Sugar Rush review
Sugar Rush is a cluster-pays slot from Pragmatic Play, released on 30 June 2022. Gummy bears, stars, hearts and jelly beans tumble onto a square grid, and a gumball machine serves as the scatter. What sets it apart is memory. The grid remembers where wins have happened and turns those spots into multipliers. In a normal spin that memory is wiped when the spin ends; in free spins it lasts the whole round. Almost everything about how the game feels follows from that one difference.
Clusters and tumble chains
Forget paylines. Each spin fills 49 cells with candy, and a win needs a group of at least five identical symbols joined edge to edge. Up, down, left and right all count. Corners touching diagonally do not. There is no Wild to fill a gap, so every cluster has to be built from matching sweets alone.
Three gummy-bear colours are the lower symbols and four candies are the premiums, without card ranks. Groups of at least 15 reach the top pay tier, up to 150x the stake for the richest candy. There is no Wild, so a cluster must contain matching sweets. Symbol and cluster-size frequencies are unpublished.
Paid symbols pop, the rest fall and new sweets refill from above. Further clusters pay within the same stake; the chain ends when no group forms. Even a small win leaves marks that can participate in later tumbles.
Marks and position multipliers
This is the heart of the game. When a winning symbol explodes, its cell is marked. If another winning symbol later explodes on that same marked cell, a 2x multiplier appears there. Every further hit doubles it again.
| Win on the same spot | Result |
|---|---|
| First | Spot marked, no multiplier yet |
| Second | 2x |
| Third | 4x |
| Fourth | 8x |
| Fifth | 16x |
| Sixth | 32x |
| Seventh | 64x |
| Eighth onwards | 128x (maximum) |
Regular play clears all marks and multipliers at the end of the chain: a new stake starts on a clean board. Free spins retain them for the round, including losing spins. A charged cell helps only a cluster crossing it. How several values combine within a cluster, and whether a newly reached step applies before or after the current pay, are not established here.
Scatters, free spins and the buy
Gumball machines count as scatters anywhere, with their count setting the starting bonus length. Accumulation continues between spins and the board clears after the last. More spins offer more opportunities to hit cells again, without guaranteeing useful clusters or a large payout.
| Gumball machines | Free spins |
|---|---|
| 3 | 10 |
| 4 | 12 |
| 5 | 15 |
| 6 | 20 |
| 7 | 30 |
The buy costs 100x the stake and uses the same marked-cell rules. Length depends on entry scatters; their distribution for buys is unspecified. Separate buy RTP and the exact retrigger rule for new scatters are undisclosed. Missing retrigger information does not confirm that extensions are impossible. Button availability depends on version and market.
Parameters and related games
Published RTP is 96.50%, volatility high and the maximum 5,000x. Hit rate, bonus frequency, maximum probability and termination at the cap are unknown. A maximum does not necessarily require charging almost the whole board: totals also depend on cluster sizes, counts and subsequent tumbles.
2020’s Fruit Party also uses a 7×7 grid, but random 2x values on winning symbols multiply together, up to 256x combined, without position memory; its maximum is 5,000x. March 2024’s Sugar Rush 1000 raises a cell to 1,024x after eleven explosions and the overall limit to 25,000x, adding Super Buy. Sugar Rush Xmas arrived in November 2023; a Super Scatter edition also exists.
At launch Pragmatic Play was releasing up to six slots per month with over 200 games; Big Bass Splash had arrived a week earlier. Yossi Barzely’s announcement connected the candy theme to early summer. Sugar Rush and Fruit Party compares position and random multipliers. Sweet Bonanza uses the candy theme at medium volatility without mark accumulation; its pay-anywhere system differs from how cluster pays work.
