Starburst Review 2026

Starburst Slot Details

Wild, Scatter and Other Special Symbols

The Starburst symbol is the game's only special symbol. It acts as a Wild, substituting for all regular paying symbols. Whenever it appears, it expands to cover the entire reel and triggers a Respin.

There is no Scatter symbol in the Starburst slot.

Bonus Features in Starburst

Starburst has three main gameplay features: Expanding Wilds, Respins and Win Both Ways.

Whenever a Starburst Wild lands, it expands to fill the entire reel, helping create additional winning combinations across the game's 10 fixed paylines. The expanded Wild remains locked in place during the following Respin.

Every Expanding Wild awards a Respin. If another Starburst Wild appears during that Respin, it also expands to cover its reel, stays locked in place and awards another Respin. This chain can continue as long as new Starburst Wilds keep landing.

Starburst also uses NetEnt's Win Both Ways mechanic, meaning winning combinations can be formed from left to right and from right to left across all 10 paylines.

The Gameplay Experience: Testing the Mechanics

The core mechanic of Starburst is the expanding wild. Land one on reels two, three or four and it stretches to cover the whole reel, locks in place and triggers a free respin. Up to three respins are possible if new wilds keep landing. And the 5-reel, 3-row grid pays both ways across 10 fixed lines, so a single symbol run can register twice.

We tested Starburst over 600 spins on desktop at a $1 stake, running the base game manually rather than on autoplay. This allowed us to properly track how often the wild actually chained into a second or third respin.

Compared to Crystal Furnace by Eyecon, which uses the same expanding-wild loop under a blacksmith theme, Starburst's respin chain felt slightly less frequent during testing. Against Solar Wilds by Nextgen, which doubles the winning potential on the same core format, Starburst's flat 500x cap makes it the more conservative pick of the three.

Expanding Wild Respins: Is It Worth It?

The respin chain is the only thing standing between Starburst and a completely flat slot; you could say that it carries the entire weight of the game's appeal. During our 600-spin session, single respins landed 41 times, two-wild chains landed twice and we never reached the third respin. The highest multiplier we cashed in a single spin was 60x, which was well short of the 500x ceiling. That gap is smaller than most Megaways or crash formats offer, but it matches what a low-volatility, 22.6% hit-frequency slot is built to deliver: frequent small returns rather than rare large ones.

Is Starburst Fair: RNG and Certification

Starburst is an RNG-certified slot rather than a provably fair casino title, so the fairness check works differently than it would on a crash game like Aviator. NetEnt builds its RNG systems to standards audited by independent testing labs such as eCOGRA. The specific certification seal for Starburst is displayed in the game's info panel at each licensed casino. We recommend checking that seal directly, since the lab of record can vary by jurisdiction and casino build.

Starburst vs. Closest Competitors

NetEnt’s Starburst was not the first slot to use an expanding wild, but it turned that single mechanic into a genre of its own. Popular games like Crystal Furnace, Starlite Fruits and Solar Wilds all borrowed that mechanic. The differences between them mainly come down to theme and win ceiling; the underlying respin loop stays close to the original.

Final Verdict: Is Starburst Worth Playing?

Starburst may be worth trying out if you want frequent small wins and a mechanic simple enough to learn in one spin (especially at low stakes where the 500x cap barely matters). That said, if you want a bigger ceiling on the same expanding-wild format, look at Solar Wilds instead.