. But soon you will see the eerie truth that an alien invasion is going on in the background.

There are 5 reels and 4 rows in the game with 30 active paylines. Players can score wins by arranging at least 3 identical symbols in these paylines. The game pays left to right for symbol combinations. Multiple payline wins are combined.

There are 10 regular symbols with the standard split between low-win and high-win ones. The lower-paying symbols appear as standard card royals. The high-win symbols look like planets, asteroids, and stars. There are also wilds that can appear on the board along with mystery symbols. But more on those later.

Before spinning the Expansion reels you will first have to place a bet. You can choose between a $0.3 bet to a $300 bet. This is quite a high wagering ceiling so be careful not to place a higher bet than you would have liked. Managing your bankroll for slots is quite important. In any case, the maximum you can win in the game is 1212x the bet with medium volatility. The RTP of the game is a decent value of 96.08%.

The most common payouts you can get are from regular symbols. The highest-paying symbol is the star. However, the overall payouts are quite low for regular symbols. We think this is because the game has a lot of potential for wilds as they can appear in great numbers with the extra features. Still, the low symbol payouts are something to keep in mind.

Players also have the betting option of purchasing free spins with the Buy feature for 60x the bet.

Betsoft’s Expansion has a couple of special mechanics that keep the base game quite interesting. Moreover, they are responsible for the higher payouts in the game. Let us cover all of them and see how they interact with each other.

• Stacked Mystery Symbols – Each reel contains stacked mystery symbol positions that are replaced with one random regular symbol before each spin. All mystery symbol positions are filled with the same symbol per spin.
• Directional Wilds – The wild in this slot functions as in any other by substituting for regular symbols. However, there are also directional wilds that can land on the reels. When they do the reels stop and a ray gun appears. It will then fire in one of the 8 directions surrounding its position. All symbols in that direction are replaced by wilds and the ray gun also transforms into a wild. Directional wilds can appear on reels 2, 3, and 4.
• Free Spins – Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters will reward the player with 8, 12, or 15 free spins respectively. During free spins, directional wilds gain an extra blast from the ray gun. This means that you will potentially get double the wilds than in the base game. Furthermore, during free spins, a random multiplier is active and will be displayed. Each win is multiplied depending on the value which can be anywhere from 2x to 10x.

One final note is that these powerful free spins can be retriggered if more scatters land.