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22 July 2024 
Candy Stars Slot Review 2024
Get ready to feel starry-eyed in Pragmatic Play’s latest confectionary themed slot, Candy Stars!
From the Provider who who tempted us with Sweet Bonanza and Sugar Rush, Pragmatic Play has chosen to add another delicious-looking slot to their confectionary collection, but will it satisfy our craving for sugary treats?
Candy Stars has all the traits of a Megaways slot, with the additional Sliding Reel and Cascading Ways but in actual fact, it isn’t. Sweet treats lead the way towards some juicy big wins with the help of sticky Wild Multipliers and an exciting Free Spins round.
Candy Stars may not look like a dentist’s worst nightmare at first, but once you get stuck into the gooey center of gameplay, your opinion will soon change!
Candy Stars Base Game and Features
Candy Stars is a 5 reel slot with 576 ways to win. Winning combinations are formed when 3 or more of the same symbol types land from left to right, starting from the left-most reel.
The minimum bet available to players is £/€0.20 per spin and the maximum bet available is £/€100 per spin, with plenty of other betting options in between the two. Candy Stars has a theoretical RTP of 96.47% and a maximum win capacity of 5,000x.
Although Candy Stars is not a Megaways slot, it does however feature both Cascading Reels and an additional Sliding Reel. Each time a winning combination is formed, all winning symbols will be removed from the reels and new symbols will drop down, filling all empty reel positions.
When a winning combination is formed using one or more of the symbols in the Sliding Reel, they will also be removed from the reels and all remaining symbols will move over to the left, and new symbols will slide onto the reel from the right-most side.
In terms of symbols, the highest paying regular symbol in Candy Stars is the Purple Sweet, followed by the Red, Green and Blue Sweets. Low-paying symbols are standard Ace, King, Queen and Jack.
There is also a Wild symbol present which substitutes for all other symbols except Scatters. Wilds will only appear on the additional Sliding Reel.
Sticky Wilds
Each time a Wild symbol lands on the additional Sliding Reel, it will remain fixed in its position for the duration of the Cascade feature for that particular spin.
The Wild symbol always starts off with a x1 Multiplier in the base game. After each Cascade, the Multiplier will increase by x1, up to a maximum of x128. If you manage to reach the maximum Multiplier available, it will be applied to all wins for any subsequent Cascades. The Wild Multiplier will be applied to all wins that pass through it.
Candy Stars Free Spins
Landing 3 or more Scatters on reels 1, 3 and 5 triggers the Free Spins round, awarding 8 Free Spins.
During the Free Spins round, 1 Wild symbol is guaranteed to land on the Sliding Reel in a random position. Identical to the base game, Wilds that land across the sliding reel will remain fixed in their position for the duration of each Cascade for that particular spin.
This time the Multiplier for all Wild symbols will start off at x2, which is then Doubled after each Cascade, up to a maximum of x128. Once you reach the maximum Multiplier value, this will be applied to all wins for all subsequent Cascades.
Landing 3 or more Scatters during this round will award an additional +5 Free Spins.
Candy Stars Bonus Buy
For those of you who are outside the UK, you will benefit from a Bonus Buy option.
Pragmatic Play has granted players access to the Free Spins round for a total cost of 80x your current bet. The bonus buy feature awards the Free Spins round with 3, 4 or 5 triggering Scatters.
When purchasing the Free Spins round, the RTP decreases slightly from 96.47% to 96.26%.
Candy Stars: Our Verdict
Candy Stars isn’t quite as sweet as Sweet Bonanza or Sugar Rush was, but it could do well to satiate the appetite of those looking for a quick fix.
Candy Stars isn’t quite the Megaways slot either despite its striking similarities, but its ‘mini-megaways’ style is obviously an intentional move on Pragmatic’s part seeing as they’ve used the Megaways licence previously.
Candy Stars looks rather modest, and it feels rather modest at first too, but Candy Stars is about much more than meets the eye with its multiplier feature in both the Base Game and Free Spins. To compensate for the lack of ways when compared to a Megaways game, Pragmatic has opted for sticky wilds, and they’re much more potent in Free Spins as you’d expect.
The multiplier doubles each time rather than increments, so a multiplier of x128 isn’t that unrealistic. Statistics would also prove that Candy Stars is as capable as almost every other game Pragmatic has made with a 5,000x win cap.
We’ll be truthful in saying that we came into Candy Stars ready to judge it for its somewhat unimaginative theme, and we thought the gameplay might match its average appearance, but it grew on us fairly quickly.
While it didn’t always deliver when we were testing it, it certainly had its moments.
Welcome Bonus
