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30 September 2024 
Smash Nudge Skillstar Slot Review 2024
Get your skates on, folks, and join us on a frenetic dash around the track courtesy of Light & Wonder partner Lightning Box and their all-action release, Smash Nudge Skillstar!
The latest installment in the provider’s fast-growing Skillstar range is no ordinary sports-themed slot. For one, skating is the name of the game around here, so we duly find ourselves centre stage at a roller derby surrounded by screaming crowds, flashing lights, and vivid neon strobes.
The audiovisuals all combine to create an energetic, nostalgic scene that winds the clock back to the 90s when skating was enjoying something of a renaissance, all those years after Torvill and Dean thrust the sport into the collective consciousness – albeit on ice. Even the 8-bit-rendered logo hints at former glories.
Retro meets modernity in Smash Nudge Skillstar, where old-school aesthetics fuse with new-age features to ensure your time on the track is as profitable as possible.
Smash Nudge Skillstar Base Game and Features
A medium variance engine runs the show around here, supplying 40 fixed pay lines over a 5×4 game panel. Wins are awarded for landing identical symbols left-to-right on a pay line from the left-farthest reel.
At the low end of Smash Nudge Skillstar’s paytable are royals running 10 to A, followed by high pays served by a helmet, a pair of pink skates, a referee, a pair of opposing female skaters, then the most lucrative of the lot, a sole female skater doling out 6.25 times the stake when appearing in wins of 5.
Wild symbols come in two forms in Smash Nudge Skillstar: the Wild Trophy and the Wild Nudge. Both serve their primary function of symbol substitution, though the latter possesses full-reel stacking capabilities.
Be on the lookout for bright green arrows sat atop the reels. If a Wild Nudge falls on an activated reel, indicated by an illuminated arrow, it duly expands upward or downward to cover the entire reel, enhancing your win opportunities.
Smash Nudge Skillstar Free Spins
3-5 scatter symbols landing simultaneously in the base game furnishes players with 8, 10, or 12 Free Spins, respectively. Before the round gets underway in earnest there’s an option to channel your competitive streak by partaking in a little side event: the Skillstart Mini Game.
However, if this proves more of a distraction and you feel like diving headfirst into Free Spins – no bother. The mini-game will always be ready and waiting the next time you manage to unlock the bonus.
Anyway, Free Spins operate in much the same manner as the base game, with the addition of a Multiplier Reel on hand to supersize all wins achieved during the feature by a random factor of 2x to 10x.
Retriggers are also a possibility throughout.
Skillstart Mini Game
So you fancy honing your skills with some little Skillstart action?
Better get your game face on, then, because the objective of this add-on is to avoid colliding into your fellow skaters by using the Up and Down arrows. Smash into an opponent and you lose 1 life. 3 strikes and you’re out – then it’s onto Free Spins as detailed above.
Make it onto the top 100 and you’ll see your name up in lights on the game’s leaderboard – reserved for the very best! How’s that for a night out at the virtual roller drome?
Smash Nudge Skillstar: Our Verdict
Smash Nudge Skillstar represents a fun addition to Lightning Box’s Skillstar line-up, leaving the confines of the chicken barn and/or Asian lilypond for a more adrenaline-charged environment.
For most intents and purposes, the studio gets the job of entertaining willing participants done without flexing its creative muscles to the very extreme or venturing too far outside its comfort zone.
Gameplay is fairly standard throughout the base game, with wild nudging expansions the closest Smash Nudge Skillstar gets to rip-roaring innovation.
That’s until the Skillstart Mini Game presents itself upon activating Free Spins, where players get to play the part of roller drome competitor, at least for a few minutes, and their opponent-dodging skills come to the fore in the quest for glory.
These sorts of extras help elevate games from the sea of monotony, which Smash Nudge Skillstar had already achieved in part thanks to its relatively unusual skater theme. So extra points for Lightning Box for breaking with convention and incorporating a skill element to what is at heart a fairly bog-standard slot relying on dependable mechanics and agreeable mathematics, encapsulated by a max win that tips the scales at 5,044x the wager.
And so, for a sports-themed game with a difference that challenges slot players in slightly unusual ways, Smash Nudge Skillstar is worth the entry fee in the right hands.
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