The 1024 ways are a costume. Strip them off and Launch to Riches is a rocket-and-asteroid money-collect slot wearing a space suit, and it plays better for the disguise. Every win that matters comes from firing rockets at an overhead asteroid grid, not from the reels underneath.
The 1024 ways pay on adjacent reels from the left, and the premiums are modest enough that you’ll rarely feel a session turning on them. You’re really waiting on a COLLECT symbol. Each one opens a 5×4 field of asteroids stuffed with cash values, then fires a rocket to reveal what’s hiding inside.
A Regular collect sends one rocket straight up its own column. Triple fires three rockets at random asteroids across the grid. Super lights the whole column and reveals a random number of values at once. The asteroid cash runs from a slim 0.5x up to a Bonus row that can hold 5,000x your stake or three scatters, so a single Super collect landing in the right column can end things early.
Some rockets uncover a bomb rather than a plain value. A bomb collects every prize beside it and can detonate neighbouring bombs, which collect their own neighbours, and the sweep rolls outward across the grid. It’s the part competitor coverage tends to gloss over, and it’s where a quiet spin can suddenly cash a large chunk of the field.
Three scatters award ten free spins, with two more for every scatter beyond the third, and the round can’t retrigger. The game shifts to a five-symbol strip above a taller 5×7 asteroid grid. Clear every asteroid before your spins run out, and a random multiplier from x1 to x10 drops onto the whole total. That win condition never shows up in the 1024-ways headline, and it’s the strongest reason the free spins outvalue the standard reels.
Buy Free Spins costs 100x your stake for a guaranteed trigger. Buy Super Free Spins runs to 300x and switches the round to a refilling grid, where collected asteroids clear and fresh ones drop from the top each spin. Both sit on the panel as specs, nothing more. The Double Chance toggle, Pragmatic’s ante here, lifts your stake to double the natural trigger rate and pushes the bet-max label up with it.
The four RTP settings sit within a hair of one another, from 96.49% on the bought free spins to 96.53% on the Super buy, which tells you the return doesn’t hinge on how you enter the round. Bets open at 20p, and the free demo runs the 96.52% top config. Unlike a straight ways game such as The Dog House Megaways, where the ways carry the action, the reels here mostly serve to reach the Collect feature. The Double Chance mode lifts your stake to widen the trigger rate rather than change any payout.
Read at a £2 spin and shown as multiples of your stake, the paytable stays deliberately low, the top gem paying just 5x for five across. That restraint is the point, since the asteroid grid, not the reels, holds the real money.
| Symbol | 3 of a kind | 4 of a kind | 5 of a kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Topaz gem | 1x | 2x | 5x |
| Purple gem | 0.5x | 1.25x | 2.5x |
| Blue gem | 0.5x | 1x | 2x |
| Gold capsule | 0.25x | 0.5x | 1.5x |
| Green device | 0.25x | 0.5x | 1.25x |
| A / K / Q / J | 0.1x–0.25x | 0.25x–0.5x | 0.5x–1x |
Launch to Riches sells itself on 1024 ways, then puts every meaningful win in the Rocket feature and the clear-the-grid free spins, and it's the better game for it. Treat the reels as a trigger surface and the asteroid grid as the draw, and the design clicks into place.
Read the numbers cold, and the game’s shape is obvious. Four RTP configs clustered at 96.5%, a top symbol paying 5x for five, and a max win of 5,000x the reels can’t realistically approach. All of that points away from the 1024 ways and toward the Rocket feature, where the asteroid grid holds everything from half-stake scraps to a Bonus prize worth the full cap.
The feature earns the billing. A Super collect that opens a whole column, a bomb that chains across its neighbours, the top-row Bonus asteroid glinting at 5,000x, this is where the tension lives and where a session turns. The free spins push it further with the clear-the-grid multiplier, an x1 to x10 boost on the total that recalls the multiply-everything finish of Gates of Olympus more than anything a ways slot usually offers.
The counterargument is real and worth stating plainly. This collect loop isn’t new for Pragmatic, and cash-collect games such as Big Bass Splash have run a similar idea for years. Strip the space paint, and you’re left with a format you’ve likely met before, reached through 1024 ways that mostly serve as a trigger surface rather than a draw.
The 4/5 volatility badge sits oddly against a rules screen calling the game Medium, and the swings land nearer the badge, with cold stretches between features the modest top prize doesn’t always repay.
So is a ways slot the reason to load this one up? Not really. Come for the Rocket feature, the bomb chains and the grid you clear for a multiplier, treat the 1024 ways as the on-ramp they’re built to be, and Launch to Riches gives you a tidy, well-drilled collect game with a launch sequence. Come expecting the ways to do the lifting, and you’ll wonder what all the reels are for.
