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Sweet Bonanza Slot Review

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Sweet Bonanza, launched by Pragmatic Play on June 25, 2019, is a cascade-style video slot game with a fruit and candy theme. Since its introduction, Sweet Bonanza has evolved into a series, but this review focuses on the original 2019 release.

Sweet Bonanza at a Glance

Feature

Details

Provider

Pragmatic Play

Release Date

25/06/2019

Grid

6×5

RTP

96.48% (reported; may vary by configuration)

Volatility

High

Win Mechanic

8+ matching symbols anywhere on the grid

Free Spins Trigger

4+ Scatter symbols

Initial Free Spins

10

Maximum Bomb Multiplier

100×

Maximum Win

21,175×

Sweet Bonanza Gameplay

6×5 Grid

Sweet Bonanza's gameplay takes place within a 6×5 grid of colourful symbols, laying out a candy-loaded screen. The candies, fruits, and lollipop symbols are the result of crisp and colourful art design.

How Winning Combinations Work

Winning combinations are formed by matching 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 or more of the same symbol. This means that you must collect enough matching symbols to form a win. A winning combination doesn't need to follow a horizontal or diagonal payline, as is traditional in slot games. Instead, you need to land at least 8 of the same fruit or candy symbols (eight is the minimum), regardless of their position on the grid.

Sweet Bonanza will pay the highest symbol payout tier if you land 12 or more of the same symbol. So, if you land 12 of the same fruit, you'll generally win a smaller prize than if you land 12 red heart candies. Two slots can look almost identical and still pay very differently for the same number of matching symbols. That’s worth remembering when comparing games on Casina Portal — the paytable tells you far more than the graphics.

Tumble Feature

After a winning combo, the winning symbols disappear and the reels tumble to give you the chance to land a new or bigger win. This makes each paid spin capable of producing several consecutive payouts. New icons appear on the screen and subsequent wins are awarded as they occur.

Sweet Bonanza Symbols and Payout System

Fruit Symbols

The five fruit symbols, banana, grapes, watermelon, plum, and apple, are among the lowest-paying. You need 8 of the same fruit to win a prize, and wins go up progressively for 10, 11, and 12 or more matching fruits.

Candy Symbols

Typically, the higher payouts come from the candy icons. There are 4 different coloured candies, each one offering different prize values. The red heart candy is the highest-paying, with wins of 10× for 8 or 9 hearts becoming 50× if you land 12 or more.

Lollipop Scatter

The lollipop is a special Scatter symbol that can also award a payout. When 4 or more lollipops land on the grid, you'll trigger a Free Spins bonus, with the Scatter payout increasing when additional lollipops land.

Multiplier Bombs

Multiplier Bombs can award multipliers ranging from 2× to 100×. You can accumulate these multipliers during the same tumble sequence, so it's possible to combine several bombs into a much larger multiplier.

Sweet Bonanza Free Spins

How to Trigger Free Spins

The Free Spins feature is triggered when four or more Scatter symbols land.

Number of Free Spins

Sweet Bonanza launches the bonus with 10 Free Spins — whether you enter the bonus with four, five, or six lollipops. You get a higher Scatter payout for additional lollipops on the triggering spin: five lollipops give you 5× your bet, six lollipops give you 100× your bet, while four lollipops award 3× your bet, with 10 Free Spins granted in each case.

Retriggering the Feature

The number of times you can retrigger Free Spins is not fixed at 100, and five additional free spins are awarded whenever at least three lollipop Scatters land during the bonus.

Multiplier Bombs During Free Spins

If a multiplier bomb lands during the bonus round, the player can receive a multiplier of up to 100× on a winning tumble. If there are multiple multiplier bombs, their values are combined together and applied to the total tumble win.

Sweet Bonanza Tumble Feature

The Tumble feature is at the core of Sweet Bonanza. Winning matches disappear from the grid, but non-winning symbols remain. New symbols then cascade down to fill the gaps, allowing for more wins from a single paid spin. The feature continues until no new winning combination appears.

