Candy Blast

Candy Blast: Slot Overview

To quote the film 'Contact', 'First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?' A similar line of thinking seems to have been running through the mind of Push Gaming as it has not only released Mad Blast but, mere weeks later, Candy Blast, a clone in all ways but skin. As such, here's hoping you're in the mood for more scatter wins action boosted by a doubling win multiplier - coated in sugar this time.

Bright colours, a lot of pink, sweet stuff all over the place, yep, we're playing a candy slot, alright. A 6x5 gaming grid rests atop a giant iced biscuit thing, or cake, or something bad for your health as if it's a literal 'dessert' island in the middle of the sea. Candy Blast is not as imaginative as Mad Blast's sci-fi and robots, but if you want candy gambling, here's a portion.

A scatter-pays slot, winning combinations in Candy Blast are created when 8 or more identical symbols land anywhere on the gaming grid. The winning symbols vanish from sight and the spaces they leave behind are filled by symbols cascading downwards. Cascading repeats until no new win appears. Push Gaming has kept the volatility high the second time around, and the maximum RTP when betting 10 c to $/€100 per spin has stayed the same at 96.34%. Players happy to pay double the stake per game round can do so by activating the Push Bet, which increases the chance of triggering the feature.

Five candies sit on the bottom side of the paytable before we get to 2 cake symbols and 2 cupcake symbols. Hitting 8-9 matching symbols pays 0.3 to 10 times the stake, whereas the biggest scatter combinations of 12+ OAK are worth 2 to 50 times the stake.

Candy Blast: Slot Features

As well as the cascading wins system, Candy Blast has a Total Multiplier, Multiplier Boost symbols, Extra Life symbols, free spins, Multiplier Strike Out and bonus buys.

Total Multiplier

The total multiplier applies to each winning combination. For each winning cascade, the Total Multiplier doubles in value until there is a non-winning cascade, then it resets. In the base game, the Total Multiplier starts at x1 and can go as high as x2,048.

Multiplier Boost Symbol

The Multiplier Boost symbol lands in the base game and in free spins. It activates with any winning combination, increasing the Total Multiplier by the number of steps it displays. The Multiplier Boost symbol may have step values of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.

Extra Life Symbol

The Extra Life symbol also lands in the base game and in free spins. It activates on a non-winning cascade, removing all pay symbols from the reels, except scatters, Multiplier Boosts, and all instances of the most common paying symbol. It leaves the highest-paying symbol if more than one symbol type is equally common.

Free Spins

Landing 3 scatters in the base game awards 8 free spins with a starting Total Multiplier of x2, 4 landed scatters in the base game awards 10 free spins with a starting Total Multiplier of x4, while 5 scatters in the base game awards 12 free spins with a starting Total Multiplier of x8. The Total Multiplier resets to the lowest possible value for each new free spin. Landing a scatter in the round awards +1 spin.

Multiplier Strike Out

This feature only occurs in free spins. After 3 consecutive winning cascades have occurred, the Multiplier Strike Out feature removes the last active Total Multiplier step from the Total Multiplier list for the remainder of the round. It cannot remove the 2,048x, though.

Bonus Buy

Players can buy free spins with an x2 initial multiplier for 150x the bet or free spins with an x8 initial multiplier for 750x the bet.

Candy Blast: Slot Verdict

If Mad Blast's info section claiming to deliver a 'one-of-a-kind experience' was up for debate, then the same claim coming from Candy Blast is even more dubious since the two slots are bang-on identical beneath the outer layer. It's weird seeing Push Gaming release slots so close to each other like this. So out of character. Well, maybe it is out of character for the old Push. This new Push Gaming gets up to all sorts of things it's hard to imagine happening in the good old days. Ah well, can't stop progress, as they say.

Can't stop the proliferation of scatter-paying slots either, it seems, and both Mad Blast and Mad Candy are solid examples of this style of play. Mixing in a multiplier feature to go with the scattering is a popular move, and the way Mad Candy uses a doubling up Total Multiplier rather than multiplier symbols, aka Gates of Olympus or Sweet Bonanza, makes for a pleasant change. It's all a bit DoubleMax (as seen in Raptor, for example), but still, variety is no bad thing. What sets Candy Blast's multiplier apart from regular DoubleMax slots is that it resets to the lowest possible value during the bonus game rather than persist after growing. If that seems unfair, it's not so bad since the Multiplier Strike Out lends an assist by removing values from the ladder, and the Multiplier Boost is handy. If cascading wins aren't desirable enough on their own, then the strike-out angle adds extra pull.

Sitting on top of Candy Blast like a pink sprinkle is a 10,000x cap, and with the top multi on the ladder clocking in at x2,048, the max win would appear to be an achievable amount, theoretically, at least. As an entertaining scatter pays candy slot with an exciting multiplier feature thrown in, Candy Blast ticks the right boxes. And yet, it was hard to totally brush aside the feeling Candy Blast was a little superfluous coming so hot on the heels of Mad Blast.