Space Miners

Theme and Design

In my opinion one of the great strengths of this slot is the sound and visuals. Relax Gaming slots are always notable for their high production values and they are immediately obvious in Space Miners too. The similarities with Reactoonz may be clear but from the first spin the slick animations and clean illustrative style, as well as the woozy alien soundtrack set this game apart from its rival.

As you can see in this screenshot we are in deep space, with a dark blue backdrop of stars and planets and the odd space craft floating past. The grid is set in a mining station with weird looking alien creatures populating the reels whilst in the bonus round the backdrop makes way for a pink screen littered with carts of minerals. Look out for cool animations as well like the Space Ship Bonus Symbol which files off the grid and drops into a little landing pad to the right of the grid.

Everything looks superb and in short, this is a beautifully crafted slot.

RTP and Variance

Space Miners has a solid RTP of 96.47% which is above the average of around 96% for an online slot game. It is also slightly over other popular Relax Gaming slots like Beast Mode (96.32%) and Money Train 3 (96.1%).

Like much of Relax Gaming’s best output it is a high variance slot with an unpredictable pay distribution. It may blow cold for long periods before you reap a whirlwind of high payouts in one short session. But it certainly has the capacity to kick out some big wins.

Maximum Win

This is one of Relax Gaming’s highest max potential slots with a top payout of 50,000x. That puts it up there with Wild Yield (50,000x), Dead Rider’s Trail (50,000x) and Dead Man’s Trail (50,000x) and second only to Money Train 3 (100,000x).

Symbols and Paytable

First up, I should say that Space Miners is a Win Ways game. That means, wins are created by landing 3 or more identical symbols across the reels from left to right, regardless of their row position. You will find this mechanic in lots of slot games and its super fun because it means you have many more ways to score wins.

The game takes place on a 6 reel and 10 row grid. Initially, only the middle 3 rows contain symbols. The top 4 and bottom 3 rows contain only blocker symbols. This means that 729 win ways are in play. This grid expands as blockers are removed with successive wins – which we will come onto in a minute. At full height the game grid is 6 reels and 10 rows bringing in an extraordinary 1,000,000 win ways.

I wasn’t so impressed with the values in the paytable which top out at just 5x for 6 reds. However, the high number of win ways really offsets this by bringing more potential wins per spin. You'll notice this for sure as you start playing the game - its about building successive wins over the course of several re-spins as the grid grows in size rather than one off wins on a single spin.

Low values are the colored gems in blue, purple, green and yellow. These are worth from 0.1x for 3 blues up to 0.4x for 6 yellows. The alien creatures, in blue, purple, green, yellow and red, are worth from 0.2x for 3 blues up to 5x for 6 reds.

To help you along the way is a box of crystals which is the game’s Wild symbol. That has no value on its own but will substitute in for other symbols to create win ways.

Features and Gameplay

Compared to other slots of its type, including Reactoonz and Space Wars 2, Space Miners is a particularly simple slot. It’s all about opening up the grid by landing successive wins and attempting to trigger the free spins round. Along the way there are some special features to help you.

Re-Spins, Blocker Tiles and Power Ups

Unlike other similar slots, Space Miners does not use a Tumbling Wins mechanic to trigger reel expansions. Instead, after each win, any of the blocker symbols that sit adjacent to a winning symbol will be removed and real pay symbols drop in to replace them. A re-spin is also awarded. Another win removes more blockers and triggers another re-spin and so on.

Effectively, with each successive win you are removing more blockers, adding more win ways and giving yourself a greater chance of payouts.

But that’s not all. My favourite part of this slot is the Power Up features. These are embedded in blockers so you don’t know when they will appear. But when they do, they destroy more blockers in one go, expanding your reel set much quicker.

• A Cross Power Up will destroy all blockers in a vertical or horizontal line around the blocker.
• A Horizontal Power Up will destroy all blockers in a horizontal line from the blocker.
• A Vertical Power Up will destroy all blockers in a vertical line from the blocker.
• A 3x3 Power Up will destroy all blockers in a 3x3 area around the blocker.

Free Spins Round – The Grid Does NOT Re-Set

The free spins round is not hugely different to the main game, which is a shame because I would like to have seen more features here. However, it does have one big advantage. After each sequence of wins, the grid does not re-set so it continues to expand, giving you a real chance of destroying all blockers and playing with 1,000,000 win ways.

To unlock free spins you need to collect 3 of the space ship bonus symbols. That gets you 6 spins. For each bonus symbol above the 3 collected you get another 2 spins. And, every bonus symbol that lands in the free spins round adds an extra spin too.