Sweet Bonanza isn't the only slot where one spin can lead to several wins. Spilloversikt.com also explains how cascading reels work in Megaways games, where the number of ways to win changes from spin to spin.

With cascading wins, each spin may give you several payouts. If the Tumble feature produces another winning combination, you'll see a new payout before the next tumble, allowing the sequence to continue without an additional wager.

Understanding Sweet Bonanza's RTP

Standard RTP

Sweet Bonanza's commonly reported RTP is 96.48%, which falls within the typical range for modern online slots, although individual game configurations may differ.

Sweet Bonanza has a notable feature in its bonus round: the random multiplier bombs. These randomly awarded multipliers are included in the RTP calculations, and they're available only during Free Spins.

What RTP Does and Does Not Mean

Return to Player (RTP) specifies the theoretical expected return from the game to the player, expressed as a percentage. In other words, the RTP corresponds to how much of the money wagered on a slot machine is returned to players over the long term.

The site https://bestcasinos.gr/ helps the player understand all the rules of slots.

This percentage is a theoretical one calculated over a large number of spins using the game's mathematical model rather than a player strategy. So, while the RTP figure represents an expected average return across a massive number of spins, it doesn't specifically apply to a smaller number. It doesn't serve as a prediction for a player's outcome after 100, 1,000, or 10,000 spins.

Sweet Bonanza Volatility

During its launch in 2019, Pragmatic Play classified Sweet Bonanza as a high-volatility game. While substantial payouts may be less frequent, their potential size can be relatively large.

What Does a High Volatility Slot Machine Mean?

In a high-volatility slot game, larger payouts generally occur less frequently, meaning players may experience longer periods without a substantial win. A low-volatility slot game, in contrast, has more frequent, but generally smaller payouts.

Sweet Bonanza Maximum Win

Sweet Bonanza offers a maximum return of up to 21,175× your stake. This should not be confused with wins announced for later versions like Sweet Bonanza 1000 and Sweet Bonanza 2500.

Sweet Bonanza Bonus Features

Free Spins and 100× Multiplier Potential

After triggering 10 Free Spins in the bonus round, each bomb can boost your win by up to 100×, and the combined multiplier means you could substantially increase your winnings.

Extra Free Spins and Tumbles During the Bonus

Keep in mind that landing 3 or more Scatter symbols during Sweet Bonanza Free Spins will award five additional spins. The number of extra spins depends on the lollipops that land during the Free Spins feature, rather than any strategy the player can control.

Sweet Bonanza Design and Theme

The game's vibrant visual style is meant to evoke a playful, colourful aesthetic. Colors and graphics are bright and expressive, creating a lively atmosphere. The sound effects are energetic, helping to give the reels a distinctive rhythm. However, the game's overall style and aesthetic are simple, with no narrative or backstory involved.

Sweet Bonanza vs Sweet Bonanza 1000

Feature

Sweet Bonanza

Sweet Bonanza 1000

Release

2019

2024

Grid

6×5

6×5

Multiplier ceiling

Up to 100×

Up to 1,000×

Maximum win

Up to 21,175× the original bet

Up to 25,000× the original bet

Pragmatic Play described the 1,000× multiplier in Sweet Bonanza 1000 as 10 times the original game's multiplier.

Sweet Bonanza vs Sweet Bonanza 2500

The latest addition to the series, Sweet Bonanza 2500, was released on April 30, 2026. It introduced two key changes:

  1. The multiplier ceiling increased to 2,500×, up from 1,000× in Sweet Bonanza 1000.
  2. The maximum advertised win reached 25,000× the original bet, up from 21,175× in the original game.

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Luis Hindman’s ‘Magid/Zafar’ Crowned 2026 Winner Of Iris Prize

The organisers of the Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival – celebrating global stories and Cardiff charm are proud to announce that director Luís Hindman has won the prestigious Iris Prize supported by The Michael Bishop Foundation for his film Magid / Zafar.  The announcement was made this morning (18 October) at the BBC Cymru Wales […]

The post Luis Hindman’s ‘Magid/Zafar’ Crowned 2026 Winner Of Iris Prize appeared first on Movie Marker.



