Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500

Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500: Slot Overview

One of the things Pragmatic Play excels at is designing slots that the studio can return to later and build on should they prove to be popular. So it was with the 2019 title Sweet Bonanza, a game that caught the scatter pay freight train early, before returning again, and again, in slots such as Sweet Bonanza 1000, Sweet Bonanza Super Scatter, and Sweet Bonanza POP. That's a whole lot of sweet. In this instance, the studio has pulled Sweet Bonanza 2500 out of the cabinet, left the gameplay as it was, given it a Christmas-themed makeover, then rolled out an end-of-year friendly game titled Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500.

Where Sweet Bonanza 2500 had a bright, fine, sunshiny day base game atmosphere, Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500 turns the thermostat down a few degrees to evoke a feeling of winter. As before, everything in the background looks like it could be eaten, but extra dustings of white icing sugar have been used to simulate snow. On a side note, Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500 has chosen not to emulate Sweet Bonanza Xmas' appearance, so the slightly sinister snowmen are missing. The game still looks more or less the same as any other regular Sweet Bonanza slot, though really, players are probably more likely to choose the latest SW release to see how Pragmatic Play has tightened the screw than to see freaky new visuals anyway.

The sweetness takes place on a 6-reel grid, each reel holding 5 symbols. To win, you'll need at least 8 matching symbols to land, but they can land in any position to trigger a payout. A tumble feature removes winning symbols from the reels, then drops new ones down to refill the grid. Tumbles continue until no new wins appear. Layered beneath mountains of sugar is Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500's medium volatile math model, which is available in several RTP configurations - 96.52% is the most preferred. The stake range has a minimum of $/€0.20 and a maximum of $/€240.

The symbols are the same, but each one has received a dusting of snow. They are bananas, grapes, watermelons, plums, apples, and four candy symbols. Scatter wins of 8-9 OAK pay 0.25x to 10x, and clusters of 12+ OAK are worth 2x to 50x the stake. 

Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500: Slot Features

Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500 comes with free spins, multiplier symbols, special bets and feature buys. 

Free Spins

Scatter symbols land on all reels and pay 3x, 5x, or 100x when 4, 5, or 6 of them land. Also, when 4 or more scatters hit, players win 10 free spins. During the round, when 3 or more scatters land, players win an extra 5 free spins. Multiplier symbols make their appearance in free spins, where they land with a value of x2 to x2,500. At the end of a tumble sequence, all multiplier symbols in view add their values together and apply the total to the win. 

Special Bets & Feature Buys

From the special bet section of the game, players may activate Ante Bet 1 for 2.5x to make the chance of triggering free spins close to 8 times higher, or Ante Bet 2 for 12x to make the chance of free spins 10 times higher, and during the round the minimum multiplier is x20. Super Spin 1 costs 20x, where on every spin at least 1 multiplier is guaranteed to hit, while Super Spin 2 costs 250x, which is the same, but multiplier values are at least x25. Free spins cannot be triggered from Super Spins

When buying the bonus round, the options are free spins for 100x, Super Free Spins 1 for 500x where multiplier minimums are x20, or Super Free Spins 2 for 1,000x where the multiplier minimum is 10x, and every multiplier that is used in a winning combination gets collected in a total multiplier meter. For the duration of the round, all wins are multiplied by the total multiplier.

Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500: Slot Verdict

Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500 is a fairly straightforward seasonal revamp, which takes the Sweet Bonanza 2500 experience, keeps the gameplay that made its cousins and forbears so appealing, and wraps it in a layer of Christmas decorations. If you were hoping for some sort of jape or mechanical twist to accompany the skin switch, you won't be finding any of those here. Instead, Pragmatic Play has held tight to what worked before, before reskinning it for the Xmas period, or any time of the year, really, though Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500 might not make a lot of sense if warm sunlight is beaming through the window while its snowy fruits and sweets are spinning in. 

Fortunately, the gameplay is good, and the scatter wins to tumble mechanic provides opportunities for consecutive wins to flow together from a single spin nicely. Sure, we've seen this sort of thing a load of times before, but Sweet Bonanza was one of the originators, and there is still magic in the formula. One of the main attractions, naturally, is the multiplier symbol potential. Where the first Sweet Bonanza slot maxed out multiplier values at x100, here they can now get as high as x2,500, though those values probably won't be blowing down in blizzards. Still, they're there, and they contribute to winning potential of 25,000x when just the right combinations of winning symbols and multipliers appear.

Apart from easing back the volatility, the stats, figures, and features in Sweet Bonanza Xmas 2500 are about bang on what they were in the regular Sweet Bonanza 2500. As such, this is a reskin that is unlikely to convert anyone who dislikes the original, or gamblers worn out by too much Sweet Bonanza. For the rest, there's little to nothing new here to dip a pinky in, but Pragmatic Play is banking on there being enough willing gamblers who consider that sometimes a successful recipe only needs a little icing sugar and a Christmas makeover.