Sweet Craze

Sweet Craze: Slot Overview

Sugary foods are perennially popular amongst online slot developers, and few have taken to the topic with as much gusto as Pragmatic Play. Boasting hits like Sweet Bonanza 1000 and Sugar Rush 1000, and a host of others under its belt already, the studio has felt the pull of the sugar once again. This time the team has created Sweet Craze, a cluster paying slot that sweetens its wins with the help of Money symbols, which possess individual, increasing multipliers. If history has taught us anything, it's that Pragmatic Play knows how to make an entertaining candy slot, so will Sweet Craze be another sweet-toothed delight or a cavity-inducing crash?

If guilt shared is guilt halved, then players will appreciate the company of a happy, bow-tied individual, holding a doughnut and a bag of other naughty food items. He is smiling not only in anticipation of a potentially epic sugar rush, but also because Sweet Craze is held in a brightly cheerful spot of gingerbread-like buildings and enormous cupcakes. It's a bit different from the candy fantasy lands of games like Candy Blitz or Sweet Rush Bonanza, but Sweet Craze is nonetheless an inviting space for comfort food lovers.

Sweet Craze is a cluster pays slot played on a 7x7 grid. Winning combinations are formed when 5 or more matching symbols are connected to each other horizontally and/or vertically. A highly volatile math model runs the game, and it produces an RTP of 96.54% when betting $/€0.20 to $/€240 per spin.

Sugary food litters the paytable, where there are nine regular paying symbols of various types. They pay 0.1x to 0.5x the stake when making a 5 OAK combination, up to 12.5x to 50x the bet if the combinations are 25+ OAK in size. Sweet Craze has a tumble feature, which removes winning symbols from the grid. The gaps this creates are filled by symbols tumbling, and the feature repeats as long as new wins are formed. The game's wild symbol can appear on all reels. It substitutes for all symbols except the scatter or Chest.

Sweet Craze: Slot Features

Sweet Craze's little bag of sweeties contains Chest and Money symbols, free spins, special bets, and feature buys.

Chest Symbols and Money Symbols

Whenever the Chest symbol hits, if there is at least one winning combination, it transforms into a Money symbol with a value of 2x to 500x the bet. Money symbols do not disappear as part of tumbles but remain on the screen until all tumbles have ended. After each tumble, a multiplier on the Money symbol increases by +1. At the end of the spin, the multiplier is applied to the value on their Money symbol, and the total is awarded.

Free Spins

Landing 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatters anywhere on the reels triggers 10, 12, 14, or 16 free spins, respectively. During the round, Money symbols produced by Chests stay on the grid till the end of the feature. Their multiplier increases by +1 with each tumble. At the end of the round, when free spins have ended, Money symbol values are multiplied by the current multiplier of each and the total is awarded. Players collect an extra 5 to 16 free spins when between 3 and 7 scatters hit.

Special Bets & Feature Buy

Players have the option of activating special bets. They are the ante bet, which doubles the stake to make triggering free spins 5x higher, or super spins, at 10x the bet to guarantee at least 1 Chest symbol on each base game spin. Free spins cannot trigger when super spin is activated. Free spins can be instantly triggered from the base game by buying them. One option is a regular free spins round triggered by 4-7 scatters for 100x the bet. The other is super free spins, triggered by 4-7 scatters, costing 500x, where all Money symbols from Chests have a minimum value of 10x.

Sweet Craze: Slot Verdict

Pragmatic Play's insatiable sweet tooth continues with the addition of Sweet Craze to the studio's impressive sugary, candy-related portfolio. Not only is the list a long one, but it also contains some bona fide classics in there, too. Sweet Craze doesn't strike one as a classic immediately, but it might find an audience amongst gamblers who, say, like what the studio has done in the past, or who are simply sweet food-minded when it comes to playing slots. The game makes a positive first impression with its amiable main character and carefree world, but unless it knocks out something impressive rather quickly, Sweet Craze's hooks aren't as sharp or catchy as some of its brethren.

For instance, in Sugar Rush, highlighted positions appear after every winning combination, so players get to experience the effect early and often. In Sweet Craze, it took a while for Money symbols to eventually appear, and they weren't especially exciting when they did. In other words, it might take extra time and effort to really sit with Sweet Craze to uncover its finer moments, though it packs a win cap of 10,000x the bet, so there are definite possibilities. To be fair, it might be quite thrilling when several Money symbols are locked in place during free spins, watching their individual multipliers tick northwards with each tumble till the end. Money symbol starting values make a difference, which makes the super free spins buy tempting, if expensive.

Pragmatic Play has released a wide variety of candy, sugar slots by now, and like putting your hand into a bag of pick 'n' mix, what you pull out might be the best sweet ever, or the worst, or something in between. Sweet Craze feels like one of those in-betweens, being neither a bad game nor one of the studio's blockbuster bonbons. So, while Sweet Craze may not immediately captivate players in the same way as some of Pragmatic Play's established candy-related hits, players willing to engage with its mechanics and patiently explore the potential of its Money multipliers may end up being rewarded.