About StarQuest
StarQuest is a six-reel Megaways game from Big Time Gaming, and the place to start is by correcting our own record: it listed five reels and 40 ways to win on the Spinfinity model. Those are the specifications of Temple Quest Spinfinity, a different studio title listed in the same database. On its official page, Big Time Gaming describes StarQuest as carrying "BTG's unique patented Megaways system that gives each spin the potential of playing up to 117,649 ways to win in both directions". Big Win Board and SlotCatalog both confirm the grid: six reels, up to seven symbols per reel, seven to the power of six.
The distinctive part is those two directions. On an ordinary Megaways game, a combination reads left to right starting from the first reel. Here it also reads right to left starting from the sixth. A single grid is therefore evaluated twice, and a symbol sitting on the middle reels can take part in both readings. The studio flags this in capitals on its own page: "BOTH WAYS - MEGAWAYS".
The second distinctive feature is an absence. StarQuest has no free spins. No scatter, no feature to trigger, no separate phase: everything is played in the base game. That is a rare design decision and it changes the rhythm of a session completely. There is nothing to wait for, so nothing to hope for from a spin that does not pay.
What stands in for a feature are the full-reel Wilds. Big Win Board describes them as Wilds that cover the entirety of a reel and substitute for any standard symbol. Each Wild carries a multiplier starting at 1x and rising to a maximum of 5x, and multiple Wilds involved in the same combination have their multipliers multiply each other. A full-reel Wild landing triggers a re-spin; each re-spin raises the multiplier by one step, and a new Wild landing restarts the sequence.
From that follows a calculation the studio does not publish but the rules allow. Wilds appear only on reels 2 to 5, four reels in total, and each caps at 5x. Four multipliers at 5x multiplying together give 5 × 5 × 5 × 5, or 625x. That is the theoretical ceiling of the stack, and it should be taken for what it is: a deduction from two published rules, not a figure announced by Big Time Gaming.
Now the numbers, disagreements included. RTP is 96.90% according to SlotCatalog and Big Win Board alike, meaning the house keeps €3.10 per €100 wagered. That is high: across the 34 Big Time Gaming games in the BetsRank database, whose median is 96.49%, only White Rabbit and Feathered Frenzy post better. GMBLRS lists 96.22% instead, a figure we do not retain given that two independent sources agree on 96.90%.
Max win is 20,000x stake according to Big Win Board, where our record said 10,000x and SlotCatalog publishes no figure at all. That is €4,000 at the €0.20 minimum, €20,000 at €1 and €800,000 at the €40 maximum. The 20,000x ceiling still sits well below the catalogue median of 36,201x. The bet range, €0.20 to €40, is confirmed by both sources and is unusual: most of the studio's titles stop at €10 or €20. Finally, one date is a problem: SlotCatalog puts the release at 5 October 2016, while Big Time Gaming writes on its own page that StarQuest "builds on the great success of Dragon Born and Queen of Riches", the latter released in May 2017. We therefore keep December 2017 and flag the inconsistency.
