Football Finals X UP

Football Finals X UP: Slot Overview

With the Football World Cup just around the corner (at the time of writing), a bunch of in-themed slots had sprung up to make the most of football fever. One of them is Football Finals X UP, an online slot from Games Global associate studio Alchemy Gaming. If you're familiar with its work, you'll know Alchemy Gaming has released a bunch of X UP-powered games, and it appears as if Football Finals X UP might be a reskin of an earlier release. Fair enough, the mechanic seems to be working out for Alchemy Gaming, so why don't we see how it fares in a sports game?

Decide to make a football game, and you're kind of limited as to what sort of visuals to use. Alchemy Gaming has gone the usual route of centring the action inside a massive stadium, packed to the rafters with cheering crowds here to see their teams compete. Players find themselves literally at ground level, accompanied by a grinding metal track at a night game for the base game, while the sun comes out for free spins, accompanied by a track change. There's never any doubt you're playing a football game, and it looks quite nice while doing it.

Previous X UP games we've tangled with have been quite highly strung in regard to math models and winning potential. For Football Finals X UP, the team has toned these components down a notch or two, closely mirroring Joker X UP and Bolt X UP, of which it might well be a clone. It means players should expect a medium volatile math model, available in four RTP configurations, from 96.22% down to 86.93% for Germany and other overregulated markets. There are up to two ways of playing Football Finals X UP. One is by picking a stake of 10 p/c to $/€20 and clicking the play button. The other is buying free spins for a base level price of 60x the bet.

So far, the X UP games have been played on 5x3 game grids with 243 ways to win, and Football Finals X UP is no different. Here, to get a win, matching symbols must land from the leftmost side of the grid across three to five adjacent reels. For lows, green grassy 10-A card ranks are provided, shooting off a payout of 1-1.5x the bet for five of the kind, whereas the high pays are a ball, crowd members, and three football action sequences, worth 2 to 4 times the stake for five-of-a-kind. Trophies are good, too; in Football Finals X UP they are displayed on the wild symbol, present on all five reels. Wilds expand to fill the whole reel when they hit and substitute for all symbols except scatters. A single winning way of five wilds is worth a payout of 4.5x the bet.

Football Finals X UP: Slot Features

In the base game, scatter symbols appear on the three central reels. When exactly 2 scatters land, they award an X UP Token which gets collected on the meter next to the reels. Collecting X UP Tokens increases the multiplier used in free spins. Multiplier levels are x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7, x8, or x10. Activating the x10 multiplier in the base game triggers free spins. Multipliers are stored at bet levels.

Free Spins

Another way of triggering free spins is when 3 scatter symbols land in view. A total of 8 free spins are awarded, along with a cash prize of 2x the bet. While free spins are active, landing 2 scatters awards +2 extra free spins and X UP Tokens collected during the round can increase the multiplier.

Upsizer Feature

When free spins trigger without the x10 multiplier achieved, players can choose to pay extra for a higher multiplier value. Collected X UP Tokens reduce the cost of the multiplier upgrades.

Buy Bonus

Should this be available in your country, players are able to buy 8 free spins with a random multiplier of x1 to x10 for 60x the bet. When buying fee spins like this, the Upsizer feature is not available for upgrading.

Football Finals X UP: Slot Verdict

In a similar way to AvatarUX's loyalty to its core mechanic, Alchemy Gaming remains steadfast in its use of the X UP feature. However, where AvatarUX constantly tinkers with the peripheral features in a PopWins game, X UP games tend to be more or less the same, technically speaking. They all basically boil down to collecting X UP Tokens to improve the multiplier before going into free spins, where it can be used alongside the ever-present expanding wilds. There have been theme changes and numerical tweaks, but the core experience generally remains consistent between each.

Not saying this is a bad thing; simply making an observation. When lined up against its X UP siblings, Football Finals X UP functions just as well as any other, more so if football is your thing. It is one of the less volatile, lower potential releases compared to some; it's worth pointing out. That might be ideal for more general consumption, but for a slot with a possibly bumpier ride using similar gameplay, maybe seek out Chronicles of Olympus X UP, where the multiplier tops out at x50 compared to Football Finals X UP's x10. The same goes for winning potential, where Football Finals X UP maxes out at a fifth of its Greek counterpart at 10,000x the bet.

In this instance, having a few choices is a good thing, though, and Football Finals X UP gives gamblers keen on the 'beautiful game' a chance to mix it up with Alchemy Gaming's mechanic. It also caters to players unconcerned with extreme levels of volatility. However, if football's not your thing, there aren't many reasons to pick Football Finals X UP over the others since it doesn't do anything not available in previous X UP slots. Alchemy Gaming must be on some sort of winning streak with the mechanic, but it wouldn't be the worst thing if they decided to add a bit more variety into these X UP games other than switching themes and adjusting the math model/stats.