One of the biggest growth areas for the gaming sector in recent years has come from mobile games. Things like Farmville, Bejeweled and Candy Crush Saga have found their audiences on Facebook and other social media platforms, as well as through their own successful apps. The candy matching and exploding genre has been one of the best served, and proves enduringly popular with gamers from all walks of life.
Play’n GO who created Book of Dead slot, have sought to capitalise on this trend with their Sweet Alchemy, a slots game that is almost too sugary sweet. But unlike most modern slots, this is an online casino game that owes more to candy matching games, than it does to old style fruit machines.
The game sets out across a novel 5×5 grid, and has only a single payline. Already, that’s some departure from the norm. The reel positions are filled with different coloured sweets, cakes and other delectable treats that look good enough to eat. The aim of the game is to match sweets of a kind, just like in other matching games, but in this case, you do so to ultimately win cash prizes – with the help of the confectionary wizardess, Candy, situated to the right of the screen.
This makes for novel gameplay, and you won’t play something like this everyday. But underneath it all, this is still a game that shares a lot in common with other slots titles. Players can bet with a coin range between £0.10 and £100 per spin, with the main jackpot standing at just 3x. While this isn’t particularly high, especially for a real money slots game, it’s offset by the fact that the payout percentage is so generous.
The payout stands at 96.5%, which is comfortably within the top paying games of the genre. Anything above 95% is generally considered to be good value for money, offering a house edge under 5%. In this case, there’s room to spare, with just a 3.5% house edge when you spinning Sweet Alchemy.
In addition to the base game symbols and features, there are a number of bonus features you can discover as you play through, all designed to help maximise your winning potential from this fun little candy slot.
There are wild symbols in Sweet Alchemy, but you’ll only get access to them through the bonus feature. This is obviously an unconventional slot, and this carries over into the way bonuses are triggered and awarded. There is a Sugar Rush meter, located to the side of the reels. You need to land 38 combinations to fill up the meter, and you get awarded with varying degrees of bonuses at the quarter, halfway and three quarter stages. Once the bonus meter has been filled up, you kick off a separate bonus round, where some of the biggest wins can be had.
At a quarter of the meter, or six combinations, you’re awarded two additional wilds, which find their place on the reels. The halfway stage brings two additional ‘striped’ wilds, which switch out all symbols in either their row or column, as well as acting as a regular wild – for double the bonus power. At three quarters, you get two different wilds, which while actings as wilds, go on to remove all types of a randomly selected symbol, to increase your winning potential on the spin still further.
Complete the meter to its limits, and you kick off the Mix The Elixir bonus round. This is a somewhat complicated bonus feature, and is essentially a mini-game, where you collect free spins, spin on a new set of reels, and find clues that will lead you down the path to a cash prize. This is where some of the most generous wins are to be had from this slot, so it’s worth persevering through the Sugar meter to get here.
Sweet Alchemy has a natural audience, and anyone who enjoys games like Candy Crush will immediately be drawn to this title. But beyond that, there are some great bonus features, especially the Mix The Elixir bonus game, which can deliver some seriously sizeable wins.
Check it out for yourself if you’ve got a sweet tooth – play Sweet Alchemy today, right here by visiting our online slots page.