Mystery Mission To The Moon (Push Gaming) Slot Demo & Review

Space. The Final Frontier. The Mission: To boldly go where… oh, sorry, I got a little distracted there! Seriously though, why aren’t space-themed online slots more popular? There are so many themes and ideas to choose from; it seems like madness that the concept is so critically underused by developers at this time. Where are the games based on the solar system? Or planetary systems such as that of Mars? How about a SpaceX game with a bonus round triggered by hitting all three stages of Starship? Even the great space franchises of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Stargate are disappointingly underused by the online casino industry, which is a huge shame for fans like me.

Is “ Mystery Mission: To The Moon” enough to satiate gaming fans who have been waiting ten years for the release of Star Citizen? Highly unlikely, I suspect, but the maximum win of 500x your bet for a full pay line of six Wild Moon symbols is undoubtedly a great start to proceedings! The highest-paying regular symbol looks like a Red Spacesuit with a flame in the visor, which is actually a little scary but also has a return of 500x your bet for six-of-a-kind. An Alien is next, although returns drop off sharply here as he is only worth 100x your bet for all six of his symbols. A Human with an elongated glass helmet – very reminiscent of that worn by the green aliens from Futurama – is next and will pay you 75x the current stake for a complete payline. There are three more high-paying symbols, a Green Robot paying 50x for six-of-a-kind, a Laser Gun of sorts at 25x, and an Antenna at 20x. The bonus round is triggered by the wild moon symbol, which is a feature that I always appreciate and means that there are no scatter symbols to discuss here.

Clicking on the arrow at the side of your current bet will pop up a quick selection window with 12 different options for your next wager. The minimum bet permitted is just €0.10, which is sure to be appreciated by those with smaller balances, whilst the maximum of €100.00 is sure to be enough for even the most degenerate slots fanatic. The only issue is the tiny number of options between these two extremes. The first five bets cover €0.10 to €1.00 per spin, leaving only six more steps before you reach €100.00. I’m sure there will be players who would appreciate the ability to fine tune their bet a little more than To The Moon will allow.

The base game consists of 20 paylines over six reels with four rows each, all of which have a distinctly stretched appearance so that every position is much taller than it is wide. This is an unusual look for an online slot, but it works well if you play the game vertically on your smartphone.

As for the graphics and symbols, as always from Push Gaming, they all look very good – highly detailed, well drawn, and with great use of colour. The sound isn’t half bad either – quite “space-y”, if you know what I mean… I still ended up turning it off after around 15 minutes of play, however, as repetitive music loops always seem to end up grating on me eventually.

Three or more matching symbols starting from the left will award a win, whilst bigger prizes are waiting when four, five, or six matching symbols happen to line up on a payline. The top prizes available in the base game are excellent, in my opinion, and ensure that even the base game of To The Moon can be an exciting experience.

Wild Scatter

The Moon acts as both the wild and scatter symbols in this game, which is a setup that always appeals to me. If three or more of these symbols land on a single spin, the free games feature will be triggered.

Mystery Stack Symbol

These stacked symbols look a lot like some kind of bulkhead door and appear as four-high symbols that can potentially fill an entire reel. Indeed, if you are lucky enough to hit a mystery stack on three reels simultaneously, the stacks will nudge themselves until they fill the respective reel before turning gold. All three (or more) stacks will then transform into the same symbol, chosen randomly from the paytable.

One interesting aspect of this symbol or feature is that any time you do land three mystery stacks, the game will award you a win on all 20 paylines; to quote the paytable: “regardless of whether symbols match consecutively left to right”. I’m not quite sure how this works. If you had a full stack on, and six, reels two, five, what win would you be awarded? Is it based on the visible symbols on the first reel?

The primary bonus round of Mystery Mission To The Moon is a free spins feature. Three Wild Moon symbols will award you eight free spins, whilst four, five, or six Moons will reward you with 10, 12, or 14 free spins, respectively.

Free Spins

During this mode, any mystery stack that lands on a reel will nudge into position so that it occupies the entire reel, in the same way, three mystery stacks will do this during the base game. That’s not all, though – the mystery stack will lock into place for the duration of the free spins feature, too, meaning that you will continue to benefit from it on every remaining free spin.

The symbol represented by all mystery stacks will change on each free spin. If you accumulate three mystery stacks during a single bonus round, you are guaranteed a win on all 20 paylines for every remaining free spin left on your counter.

I had some great results from testing this feature and would love to see what could happen on an especially lucky six-scatter trigger where I got all three mystery stacks in place early on. I bet there will be more than a few videos of players achieving these kinds of feats hitting YouTube in the coming months.

Bonus Buy

Finally, let’s talk about the bonus buy facility. You can purchase a three-scatter trigger for 102x the normal stake, a four-scatter trigger for 161x, five-scatters at 237x, and all six will cost you a whopping 332x the normal price of a spin.

All four of these options have a higher RTP than just playing the base game, and my own results confirmed that they are all likely to be reasonably fair whilst testing these options. As long as you don’t spend more than you can afford, these options offer a great way to play the most exciting part of the game.

Also, note that a “lucky dip” option is available for 200x your bet, and it even threw me six scatters once, along with five scatters twice – this could be worth considering if you don’t mind a little extra risk-to-reward!