Ultra Ace Slot Review

I've been spending some time with Microgaming's Ultra Ace lately. It's a cards-and-casino themed slot built around a cascading wins mechanic, where consecutive drops push you up a multiplier ladder. While it's a fun game to play, if you play a lot of slots, you'll probably notice pretty quickly that it shares its design with some familiar games, just with a few tweaks and a premium bonus option added in. The studio lists a 96.15% RTP and high volatility.

The main draw here is the free spins round. You can trigger 10 free spins naturally by landing three scatters, or you can just buy your way in.

The whole bonus revolves around a streak multiplier. Every time you get a winning cascade on a single spin, you move up a step on the ladder. The problem, and something to keep in mind if you play, is that the multiplier completely resets between each spin. Your progress doesn't carry over, so to see those big multiplier numbers, you really need a single spin to hit multiple cascades in a row.

The game offers two different bonus tiers:

• Standard Free Spins: You can buy this for a very reasonable 40x your bet. The multiplier trail here goes x2, x4, x6, and x10.
• Ultra Free Spins: This one can only be bought, costing 130x your bet. The multiplier steps are much steeper here: x5, x10, x20, and up to x50.

In my two bought rounds the reels also carried far more wilds and more Aces than the base game did. I actually really liked the "Golden Card" mechanic: symbols in the middle three reels can land with a gold frame. If they are part of a win, they turn into wilds and lock in place for the next cascade. They don't carry their own multipliers, but they do a great job of keeping your cascade chains alive.

Because the trail resets every spin, your success really comes down to getting one or two deep cascade chains rather than steadily building up a multiplier over time.

I bought the 130x Ultra option, and walked away with a 175x return. I got lucky with a mid-round retrigger that gave me 10 extra spins, which finally allowed me to hit a late board with five Queens at the x10 multiplier step. I also tried the standard 40x buy, which paid back 35x. That one sat near zero until the very last spin climbed up to the x6 step. It's definitely a volatile setup, if you don't get a long chain, a lot of your spins will just pay out at the bottom tier.

If the mechanics feel familiar, it's because Microgaming used this exact same engine for Pong Pong Mahjong 2, which came out a couple of weeks later. That game has the same layout and the same 40x standard bonus buy, but it swaps the Golden Cards for a rotating side panel and offers a much higher 7,000x max win.

You can also find the same design outside the studio, in Pragmatic Play's later Mahjong Wins Triple Pot, which uses almost the exact same resetting trail and golden-wild mechanics, but boasts a massive 100,000x max win. (Also, just a heads-up if you're searching for this game: Playtech released a slot with the exact same name, Ultra Ace, just a few days later, which has a 10,000x max win).

Microgaming has taken a really solid, proven cascading format and given players a direct, albeit expensive, shortcut to some big multipliers with the Ultra Free Spins buy. The gameplay is smooth and the cascades are satisfying. However, the biggest drawback for me is the 2,800x max win. It feels a bit strange to build such a steep, high-risk multiplier ladder in a game whose top win sits so far below those of its closest competitors. It's a fun game for a casual session, but high-rollers chasing massive payouts might look elsewhere.