How Spaceman works

Key takeaways

• A bet can be placed or changed only while NEXT GAME IN ..s or WAIT FOR NEXT GAME is displayed; the BETS CLOSED message ends betting time.
• A round can end at 1.00x, the starting value, in which case every bet placed in it is lost.
• If the multiplier reaches 5000x, the Game Help says all bets still in the round are paid out automatically.

How a Spaceman round works, step by step

The Game Help marks the betting phase of a round with messages on the screen. The labels below are the ones it uses.

1. Betting opens. While NEXT GAME IN ..s or WAIT FOR NEXT GAME is displayed, a bet for the upcoming round can be placed or changed. The first message is a countdown that drops by one each second.
2. BETS CLOSED. This message marks the end of betting time. From here the bet for the round can no longer be changed, and neither can the auto cashout settings.
3. The bet is processed. The game answers with BET ACCEPTED or BET REJECTED. A bet may be rejected if it falls outside the minimum and maximum shown in the Bet Limits indicator; the Spaceman rules page covers acceptance and rejection.
4. The multiplier appears at 1.00x. It grows slowly at first and then increasingly faster.
5. Cashouts happen while it rises. A player with an accepted bet can use CASHOUT for the whole bet or CASHOUT 50% for half of it, or leave it to an auto cashout value set during betting time. A manual click is a payout request, settled at the multiplier when the game server processes it, provided the round has not ended; the Spaceman cashout page compares the manual, 50% and automatic routes.
6. The round ends. The multiplier stops at its predetermined value, which the Game Help calls the crash. Any amount not cashed out by then is lost.
7. Betting for the next round opens. The sequence starts again, with a new random, predetermined end point.

The Game Help gives no number of seconds for the countdown or for a round, so none is given here. Where the messages and controls sit is covered in the guide to the Spaceman screen, and the same sequence for the genre as a whole in how crash games work.

The end point is set before the multiplier moves

Predetermined means the end point exists before the multiplier starts to move: the rising number on the screen is the display of a result that has already been decided.

Nothing a player does during the round changes where it ends, including whether or when they cash out. The Game Help says as much: Spaceman is not a game of skill, and a player’s choice has no impact other than deciding when to cash out.

What the documents do not describe is how that value is drawn. The press release calls Spaceman an RNG (random number generator) title, but neither it nor the Game Help sets out the distribution of end points or the RNG algorithm. What is documented about randomness and testing is collected on the Is Spaceman fair? page.

Choosing when to cash out changes how often a bet returns something and how much it returns when it does. Under the constant-RTP model used on this site, which is an illustration and not a distribution published for Spaceman, it does not change the long-run average return, which is what RTP (return to player) measures.

Four ways a round can end for a bet

Canceled rounds and disconnections aside, one accepted bet has four possible results. The examples use a stake of 10 units.

Outcome	What happens	Example
Cashed out in full	A cashout is processed before the round ends, and the whole bet is paid at that multiplier.	10 units cashed out at 2.00x return 20 units.
Half cashed out, then the rest	CASHOUT 50% secures the win on half of the bet. The other half stays in and is either cashed out later or lost.	5 units at 1.50x return 7.50. The other 5 units return 12.50 if cashed out at 2.50x (20.00 in total), or nothing if the round ends first (7.50 in total).
Not cashed out	The round ends with the bet still in. This includes every bet in a round that ends at 1.00x.	Nothing is returned; the 10 units are lost.
5000x reached	The round does not end in the usual way at 5000x. All bets still in the round are paid out automatically.	10 units at 5000x return 50,000 units, subject to the maximum payout rule.

1. 150% cashout at 1.50x
2. 2cashout at 2.50x
3. 3round ends at 3.20x

The second row is the 50% cashout, whose own page works through the arithmetic and what it does to the spread of results. The maximum payout rule behind the fourth row is set out, with the full range from 1.00x to 5000x, on the Spaceman multiplier page.

Sources

• Pragmatic Play — Spaceman Game Help, version 1.7 (change log to 10 July 2024), as distributed to licensed operators. Cited by name; operator-hosted copies are not linked.
• Pragmatic Play — press release, “Pragmatic Play blasts off with Spaceman” (24 March 2022)