Sugar Rush

Sugar Rush is what happens when a studio looks at its own biggest hit and
decides the problem was that it had reels at all. Pragmatic Play took the sweet
shop palette of Sweet Bonanza, threw away the grid it fell through, and replaced
it with a 7×7 board where wins are clusters rather than lines.

It arrived in 2022 and did well enough to get a sequel, which in this
category is the only review that counts.

Sugar Rush Slot: the Basics

Seven reels, seven rows, no paylines and no ways to win. Five or more
matching symbols touching each other horizontally or vertically pay as a
cluster, then vanish and let new ones fall.

Stakes run from £0.20 to £100 a spin. The base game is quick and the tumbles
are quick, which makes it feel busier than the maths would suggest.

Multiplier spots, which is the whole idea

Here is the mechanic worth understanding. When a winning cluster clears, the
board positions it occupied are marked. If a position is part of a winning
cluster again, its marker becomes a multiplier, starting at 2x.

Every subsequent win on that same position doubles it: 2x, 4x, 8x, and on up
to 128x. Multipliers on any position that forms part of a win are added together
and applied to that win.

So the game is not really about landing a big cluster. It is about landing
several ordinary clusters in the same corner of the board, which is a very
different thing to hope for and a much better one to watch.

Free spins

Three or more scatters award free spins, and the crucial difference is that
multiplier spots persist across the entire round rather than resetting each
spin. A position that has been hit four times by spin three keeps that value for
the rest of the feature.

The maximum win is 5,000x your stake. That is low for a modern Pragmatic
release, and it tells you honestly what sort of game this is: frequent, busy and
capped.

RTP and volatility

Pragmatic quotes around 96.5% at the top configuration, and as with the rest
of their catalogue more than one version circulates. The casino chooses. Check
the game’s information screen where you are playing rather than trusting a
number on a review site, this one included.

Volatility is rated high, though it plays lighter than Gates of Olympus
because the base game produces small wins constantly. Those wins are mostly
below your stake, which is the oldest trick in slot design and worth naming.

Conclusion

Sugar Rush is the most watchable of Pragmatic’s grid games and the least
dangerous, which are related facts. The 5,000x ceiling means it cannot do what
Sweet Bonanza occasionally does, and in exchange it does something almost every
spin.

The sequel pushes the ceiling far higher and is a harsher game for it. Start
here, and only move across if the constant small wins start feeling like
nothing.

18+. Gambling should be entertainment, not income. Long term the
house wins. Free and confidential help is at BeGambleAware.org.