Mystery Drop PopWins

Expand your game with a debut of a new mechanic on the PopWins slot from Stakelogic. Available on desktop, tablet or mobile devices, Mystery Drop features expanding reels with both ways pays and a free spins bonus with a gamble feature. Boost your play with Super Stake for random bonus triggers and retriggers, leading to wins of up to 50,000 times your bet.

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Slot Details

Mystery Drop PopWins is a cascading video slot with a default 5×3 reel set and 243 ways to win, which is doubled to 486 ways thanks to the pay-both-ways mechanic. In the base game, this can increase up to a 5×6 format with 7,776 ways and up to 5×9 with 59,049 ways in the free spins, again doubled to 15,552 and 118,098 ways, respectively with the pay-both-ways mechanic (more to that shortly).

Wins are awarded both ways for landing three to four matching symbols on adjacent reels from left to right and from right to left. Five of a kind of matching symbols are paid one way only. You can spin the classic reels on desktop, tablet or mobile from 0.20 to 5 credits per spin, doubled when Super Stake is activated. The game has maximum volatility (5/5) with an RTP of 95.59%. Mystery Drop comes with a Bonus Buy feature for 75x your bet (x150 with Super Stake) with the same RTP value.

Stake Logic develops video slots that come with different Return To Player settings for casinos to choose from. Mystery Drop will be found with RTP ranges in the 94% and 92% arenas in addition to the default setting of 95.59%.

The pay symbols start at the low end with 9, 10, J, Q, K and A, paying up to 1.6x your stake for five of a kind. Cherries, lemon, plum, raspberry, bell, star and seven symbols come next, awarding up to 8x your stake for five of a kind. No wilds or scatters feature in the game, except for the gold diamond scatter triggers found in the free spins bonus with Super Stake enabled that award extra spins. Mystery symbols appear as question marks during free spins before morphing to standard pay symbols.

Mystery Drop PopWins Slot Features

No two ways about it, Mystery Drop is a carbon-copy of the PopWins mechanic from the series of games by Avatar UX, such as HippoPop and CherryPop, with striking similarities to the latter. Therefore, it is only fair to compare the two for review; most notably, CherryPop has a higher max win and is more polished with a higher, player-friendly, single version RTP which will pay more back to players. Let’s see if Mystery Drop can score some extra points with its features.

As standard, Stakelogic Games come with a Gamble Feature that offers a choice of Collect or Gamble for each bet win. The Gamble Feature presents a playing card, face-down, and a choice of Card Colour or Card Suit:

• Card Suit | x4 Gamble – Diamonds, Hearts, Clubs or Spades. Guess correctly to quadruple your winnnings.
• Card Colour | x2 Gamble – A straight-up 50/50 choice of Red or Black to double your winnings.

Upon choosing, the card is flipped to reveal a win or loss. You may continue to stay in the Gamble Feature and gamble more wins until you either lose or hit the maximum number of gambles allowed. Bonus winnings may also be gambled and lost gambles will return you to the main game. This feature can be switched off in the game settings.

Super Stake is another frequent feature of Stakelogic video slots and offers game enhancements for an increase in the bet amount. For double your bet size, Mystery Drop Super Stake mode takes the extra funds as a contribution for two enhancements, with the same RTP as the main game:

• Random Free Spins – On any single losing spin of the main game, Super Stake mode can randomly trigger the free spins bonus.
• Free Spins Retrigger – During the free spins bonus, Super Stake mode brings scatter symbols onto the reels. Land three scatter symbols during a single free spin sequence to win a further 5 spins. This award cannot be gambled.

A basic spin of Mystery Drop combines a cascading win process with Expanding Reels. For each winning combination, winning symbols disappear from the grid and are split into two symbol positions, expanding the reel by one symbol height and revealing new symbols in place. The process repeats with further wins and can lead to a chain of winning sequences, with expanding reels up to a maximum height of six symbols for the base game and 15,552 ways to pay.

Expand each reel to the maximum number of six symbols to trigger the bonus round. Upon entering the bonus, you can accept the initial spin award or choose the Free Spins Gamble. Using a pinball-style game with a choice of three starting positions, a ball will bounce its way into a slot at the base and either add the number of extra spins displayed or void winnings for a loss. Gambles can be repeated up to a maximum of 16 free spins.

The Mystery Drop Free Spins Bonus begins with the reels set to a symbol height of six with 15,552 ways to pay. Expanding Reels can reach up to nine symbols high during the bonus and the maximum number of 118,998 ways to pay. Mystery Symbols feature that can appear at random on any spin and will reveal matching symbols to create or complete a winning combination, along with a Progressive Multiplier that begins at x2.

Each win stage of a sequence will be multiplied by the Progressive Multiplier value and then add +1 for the next appearance of symbols. The multiplier does not reset and maintains its value for the entire bonus round with no upper limit. But that’s not all, this bonus comes with a safety level for the Expanding Reels, activated at the end of a spin sequence when all reels reach a matching level, e.g. a symbol height of 7, 7, 8, 8, 8 will return to a safety level of 7 symbols across the reels for the next free spin. Reaching the maximum height of 9 symbols across all reels adds +3 to the progressive multiplier and then +4 for the remainder of the bonus.

Final Verdict

Mystery Drop PopWins is a decent copy with a couple of appealing differences; maximum ways in the bonus leaps the multiplier by +4, compared to +3 on CherryPops, plus Mystery Symbols and Super Stake (lest not forget at twice the bet size) offers possible retriggers and random bonus awards.

Still, all Avatar UX originals come with higher RTP and unique feature combinations of their own and CherryPops has a Super Pay Cherry symbol for its bonus round. Mystery Drop looks virtually identical, with multiple lower versions of RTP, but has enough of a twist in features to carry individual appeal and pique some interest from the growing army of PopWins fans.

Review Updates

• 30th July 2021: Avatar UX has intervened legally to block Stakelogic from offering Mystery Drop. The outcome is to be determined and we will update the review with any news as soon as possible.
• Update 26th October 2021: Stakelogic has partnered with Avatar UX in an exclusive licence to use the PopWins mechanic.

Mystery Drop – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What is Super Stake by Stakelogic?

Super Stake offers you additional features or a higher frequency of the Free Spins in return for doubling your base bet. On Mystery Drop, the benefits are random Free Spins triggers on a losing spin in the base game and the addition of scatters during the feature with three landing in view retriggering the free spins.

2. Can I trigger extra spins during the free spins bonus of Mystery Drop by Stake Logic?

Only if you have Super Stake Mode enabled. With Super Stake, gold diamond scatter symbols feature and landing three during a single spin sequence will award an additional 5 free spins.

3. Will Mystery Drop from Stake Logic be the same game no matter what casino I play at?

No, Mystery Drop will be released in several different versions of Return To Player for casinos to choose from. You can check which version your casino has picked in the game rules.

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