Overview Of Star Clusters
Star Clusters is Big Time Gaming’s latest offering with a brand new patented mechanic called MEGACLUSTERS. What does this mean exactly, well to be honest I can only assume it will be like Reactoonz and the other cluster games but with some Megaways twist on it, either way its nice just to have a game with a new format so let’s see if it’s any good or if it’s a flop like Holy Diver was!
Slot Description
Star Clusters is a MEGACLUSTERS game that begins with 4 rows and 4 columns in the base game and 8 rows and 8 columns in the Free Spins as shown below.
Winning symbols split and react, allowing up to 256 symbols to occur during the Free Spin round. Wins consist of 5 or more matching symbols of any size, both horizontally or vertically adjacent to one another, in layman’s terms they have to be touching!
When wins occur, each winning symbol is replaced by 4 smaller symbols, these don’t fall down initially. The 4 spaces spin like a mini slot machine and 4 new symbols land, when wins occur with these smaller symbols, symbols of the same size now cascade downwards and new symbols drop in from the top of the screen to fill the void. To be honest at times it can be a huge amount of info to take in and to begin with I had no idea what was happening!
Moving onto the wild symbols now and we have 2 variants. We have the regular wild which substitutes for all symbols except the gold wild. The gold wild substitutes for all symbols and you can have up to 2 gold wilds at any one time.
The difference between the 2 wilds is the fact the gold one adds a 1x multiplier each time its used in a win, the multiplier of course resets at the end of each spin unless the free spins are triggered.
Star Clusters Free Spins
When 5 or more reactions occur in the base game, the free spins are triggered. 2 free spins are awarded plus 1 for each reaction beyond the fifth, the gold wild multiplier also carries over to the free spin round if you have one.
Each time the gold wild multiplier reaches a multiple of 10 you get awarded an extra 2 spins
While I was testing the game I got 3 free spin rounds and they all came within the first 20 spins! Two of the rounds were less than 5x my stake and one of them was 50x my stake, since then I can’t trigger them, I get 4 reactions and lose on the fifth!
Star Clusters Paytable
Starting with the low paying symbols first, we have the blue and yellow gems paying 10x your total stake and the orange and green gems paying 20x your stake, both of these pays are for clusters of 25+ and you’re going to need to be in the free spin round to have a good chance of hitting clusters that size.
Now moving onto the premium symbols we have the blue gem paying 25x your stake, the red gem paying 30x your stake and in true BTG fashion we have the purple gem as the top symbol paying the usual 50x max award. 
Final Thoughts On Star Clusters
Star Clusters has an RTP of 96.54% and as with all BTG games it is safely in the super high variance category.
Did I enjoy it? Yes I did and once I understood the mechanics of the game it became a lot more enjoyable as you have a better idea of what you want and in what section of the board, however, I soon became more interested in the random sound effects (I heard a Street Fighter 2 Hadouken and a Homer Simpson Wahooy sound fx!) than the actual game, it didn’t have me engaged per se.
Is it a flop? Potentially yes, potentially no, it all depends on what sort of win’s we see in the future and if it becomes a fan favourite like Reactoonz. Now speaking of Reactoonz this is where I think the MEGACLUSTER mechanics could become legendary, by integrating into existing tried and tested games, can you imagine a Gargatoon on a 256 space board!!!
Anyway, thanks for reading and if you want a go yourself there’s a link a link below, the game is currently exclusive to Betfair and Paddy Power but it will be rolled out across the NYX casino network in the next few weeks, keep it responsible and always good luck!