The Final Countdown Free Play in Demo Mode by Big Time Gaming

The Final Countdown review

Theme and Storyline

Having officially licensed Europe’s classic synth rock track The Final Countdown, Big Time Gaming have rendered one of the strangest settings for a slot machine out there. At the edge of a disco-tastic dance floor a vast Saturn V rocket sits waiting to blast off into space.

Big Time Gaming have a number of these song-themed slots and although this is not necessarily the best of the batch, the track is still a classic and the setting is weird enough to engage the player for a while at least.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

It helps in selling the strange theme and setting that the slot is extremely well designed visually. The bizarre set up comes with a fully animated concert light show and a disco-future cityscape in the background.

The sound is a fantastic mix of strange synth sounds that are both exciting and ominous in the way that the original track is and the sounds of the reels and the special symbols are all designed to really ramp up the tension.

All of this is fronted by reels that are a little more pedestrian but cleanly designed and animated with enough going on to keep one’s eyes focused on wherever the action is.

Overall, it is a good looking slot.

Gameplay

This six by four slot machine institutes an all-ways win system, meaning to hit a winning combination the symbol just needs to appear on consecutive reels starting with reel one and moving to the right.

There is no gamble feature, but the bonuses should be enough to keep you engaged (see below).

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild substitutes for any symbol except the Scatter.

Three or more Scatters anywhere on the reels pay out. They also allow you to choose between two bonus features – the Countdown feature or the Heading for Venus feature.

The Countdown feature consists of eight free spins with the countdown at 10. Every Scatter you hit reduces the countdown by up to three. If the countdown hits zero before the spins run out the feature retriggers.

During the Countdown bonus, a wandering Wild is added to reels two to five. It starts as a 2x2 sized block and grows by one square in each direction with each retrigger, up to 4x4 symbols. This also provides a multiplier to any wins using the expanded Wild of four times for the 2x2 Wild, twenty-seven times for the 3x3 Wild and 256 times for the 4x4 Wild.

In the Heading for Venus bonus, a Reel Clone occurs every spin. This means that two to four of the reels (excluding reel one and six) will match up perfectly with the same symbol in the same positions.

During the Heading for Venus Bonus, a "Velocity Bonus" occurs on Reel Clones and expand to the width and height of the number of reels. A random multiplier between x4 and x888 is applied to this Wild.

There is also a random bonus which triggers every few spins in the form of a Reel Clone. This works like the Venus Reel clone.

If a Wild lands on the cloned reels it expands vertically and horizontally to block out a square across each of the reels. The expanding wild adds the same size-based multipliers as in the Countdown bonus.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 96.65%. This is slightly higher than the estimated average for the industry that we have come up with.

The range of bet sizes on the site we tested was from a minimum of $/£/€0.20 per spin up to a maximum bet per spin of $/£/€20.00. This is a pretty small spread with a very low maximum. However, the number of people playing for $/£/€20.00 is a small percentage of our visitors we would expect.

The volatility of this game is astronomical. This is excellent as it means it pairs well with our preferred strategies.

Conclusion

The Final Countdown is a really good slot. Despite its somewhat shaky choice of source material it manages to spin a good yarn out it.

We like the high volatility and the return to player is within acceptable bounds.

This is a strong recommendation from us.