FruitPunk  (Bigwinboard.com)

FruitPunk  (Bigwinboard.com)

$/€1000 bonus

300 free spins

Get Bonus

18+ | terms apply

$/€1000 bonus

10% cashback

Get Bonus

18+ | terms apply

$/€1000 bonus

200 free spins

Get Bonus

18+ | terms apply

$/€1500

7500 free spins

Get Bonus

18+ | terms apply

FruitPunk: Slot Overview

One way of learning an instrument, let’s say the guitar, is to get your hands on some tablature and play along to your favourite tunes. Or, to learn how to draw, open up your favourite comic books and attempt to reproduce the images using a pencil and a rubber. Is it the same in the online slot biz, where an up-and-coming studio uses its favourite slots as inspiration for its own mechanics, features, and games? Maybe, maybe not, but while it is impossible to call software provider Yggdrasil Gaming a rookie, the studio has apparently liked what it saw in Pragmatic Play‘s popular slot Sugar Rush and gone and made something that operates almost exactly the same.

Sugar Rush was all about candy, so in an attempt at a disguise, FruitPunk has gone the other way and provides a selection of healthy foods. Instead of being held in a fruity wonderland, though, FruitPunk is located in a neon, Miami, hip hop, palm trees, and pink flamingo world. The base game is sort of like spending leisure time at the hotel before jetting to a casino in a fast car for the free spins round. Eh, it’s fun, it’s different.

FruitPunk slot
FruitPunk slot – base game

FruitPunk is a highly volatile slot played on a 7×7 gaming area. Its RTP comes in two variants, a 94% one and an even less desirable 90.5% version, though the hit frequency, according to the game information, is quite high at 54.1%. Players can stake 20c to $/€70 per spin, and there is a surprisingly thrifty feature buy available, too.

All symbols on the paytable pay when they make a cluster of 5 or more that are matching and are connected horizontally or vertically. The avalanche mechanic makes winning symbols disappear, creating gaps that are filled by a symbol drop. Avalanches repeatedly trigger as long as new wins appear. FruitPunk’s pay symbols are bananas, limes, strawberries, bell packs, cherry juice boxes, bar packets, and cans of 7. Winning clusters made up of 5 matching symbols pay 0.2x to 1x, going up to 20x to 150x for 15+ OAK. Wilds are something FruitPunk does not have.

FruitPunk: Slot Features

FruitPunk slot
FruitPunk slot – free spins

As well as avalanching wins, FruitPunk places rising multipliers on individual reel positions, a free spins round, and a feature buy.

Multipliers

After a winning symbol disappears, it highlights its grid position. If a winning symbol explodes in the same position, a multiplier of x2 appears there, doubling each time a new symbol explodes, up to x128. The multiplier applies to all winning combinations that appear on top of it. When a winning cluster has more than one multiplier, the multipliers are combined and then applied to the payout. In the base game, all highlighted positions with multipliers are cleared on the next spin.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatters anywhere on the grid awards 10, 12, 15, 20, or 30 free spins, respectively. During free spins, highlighted positions and their multipliers remain in place till the round ends. Landing 3 or more scatters awards the same number of free spins as when triggering the feature from the base game.

Feature Buy

The free spins round can be bought from the base game for 34x the bet. When buying it, 3-7 scatters randomly hit, and the RTP is the same as when playing regularly.

FruitPunk slot
FruitPunk slot – free spins

FruitPunk: Slot Verdict

The neon fruit skin might throw unsuspecting gamblers off, but if they’ve played Sugar Rush, and many have, it won’t take long to notice the similarities to the Pragmatic Play release. Have to say it was a surprise, a minor one, to see Yggdrasil Gaming match the candy game so closely. Not in form obviously. FruitPunk has healthy foods as a focus, and the futuristic game world is a long way from the pink, pastel, candied realm of Sugar Rush. But once it became clear that the aim of the game is to cluster up on the same grid positions in order to double multipliers, déjà vu kicked in.

As always, if a developer is going to copy an idea, they may as well copy a good one, and Sugar Rush didn’t hit the popularity levels it did by delivering dud gameplay. There is just something sweet about the way clusters highlight positions and double multipliers as they avalanche on the same spots. Not to mention, the thrill of lighting up significant portions of the game grid with multiplier values in free spins, which you know are not going to be cleared off the board until the round ends. It’s not for nothing that Pragmatic Play itself followed up with Sugar Rush Xmas, Sugar Rush 1000, and the upcoming Sugar Rush Bonanza.

What dampens the desire to pick FruitPunk is that this has all been done before, more than once, in games with noticeably higher max RTPs. Sure, if you’re fed up to the back teeth with candy slots, but still hunger for the avalanching, highlighted winning positions, rising win multipliers combo, or are tempted by the feature buy price, then FruitPunk might make for an entertaining palate cleanser. The max win here is higher than what the original Sugar Rush release has to offer, too, at 7,000x, but players attracted by these mechanics are better served elsewhere.

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