Sweet Bonanza Candyland Live Game Review

Sweet Bonanza Candyland is Pragmatic Play’s most recognisable money wheel game. Playable in over twenty languages, the game show release debuted in 2021 and took the lessons the provider learned from Mega Wheel and ramped them up, with ample bonus features to take advantage of. Obviously, I had to put it to the test and reveal all.

Setting Up Bets

There’s nothing overly radical about betting on Sweet Bonanza Candyland. Like most Pragmatic Play live dealer options, you’ve got chips ranging from 0.20 up to 500.00 below the live video stream to use. While it is possible to splash the cash and stake up to three grand a pop if you’re a high-roller, I recommend keeping things light – this is a game of luck, after all.

Wagers can effectively be made on a variety of options – six, in fact. You’ve got conventional 1x, 2x and 5x segments and four bonus options. To be in with a sniff of landing a bonus, you’ll need to have a wager on them. Failing to do so sees you compete solely to win straight up cash prizes without multipliers.

Sweet Bonanza Candyland Gameplay

Assuming that you’ve played money wheel titles before, you’ll know how this works. If not, it’s dead simple. Sweet Bonanza Candyland’s wheel is divided into fifty-four segments, as with any title like it. There are 23 yellow banana 1x segments, alongside 15 purple grape 2x options, and 7 pink plums. Pink plums? Clearly, purple was already taken.

Alongside those, you’ve got three Sugar Bomb and Bubble Surprise spots, two Candy Drop segments, and one Sweet Spins option. These are the bonus betting options you can choose from.

The general idea is that you’re looking to slap down bets on fruit segments if you want to win fixed cash prizes. To win the big bucks, you’ll need to throw a bet or two on the bonus options. The wheel is then spun, with the pointer determining the outcome.

Obviously, I noticed that you’ll have a trickier time trying to land the bonuses, and not all of them are worth it. The Sugar Bomb Bonus, for instance, doesn’t guarantee much more than the basic betting options, but I’ll come to that in a moment.

Spin Your Way to Success

While it is the most basic way to bet, placing a bet down on the fruit segments will see you win instant money if they are chosen. Like so:

If you choose to be boring and opt for the 1:1, you’ve got the greatest chance of winning, as there are more of these segments than any other. However, winning even money won’t be the name of the game for most of you. That said, you should remember that Sweet Bonanza Candyland is luck-based, so there is no guaranteed strategy for success.

You’ve got roughly an 83.3% chance of success with fixed-price segments. That’s quite low if I’m honest. When it comes to triggering bonuses, the probability of landing those depends greatly on which options you’ve gone for, as you can imagine. Sweet Bonanza Candyland’s top prize is 20,000x, and you’ll need the Sweet Spins round to land it, as I’ll explain below.

Choose from Four Bonus Rounds

Having four bonus rounds isn’t quite the benefit it sounds. You’ll need to slap down a bet on one of them and hope it comes good to trigger them. Each brings something different to the table, so let’s cover those next.

• Bubble Surprise: This feature was only added a year after Sweet Bonanza Candyland debuted. With Bubble Surprise, a single reel slot (with five prizes) is spun. Whatever shows up is awarded to all players who placed a wager on this bonus to appear. Prizes include 5x, 10x or 25x your bet or the Sweet Spins or Candy Drop bonus rounds.
• Candy Drop: Once triggered, this mini pachinko-style game lets you pick from blue, yellow or red candies. With your selection made, they’ll drop down a chocolate-inspired maze, bagging multipliers as they go. If they make it to the bottom and land in a favourable pocket, you could end up winning 1,000:1. I wasn’t so lucky, so I ended up with smaller prizes, the lowest of which is worth around 3:1.
• Sugar Bomb: If the Sugar Bomb is chosen (and you’ve bet on it), you’ll see 2x to 10x multipliers dropped on the wheel on the following spin. You’ll win whatever crops up. However, it is possible to land successive multipliers. Because it has the least valuable prizes, I’d recommend giving this one a miss, but that’s up to you, of course.
• Sweet Spins: It is this feature from which the live dealer game derives its name. It is loosely based on the Sweet Bonanza slot from the same provider. In the feature, you’ll get to play ten free spins on a 6×5 slot with the tumbling reels mechanic in effect. Obviously, you can benefit from multipliers and Sugar Bombs that can destroy eight or more symbols. I also managed to get another ten spins by landing three lollipops. Sweet Spins is the most valuable bonus round, with a top prize worth 20,000x. It’s purely RNG-based like its counterparts and naturally trickier to get the big win.

I have a clear favourite here, and it is the Candy Drop feature. The Sugar Bomb is the worst of the four. Sweet Spins is a decent feature and should be richly rewarding, but then it begs the question – why not just play the Sweet Bonanza slot instead?

Boost Your Bonus Chances

Buying bonus rounds has become all too common in the online slot world. Now, it’s crossed over into the live dealer casino sector. Pragmatic Play gives you the option of buying a Sugar Bomb Booster at a cost of 25% of your bet again. If the Sugar Bomb round is triggered, it’ll double your multipliers. However, it doesn’t go higher than 10x. I found that out the hard way.

Check out a demo of Sweet Bonanza Candyland Live gameplay video for a closer look at the fun and potential wins this game offers!

Gamesbelt’s Verdict

Sweet Bonanza Candyland is perfectly suited for those live game fans who want something a bit more than a basic money wheel. With its bubble-gum studio, colourful wheel, six betting options, diverse bonus rounds and 20,000x non-progressive prize, it has got some bite. Sweet Bonanza Candyland is still a game of chance, though. While it’s heads and tails the best option in Pragmatic Play’s range, I’d say it is on par with the experience I had playing any number of Evolution’s own takes on the genre, including Crazy Time, Funky Time, and Monopoly Live, to name a few.

FAQ

Doesn’t Sweet Bonanza Candyland have four red 10x segments?

If you’ve not played the game for a while, you’ll no doubt be wondering this exact question. There used to be four red apples (10x) that paid 10:1. They were removed, probably to make way for the introduction of the Bubble Surprise mechanic in 2022.

Why does Sweet Bonanza Candyland RTP vary?

Pragmatic Play admits that the RTP can dip to just over 91% while at other times it rises in the 96s. This depends on what you’re betting on and the activation of bonus rounds, as it would in any game.

Is the Bubble Surprise bonus the same as the Sweet Bonanza slot?

No. It is loosely based on the slot of the same name, and the Sweet Spins round shares some of that slot’s mechanics, but it isn’t a carbon copy of the Pragmatic Play slot. There are subtle differences between them.