Hockey and gambling have a lot in common. Both favor players who like to play hard, those who are willing to sacrifice time and money for their hobby. Luck also plays an important role - you won’t get far without luck, regardless of whether you want to win in hockey or in slots.
Hockey is not a common theme for online slot machines. But Microgaming decided to take the risk and dedicated an online slot machine called Break Away to all the fans of ice, hard hits and nice goals. The game doesn't have any official license, and so don’t come expecting any well-known team or player. It's all perfectly generic.
Full offense, and with no winning lines
Right from the get go, one needs to mention that Break Away is a non-line slot machine. However, it still holds that the winning combinations are read from left to right.
Graphically the game is not bad at all, and basically offers all the things you love about hockey. Symbols exclusively carry the hockey theme. But we couldn’t shake the feeling that it all felt a bit “numb”. We somehow expected more action and dynamics in a hockey-inspired game. The sounds also don’t do much to help with the first impression. They do have some hockey spirit in them, but we expected more.
Bonuses which can hit home
In any case, our criticism of the visuals should be taken as a subjective opinion. The game has a lot more to offer in terms of special symbols and bonuses - one can say that this is an area where the slot machine is above the average.
Of course, the baseline consists of Wild and Scatter symbols, which have nowadays become a standard component of many slot machines, not just this hockey-themed one. The Wild symbol functions as a wildcard and allows you to replace a missing symbol in winning combinations. In Break Away, these appear only on reels 3, 4 and 5.
The Wild symbol is also linked to a so-called Wild feature. This special bonus is activated randomly on the gaming field. When that happens, several hockey players will appear on the screen and the reel they end up hitting will turn into a Wild reel (whereas this will also create a winning combination).
Next comes the Scatter bonus. To activate that, you need to get 3 or more Scatter symbols anywhere on your reels. This immediately rewards you with free spins, the number of which depends on the number of Scatter symbols you see. 3 symbols give you 15 free spins, 4 give 20 and 5 give 25. You can't win further free spins during free spin mode. However, if you do get a second win during a single spin (i.e., after the original symbols disappear), this win is multiplied by a factor of 2; if you win once more, that win is multiplied by 3 (all in all, the multipliers are: 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x). This means that all you need is a single combo to get a truly pleasant prize.
Try Break Away for free
In our final verdict for Break Away, we must admit that its excellent bonuses made up for our reservations concerning the visuals. In the end we enjoyed the game a lot, and can warmly recommend at least giving it a spin.
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