Cricket Mania Slot Review
Dusk at a floodlit cricket ground, the outfield mown in stripes, a pink sky fading to lilac behind the packed stands. Cricket Mania from Tom Horn Gaming takes the one major sport slots almost never touch and does something counter-intuitive with it: when the bonus finally arrives, the game shrinks rather than grows.
It runs on a 5×4 grid with 40 fixed winlines, at high volatility and an RTP of 94.84%, a figure that sits below where most modern releases pitch themselves. The studio’s shelf also holds Book of Cleo, Fluxberry and Piggy Bank Heist, and none of them prepare you for a bonus round played on a 3×3 grid.
Forty Winlines Across a 5×4 Pitch
The base game spreads five reels across four rows and pays along 40 fixed winlines, evaluated from left to right. All wins are multiplied by the total bet rather than a per-line stake, and only the highest combination on each line counts. Straightforward stuff, and the format suits the tall grid.
One regular helps out. The expanding wild lands only on reels two, three and four, covers its whole reel when it does, and substitutes for everything except the scatter. It’s active in the base game and the free spins alike, so a full wild reel is never far from the maths.
Because the wild can appear on all three middle reels at once, a lucky spin can stack two or even three fully wild columns. With 40 winlines crossing a 5×4 layout, that kind of coverage turns a lot of near-misses into paid combinations, and it’s the main engine of anything resembling a decent base game hit.
Thirteen symbols fill the reels. Five are characters drawn from the field: two fielders mid-catch, a bowler mid-run, a wicketkeeper crouched at the stumps and a batsman in yellow. The rest are the royals from A down to 9. Every value below is a multiple of the total bet, for three, four and five of a kind:
- Red-shirt fielder (catching pose): 0.5x, 4x, 12.5x
- Purple-shirt fielder (catching pose): 0.4x, 3x, 10x
- Yellow/red bowler: 0.4x, 2x, 5x
- Green/orange wicketkeeper at stumps: 0.3x, 1.7x, 4x
- Yellow-uniform batsman: 0.3x, 1.7x, 3x
- A, K: 0.2x, 1.5x, 2.5x
- Q: 0.1x, 1x, 1.5x
- J: 0.1x, 0.5x, 1x
- 10, 9: 0.1x, 0.5x, 0.7x
The shape of that ladder matters more than any single row. The royals cluster together at the bottom, the two catching poses sit clear of everything beneath them, and the gaps between tiers are narrow rather than stepped. There’s no dramatic jump anywhere in the base pays.
That’s a flat structure. It puts real weight on the bonus round, because the base game on its own doesn’t offer a combination worth writing home about.
Free Spins on a 3×3 Ground
The scatter is a cricket bat, and it takes seven or more of them anywhere on the screen to trigger the free spins. That’s a high bar by any standard, and the reward for clearing it is up to 20 free spins.
Seven scatters in a game with 20 symbol positions on screen is a demanding ask, and it’s worth pausing on how demanding. Most slots ask for three. Even scatter-heavy games that pay anywhere typically want five at the outside. Seven leaves a lot of spins between triggers, which fits the high volatility label. There’s no bonus buy to shortcut it either; the scatter count is the only route in.
Then the round does something unusual. The layout shrinks to a 3×3 grid with 27 ways to win, and only the high symbols remain in play. The royals are removed entirely, so every spin of the round is built from the five character symbols, the wild and the bat.
The shrinking works in the round’s favour in a quiet way. With nine positions instead of 20, the character symbols that survived the cut appear far more densely, and three of a kind is no longer the start of a line but its whole length. A compact grid of premium-only symbols concentrates what the base game spreads thin.
The expanding wild still functions on the smaller grid, and it behaves exactly as it does in the base game: middle reels only, full-reel coverage, everything substituted except the scatter. On a 3×3 layout, one wild reel is a full column of a three-column grid, which is about as much help as a wild can offer.
The character pays also climb for the round. Three-of-a-kind values during free spins run as follows:
- Red-shirt fielder: 12x
- Purple-shirt fielder: 8x
- Yellow/red bowler: 5x
- Green/orange wicketkeeper: 2x
- Yellow-uniform batsman: 1x
Because three of a kind is the maximum line length on the smaller grid, those are the round’s ceiling pays rather than its entry-level ones. A screen built entirely from high symbols at those prices is where the game keeps its real potential, and with 27 ways in play, several of those lines can land together on a single spin.
The round can’t be retriggered, though. Once your spins run out, you’re back to the big grid and the long walk to another seven scatters. Everything the round can pay, it has to pay inside those original spins.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 6.5/10
Playing Cricket Mania is mostly waiting, and the reason to sit through the wait is the round at the end of it. For a game dressed as a floodlit Twenty20, it’s oddly patient: a thin, flat-paying base game, spin after spin, until seven bats land at once and the whole thing folds down to nine tiles of premium symbols. When that round hits with a wild reel on the middle columns, it pays like a finish, not a flurry of singles.
Its strength is that shrunken bonus round, and it’s a real one: stripping the royals and compressing the grid means every winning line is built from the top of the paytable, at prices three-of-a-kind alone can’t reach anywhere else in the game. Its weakness is how much has to go right to see it. Seven scatters with no buy and no retrigger, all wrapped in a 94.84% RTP that gives less back on the way.
This is one for players who want a single concentrated payoff rather than a steady trickle of features, and for cricket fans who’ll forgive a quiet middle for a theme nobody else is serving. If you need regular bonuses to stay interested, the outfield here stays empty a long time.
Cricket Mania FAQs
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How do you trigger free spins in Cricket Mania?
Free spins trigger when seven or more scatter symbols, shown as cricket bats, land anywhere on the screen at once. That awards up to 20 free spins. -
What changes during Cricket Mania free spins?
The layout shrinks from 5×4 to a 3×3 grid with 27 ways to win, the royals are removed so only high symbols remain, and the character pays climb steeply, starting at 1x and reaching 12x for three red-shirt fielders. -
Can free spins be retriggered in Cricket Mania?
No. Free spins cannot be retriggered, so once the round ends you return to the base game and need seven or more scatters again to start a new one. -
What does the wild symbol do in Cricket Mania?
The wild appears only on reels two, three and four, expands to cover its entire reel, and substitutes for all symbols except the scatter. It is active in both the base game and the free spins. -
What is the RTP of Cricket Mania?
Cricket Mania runs at an RTP of 94.84%, which is on the low side for a modern video slot. -
Is Cricket Mania high volatility?
Yes, Cricket Mania is a high volatility slot, with wins concentrated in the free spins round rather than the base game. -
How many paylines does Cricket Mania have?
The base game has 40 fixed winlines evaluated from left to right. During free spins the layout changes to a 3×3 grid with 27 ways to win. -
Who makes Cricket Mania?
Cricket Mania is made by Tom Horn Gaming. Its release date is 17 November 2021.
