Join the team from Candy Street on their summer vacation in a seasonal edition of Octopus Gaming’s popular Sugar Rush franchise that features all-new graphics, animations and sounds.
Essentially the same game as the original Sugar Rush video slot – albeit with a new lick of paint – the Summer Time edition again features 5 reels, 3 rows and 20 fixed paylines, with the stacked gingerbread wilds, gummy bear scatter icons and tower building bonus round all also returning.
One caveat to these similarities, however, is that Sugar Rush Summer Time is a lot harder. We’re not sure how or even why, but trust us when we say that all important bonus feature comes around a lot less often and the free spins – though seemingly more frequent – are really hard to profit from.
Just as in the previous edition of Sugar Rush, the paylines in Summer Time are non-adjustable; meaning every time you spin you’ll be multiplying your wager by 20. Thankfully, however, Octopus Gaming does offer great flexibility in terms of the amount players can risk on each line, with bets of between 1 and 10 coins available and a coin size range of $0.01-$0.50 also featuring.
This means that the game can be played from as little as $0.20 a spin for those on tighter bankrolls – and for that investment, players will get a shot at taking home a maximum regular jackpot of 450x their bet per line for matching five of the game’s highest value icons. Regular three-of-a-kind payouts, meanwhile, vary from 5x your line bet to 30x and are significantly assisted by stacked wilds.
Perhaps one of the most striking things about Sugar Rush Summer Time is its consistency with other titles in the series. True, the cutesy Candy Street background has been replaced with an all new beach location, but the cast of characters on its reels remain largely the same as in the last game.
The queen-through-ace playing card symbols again return (boo), but they are joined by the allsorts bon bons, gummy stars and marshmallows from the original Sugar Rush (yay). The difference this time out is that all of the symbols have been re-vamped for summer, with each now having a face complete with sunglasses, a straw hat or a rubber ring to continue the game’s beach holiday theme.
The cupcake wild symbol has also been replaced with a fruity red cocktail, while the free spins feature includes a nice graphical touch in which the sun in the background goes down and a night time party begins, complete with fairy lights around the palm trees and an up-tempo shift in music.
The tower building feature from the original Sugar Rush also returns in Sugar Rush Summer Time and is activated whenever three cocktail symbols appear anywhere on a valid payline. For those unfamiliar with the game, players are then transported to a separate screen where they must construct a tower from the various sweet treats that hover above their base at the top of the screen.
Clicking “drop” will select the currently highlighted item and players will win a prize award, with this amount building up with each new section of the tower until it has a) been completed or b) been sabotaged by picking two dodgy items. When this happens, players are returned to the main game.
Similarly, the free spins feature makes a welcome return in Sugar Rush Summer Time and seems to come around far more often than in its predecessor – but saying that, decent payouts seem to be a lot harder to come by. Discounting re-triggers, we activated the free spins feature four times during our play-through and completely aired three times. That means we won nothing. From 10 free spins. On a 20 payline slot. Three times. Do you have any idea how hard that is to do in most games?!
While we’re all for reboots of already popular games, we can’t help but feel that the return to player stats for Sugar Rush Summer Time have been slightly altered from the original version. The game seems a lot less generous in terms of its regular payouts, so although we actually much prefer the look and sound of this version, if you’re looking to turn a profit we’d advise sticking with the original.
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