Guarana Eyes of the Amazon is an online slot from software provider Pragmatic Play, and if, like us, the title doesn't mean a whole lot to you, a quick little online search will soon clear everything up. Simply search for the term 'guarana' and tap the 'Images' tab. Right? Pretty weird, huh? It appears that the guarana plant, which is native to the Amazon, does look like a bunch of eyes. A little eerie, actually, or maybe even a lot eerie. Anyway, players are unlikely to find much in the way of eeriness in Guarana Eyes of the Amazon, which is, on the contrary, a game full of charming representations of plant life.
Well, the symbols on the gaming grid are cute; the rest of the background image is a more realistic representation of a thick jungly part of the Amazon basin. Plants wave lazily around as sunlight wafts in through gaps in the tree canopy to produce an almost primal atmosphere. It wouldn't have been a major surprise to see dinosaurs stalking through the trees in this dank spot. Presumably, such is the dense blanket of nature the Amazon wraps over visitors to its realm.
Guarana Eyes of the Amazon is available on any device and accepts wagers of 20 p/c to $/€100 per paid spin or drop, however you'd like to call it. It's actually a clone of an earlier sweety game of Pragmatic Play's titled Sugar Rush and, as such, shares all of the same stats. This includes the 5 out of 5 highly volatile math model rating and a maximum return to player value of 96.5% - whether playing in the regular single spin manner or buying free spins.
Played on a 7x7 sized game grid, Guarana Eyes of the Amazon is a cluster pays slot which awards wins when blocks of at least 5 matching symbols land, touching in horizontal or vertical positions. It was a little hard to make out precisely what the symbols were, but all are natural products of Mother Earth with arms and faces to give them a personal touch. Landing a 5-symbol cluster pays 0.2 to 1 times the bet, while a 15+ symbol cluster pays 20 to 150 times the bet. Before moving on to the features, let's finish this section off by saying Guarana Eyes of the Amazon does not have a wild symbol.
It has a Tumble feature, though, as well as Multiplier Spots, free spins, and a buy free spins option.
The Tumble feature is active in all phases of the game and removes winning symbols from the board. Remaining as well as new symbols, then drop down from above to plug the empty spaces. A tumbling sequence will keep going until no new cluster is created.
When a winning symbol is removed, it highlights the position it was in. After the second time a symbol is removed from the same spot, a multiplier is added to it. The multiplier starts at x2, and its value doubles every time another symbol is removed from the same spot – up to a maximum of x128. The multiplier applies to all winning clusters that land on top of it. When more than one multiplier is used in a win, they add to each other. In the base game, all marked spots persist during a tumble sequence but are removed at the end of the spin.
Hitting 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatter symbols in the base game awards 10, 12, 15, 20, or 30 free spins, respectively. The same applies while free spins are active, where landing 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatter symbols awards a further 10, 12, 15, 20, or 30 free spins, respectively. During free spins, multipliers and marked spots remain in place until the feature comes to an end.
Players are able to buy free spins from the base game for the cost of 100x the bet. When buying the bonus round like this, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 scatters will randomly land to trigger it.
Looping back to the first paragraph, it would have been interesting if Pragmatic Play had decided to go realistic with the theme, and Guarana Eyes of the Amazon was full of googly-eyed-looking plants staring out at players like some sort of extra-terrestrial being. But it doesn't seem like intense originality was the order of the day when the studio sat down to create Guarana Eyes of the Amazon since it's a clone of Sugar Rush and all. No matter, Sugar Rush was a playable game, simple, yet with a nicely thought-through and delivered progressive multiplicative mechanic to help spice up cluster wins.
And to be fair, the same set of features and stats means Guarana Eyes of the Amazon is just as playable as its predecessor was. Perhaps not quite so much for players utterly enthralled by candy-themed games, which Sugar Rush proudly was. But Guarana Eyes of the Amazon is a thoroughly charming game as well, and there's something warming about the fruit and veg or whatever else is on the game's paytable, injecting heavy doses of cuteness as well. As for the gameplay, Guarana Eyes of the Amazon is technically just as compelling as before, and if you've seen the max win clip of Sugar Rush going manic with multipliers, you'll be acutely aware of how well they can potentially function in Guarana Eyes of the Amazon as well.
With its 5,000x the bet win cap in place, it's safe to say that Guarana Eyes of the Amazon is just as enjoyable as its mould slot was. Perhaps even more so if you prefer the jungle location to the candy wonderland of before, plus the personable chums that went into colouring Guarana Eyes of the Amazon help make the repeat performance fresher than it might have been. Clever name, too.
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