With Mamma Mia, you get to check out what an Italian restaurant is like behind the scenes, right as its chef is preparing for the visit of a famous food critic. It’s one of the impressive Slots3 games released by Betsoft, with all the bells and whistles that usually come included, and with some innovative features present as well.
As you experience what Salvatore’s is like, you’re covering up to 30 active lines with bets, and then getting 5 reels to spin. You choose which symbols are wild symbols and locked, you trigger free spins or bonus games, and overall you just get a lot of different features from this slot.
Betting
The regular bets are the ones that you have in most Betsoft slot machines, which allow you to customize every part. You decide if you have all 30 lines active, or how many of the up to 5 coins you use for each one. The coin denomination is your final decision, and it starts at $0.01, being taken to as much as $1 eventually. You have a betting range that’s between $0.01 and $150, enough to satisfy the majority of the player’s budgets.
Another type of bet is the one you see below the Spin buttons. You have a special button for a Lock & Spin option at the current bet, and another one for the maximum bet. The value changes, depending on the wild symbols present on the reels, which are going to be locked for the next round. It can be a very expensive option to use.
Mamma Mia Jackpot
The best paying combinations will be the ones coming from the free spins, where you get completely different symbols. The right symbols (Salami) will pay up to $5,000 per combo. It’s not a very impressive payout, but add together all the possible wins, to get a potential win of up to $150,000 for a single free spin.
Once again, as in a lot of other Slots3 slot machines, the amount of time they had to invest in crafting the slot machine seems to have gotten the costs up, and the RTP ends up being lower than I’d like. It’s at 93.46% for Mamma Mia, which makes this a game that I wouldn’t play for its potential alone.
Special Features
The feature section is rich enough in Mamma Mia, that any player willing to give the slot a try should be able to find something enjoyable in it. It’s not quite the standard mix of features either, so there is diversity in Betsoft’s choices.
Lock & Spin Wilds
Thanks to the presence of the Lock & Spin option, the wild symbol really is one of the stars of this game, even as it doesn’t give you any rewards by itself. The substitution ability of the wild is the one you get in other slots as well, so that part didn’t change.
Lock & Spin is an option that you get, to pay an extra amount in order to have certain symbol positions as locked wilds. You can use existing wilds for the purpose, or you can click on any symbol position you want, to turn it into a locked wild symbol. There can be as many locked wilds present on the reels as you’d like, but the feature tends to get expensive quickly.
Pizza Free Spins
The Pizza is going to be your scatter and the trigger for its own free spins, so get at least three symbols of this type to appear, and their features is yours. It’s a funny feature, which uses a different set of symbols which are based on pizza ingredients. They pay more, up to $5,000, so twice as much as the base game jackpot.
Food Cover Click Me
The symbols with the Food Cover are also scatters, and once again you need at least three for the feature to start up. It’s a bonus game, a simple one where you have to click on covers, in order to find the prizes hidden underneath them.
Critic Bonus Round
This is the feature that the entire game is built around, story-wise at least. The critic is visiting Salvatore’s restaurant, and the feature is triggered by 3+ Menu symbols on the reels. You assist the chef with his decisions, on the best dish to serve. The critic will score the dish on four criteria.
Design
The design is never an issue for a game from the Slots3 collection. With plenty of animated characters and symbols, with cut-scenes at the right moments and with only themed symbols on the reels, it’s a pleasure to play this Italian restaurant based slot.
Several characters appear in the game, such as the Chef, the Critic or the Waiter, along with various dishes, menus, newspapers, wine bottles and ingredients. The free spins even get a completely different set of symbols, based on pizza ingredients.
Summary
Mamma Mia excels in a couple of areas, such as in graphics or its long list of features, plus it has those interesting Lock & Spin Wilds for you to experiment with. It doesn’t give you a high enough RTP though.
