Sweet Rush Bonanza: Slot Overview
Editor’s note: This review is based on an early access version of the game. We may update the review after the full release if necessary.
Non-gamblers might be surprised to discover just how successful candy is at sleeving online slots, and one of the more popular examples is Pragmatic Play‘s sugar-coated cluster pays machine Sugar Rush. It was a game that played as sweetly as it looked on account of its ability to grow combinable multipliers on every one of its individual grid positions. Since it was released in 2022, Pragmatic Play has gone back to the blueprint on more than one occasion, and has done so again to design Sweet Rush Bonanza, a game that combines elements of Sugar Rush with those of the iconic scatter pays slot Sweet Bonanza.
The items in the background might have been altered since Sugar Rush and Sweet Bonanza, but Sweet Rush Bonanza’s optical effect remains a candied fantasy world of sweets, lollies, and whatnot. The music is just as saccharine as the visuals, providing a vibrant place for sweet-toothed gamblers to try their luck. While much might seem similar at a quick glance, it won’t take long to spot various differences, such as extra gambling options and the pay mechanic/cell multiplier combination.
Sweet Rush Bonanza borrows from Sweet Bonanza for its active play area, where the action takes place on a 6×5 matrix. Furthermore, Sweet Rush Bonanza creates winning combinations when at least 8 matching symbols land anywhere on the grid. A max RTP of 96.5% and high volatility are two of the key stats, while stake selection is 20c to $/€240 per spin. What has also changed is an abundance of betting options – ante bets and feature buys, which are covered below.
From bottom to top on the symbol hierarchy are bananas, grapes, apples, orange gummy bears, blue gummy bears, red gummy bears, and three candy symbols. Winning combinations of 8-9 in size are worth 0.25x to 5x the bet, rising to 2x to 50x for a 12+ OAK combo. The tumble mechanic causes winning symbols to explode off the grid, dropping symbols downwards for another chance to win on the same spin, repeating as long as new hits appear.
Sweet Rush Bonanza: Slot Features
Sweet Rush Bonanza’s main features borrow heavily from Sugar Rush, meaning a cocktail of tumbles, multiplier spots and free spins. This one has a lot more to offer bonus buy players, including three ante bets and a couple of free spins buys.
Multiplier Spots
When a winning symbol explodes, its grid position is highlighted. After the second time a symbol explodes on the same spot on the same spin, a multiplier of x2 is added to the position, which doubles every time another symbol explodes on top of it up to x128. The multiplier applies to all winning combinations that land on top of it. In the base game, all multipliers and highlighted spots are cleared when there are no more tumbles.
Free Spins
Hitting 4 or more scatters triggers 10 free spins. During free spins, highlighted spots and their multipliers remain in place until the end of the round. Hitting 4+ scatters on a free spin awards an additional +10 free spins.
Ante Bet & Feature Buy
Sweet Rush Bonanza has not one but three ante bets for gamblers to activate should they so choose. They are Ante 1 for 3x to provide 10 times the chance of getting the feature since three scatters will trigger it. Ante 2 costs 20x to have random starting multipliers on all positions on the grid, while Ante 3 costs 250x to have x32 multipliers on the whole grid. Free spins may be bought from the base game for 100x the bet, while 500x buys super free spins where a multiplier of x2 is on all grid positions.
Sweet Rush Bonanza: Slot Verdict
With hindsight being 20/20, the meeting of Sugar Rush and Sweet Bonanza has a ring of inevitability to it. Aside from switching from cluster pays to scatter pays, the game functions very closely to Sugar Rush, which is not a bad thing. Sugar Rush has proven to be a very popular slot for Pragmatic Play, prompting the developer to follow up with games like Sugar Rush Xmas and Sugar Rush 1000. The studio flinging everything at the wall to see what sticks approach occasionally pays off, and Sugar Rush resonated with both gamblers and other software providers keen to try the mechanic out in their own releases – Nolimit City‘s Duck Hunters is one of the more memorable examples of a competitor having a crack.
You often can’t beat the original, though, and Sweet Rush Bonanza doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, preferring to mash two wheels together instead. At its heart, the focus remains on getting wins, highlighting cells, hitting consecutive wins if you can, and growing those cell multipliers. As before, having a lot of multis light up big patches of the grid is what you want to see, and the best chance of really doing so is most probably in free spins, since they don’t reset – or via feature buys or ante bets, though they might be pricey. The cell multiplier effect is perhaps less visually impressive in Sweet Rush Bonanza since the grid has shrunk, but winning potential has not, staying at the same 5,000x level as Sugar Rush, and scatter wins growing multis can still be a real treat. While the odds of max exposure occurring are better in this game than Sugar Rush, some may have been hoping for greater potential, especially given the price tag on the super buy.
And since Sweet Rush Bonanza is a game with bonus buying/ante bet players in its scope, that could be a make-or-break factor for some. For players with no interest in doing anything other than base game grinding, picking Sweet Rush Bonanza boils down, in part, to having a scatter pays or cluster pays preference, and both methods have definite entertainment value. However, for gamblers who prefer to up the stakes, then the enhanced betting options certainly add a new dimension to the Sugar Rush experience.
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