Sweet Powernudge (Pragmatic Play) Slot Demo & Review

Candy Crush may get all the attention for starting the craze for sweet-based entertainment, but the truth is that online slots featuring candy or sweets had already been around for years before Candy Crush became a twinkle in game developer King’s eye! The theme has undoubtedly increased in popularity as a result of the enormous success of the mobile game, so I do have to give credit where credit is due. We have a great selection of sugary themed slot games for you to indulge in here on our site, and you can play Sugar Rush free, another Pragmatic Play release, or get your teeth into another of their creations titled Sugar Supreme Powernudge that features hue multipliers in the bonus round.

The next stop in our review is the pays section, and the Red jelly is the highest-paying symbol on the paytable with a return of 100x the bet for a maximum cluster of 15 or more, dropping to 20x for 12-14 and 12x for a group of 10-11 adjacent symbols. The Green Jelly drops to 75x, 15x, or 9x for the same 15/12-14/10-11 cluster sizes, respectively, followed by the Yellow at 50x/10x/6x, and then the Purple at 40x/8x/4.5x. Four royals make up the lower-paying section and return between 30x and 10x the bet for a maximum cluster of 15 or more adjacent symbols.

There are no surprises with respect to the betting range; Pragmatic Play is very consistent in this regard! The minimum bet is €0.20 for each round, whilst the maximum permitted wager of €100.00 matches that of nearly every game from this developer.

The base gameplay of Sweet Powernudge is unique; the playfield has six reels, each containing five rows of symbols, plus one additional multiplier reel displayed to the right of the main reel set. I was initially surprised by the number of dead spins the game returned. Still, I soon began to understand the reason for this once I became familiarised with the Powernudge feature – see below:

Powernudge Feature

On every winning spin, the Powernudge feature will activate immediately after your winnings have been paid. All reels that contain one or more winning symbols will now drop by one position, allowing new symbols to drop in from the top of the screen.

After the powernudge is complete, the game will pay you all over again, even if the winning cluster has not changed as a result of the nudging. This process will repeat until no more winning symbols are visible on the screen.

If your existing winning combination happens to line up with new matching symbols on either side, those symbols will now become part of the winning group. If any of the new symbols dropping in from the top form a new cluster of five or more matching symbols, those will form a new winning group as well.

Ante Bet

You may opt to pay an additional 25% on top of the normal price per spin in return for double the odds of hitting the free spins feature. This seems like an amazing deal – a 100% increase in your chances to trigger the bonus in return for a 25% premium. It seems almost too good to be true!

The paytable states that the game’s RTP remains unchanged at 96.08% regardless of whether this option is enabled or not. With that in mind, there seems to be no reason not to play with this option enabled, as you can be sure of hitting many more bonus rounds in the same period of time.

You’ll need to hit at least four scatter symbols to trigger the bonus round, but the game does make this a little easier for you by allowing you to collect the scatters throughout the course of any nudges which take place during a winning spin.

For example, suppose three scatter symbols land alongside a winning symbol cluster. In that case, you can hit the fourth and final required scatter during the nudging procedure, which will take place immediately afterwards – see the Powernudge section above for details.

Free Spins Feature

The free spins feature begins with seven free spins on your counter. You can win additional sets of three more spins by collecting further sets of four or more scatter symbols whilst the bonus is in play. If the triggering combination included more than four scatter symbols, the additional ones will be carried over into this feature to give you a head start on collecting a re-trigger.

I had almost forgotten about the multiplier reel when I hit my first set of free spins! Any wins achieved during free spins will be boosted by the value shown on the multiplier reel when they occur.

Bonus Buy

The free spins are undoubtedly the most exciting part of Sweet Powernudge, thanks to the all-important multiplier reel. So it would be understandable if you wanted to skip the base game and go directly to the bonus round!

If you live in a jurisdiction which permits bonus buy games, then you are in luck – for a price of 100x the normal cost per spin, you can purchase a free spin feature with a random number of triggering scatters. This seems like a fair price to me, and I would take advantage of this option if I could.