Sweet Bonanza™ Slot Game for Sugar & Adrenalin Addicts

If you have played Candy Crush before, Pragmatic Play’s Sweet Bonanza™ will look instantly familiar – they definitely took a pinch of inspiration from the ever-popular mobile game! Even more interesting is the fact that this game – technically a grid slot – does away with regular pay lines or pay ways, and instead pays out whenever you have eight to twelve matching symbols onscreen in a single spin.

Sweet Bonanza™ Overview

The game takes place on a 6×5 grid, giving you a total of 30 potential slots for symbols to land in. This means you can technically win up to three times on a single spin, although during my testing I only landed two sets of matching symbols a handful of times. Because of this, I believe that hitting eight matching symbols three times on a single spin is probably extremely rare.

It’s a unique style of play that I haven’t seen very often – most grid slots require you to match groups of adjacent symbols, so scoring a win just from having eight matching symbols anywhere on screen is an interesting dynamic. Despite the maximum win being advertised as 21,100x, Pragmatic Play states that this is only a “Medium” volatility game! I have upgraded this to “High” in the table below, based both on the maximum win and my personal experience during testing.

Spinning the Reels for the First Time

The sweet-inspired graphics are attractive, although they do feel a little generic. I figured I would try a few spins before looking at the pay table to get a general feel for the game, and was surprised to hit a 74x win in my first few spins! Take a look at the payouts section below to find out how common wins of this size are.

Sweet Bonanza™ features cascading symbols too, giving you additional chances to win by removing any winning symbols from the reels. Because you need eight of the same symbols to score a win, I found that it was rare to win more than two or three times on a single spin. I also found out the hard way that three scatters are not sufficient to win the free spins in this game – you’ll need at least four.

Payouts

On the bright side, the scatters do have their payout attached – 3x, 5x, or 100x for four, five, or six respectively. This makes the scatter symbols the biggest win on the pay table, with the next highest payout being 50x your stake for 12 or more of the heart shaped symbol. I was surprised to discover that it is the basic shapes such as the heart along with the purple square, green pentagon, and blue rectangle which are the “picture” symbols in Sweet Bonanza™, with the smaller payouts being linked to the real fruits.

The “big” wins range from the previously mentioned 50x for twelve or more hearts, down to 12x for the blue rectangle. The red apple is the best paying “low” symbol with a maximum payout of 5x, and the colors stay co-ordinated with the higher paying symbols, making it simple to remember which symbols pay better. The only exception to this is that there is an additional banana symbol in the low paying group, with no matching yellow symbol on the top row.

Sweet Bonanza™ Features

Here’s a breakdown of the unique features offered by Sweet Bonanza™.

Ante Bet

For an additional 25% on top of your regular bet, you can buy yourself an increased chance of hitting the scatter symbols. I wasn’t very keen on this because it isn’t specified exactly how much better your chances are, or what effect this additional bet has on the games RTP. If the only difference from placing the “Ante” bet is a few extra scatters being added into the reels, surely this must have a significant negative effect on the base game RTP?

That said, if this bet increases your chance of winning the bonus round significantly, could it be a good bet in comparison to the bonus buy feature? You could place 400 of these bets for the same price as a single feature, so it might be a good deal – it’s a shame they don’t give players more information about this.

Free Spins Feature

As mentioned earlier, you need to catch at least four scatters to begin the free spins feature, but whilst the bonus is in play you can win an additional five spins each time you hit just three scatters. Additionally, a bomb-shaped multiplier symbol is added to the reels during free spins, which can multiply the value of your spin by up to 100x. Sadly, whenever I saw large numbers such as this attached to the bomb, I failed to hit a win on the same spin.

Bonus Buy Feature

The free spins are a lot of fun, and I had a couple of excellent rounds from it during testing, with a maximum win of 367x my bet. That’s not a bad result considering I only played around fifteen bonus rounds altogether. The price does feel high though at 100x your stake – I had a couple of sets of free spins which finished with no win at all, so be aware that this can happen.

Sweet Bonanza™ – Our Verdict

I really enjoyed playing Sweet Bonanza™ and found that the “Pay-Anywhere” mechanic made the game feel fresh and interesting. The pay table is probably quite reasonable considering the large size of the grid, although I did feel as if the base game could be a little more generous. Overall, this is a great slot which deserves your attention!

Game Details