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Interview With Director Rhys Marc Jones (Black Church Bay)

Playing at this year’s London Film Festival, as well as closing out the 20th anniversary edition of Cardiff’s Iris Prize. Black Church Bay is a tense drama set in a small Welsh village, centred on school teacher Barry (Tom Cullen), who is leading a double life. When an intimate encounter with a younger man, Jasper […]

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Iris Prize Unveils Best British Award Winners For 2026

The organisers of the Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival – celebrating global stories and Cardiff charm are thrilled to announce that the winner of the Iris Prize Best British Short Film Award sponsored by Film4 and Pinewood Studios is Darius Shu, for Molly. Darius produced Queer Parivaar, which won Best British Short at Iris Prize 2022 […]

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MOVIE REVIEW: The Plea

Images courtesy of the Woodstock Film Festival

THE PLEA— 4 STARS

After an opening montage of news clips set to the overused one-hit wonder needle drop of “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum blends the highs and lows of dancing Presidents, destructive protests, and random messianic imagery, The Plea commences to genuflect in the direction of Sidney Lumet. Bathed in soft black-and-white cinematography by DP Tinx Chan (Starring Jerry as Himself), twelve jurors assemble in a room, scrolling through their phones, pacing idly, and venting frustrations before the devices are collected. They’ve all met, but this is their first chance to deliberate or, better yet, argue, and it starts almost immediately. Their names are their juror numbers rather than what’s written on their IDs.

Even so, the stereotypes and archetypes arrive in a hurry, dominated initially by the quarrelsome middle-aged Juror #1, played by The Plea’s co-director and co-writer Dean Imperial (TV’s Godfather of Harlem). He’s your classic “it’s a free country” asshole who’s already stirring shit and rubbing people the wrong way. Once the bailiff (steady TV actress April Matthis) arrives with shouted calls to simmer down and focus on the judge’s order that this case before them be decided unanimously and according to the law, you wonder how this cornucopia of banalities is ever going to agree anytime soon. 

As that uncomfortable and daunting feeling creeps into place, a sizable truth about this film and the jury-centric movies its following becomes clear when the doors are locked. There’s a two-headed monster for these types of proceedings: figuring out the case or figuring out the people voting on the ruling. The Plea, as it presents its path of scenes, tips its hand as to its preferred answer to that proverbial question.

LESSON #1: THE PARTICULARS OF THE CASE AT HAND— Start with The Plea’s case. An unseen defendant, an IVF technician at a fertility clinic, is being tried for twelve counts of murder for spilling a tray of a dozen fertilized embryos that ceased to be viable. Even if the jury considers this act an accident, manslaughter charges are still possible. At the heart of the case is the interpretation of the embryos, technically called EUPs (extra-uterine persons), and the legal definition of “personhood.” The voting divide among the sequestered greatly mirrors the contentious gulf between conservative pro-life defenders and those more staunchly pro-choice. 

LESSON #2: FIGURING OUT THE PEOPLE— Because of the temperature of those topics, The Plea leans on figuring out the people. The most vocal not-guilty/non-personhood proponent is Juror #7 (Antoinette Crowe-Legacy of Passing), a pushy woman willing to stand, shout, and curse to show her dominance on this issue. Her common opponent is her neighboring Juror #8 (Stir of Echoes star Kathryn Erbe), an older, calm woman who sums up all decisions as “God’s will.” Caught in the middle is everyone else—including the sullen widower, Juror #12 (Dennis Boutsikaris of *batteries not included and Better Call Saul), the panic-attack-prone Juror #5 (Trieu Tran of Altered Carbon), the deaf young lady, Juror #6 (Millicent Simmonds of the A Quiet Place series, this movie’s biggest casting get), and the movie star within their midst, Juror #2 (Outer Banks’s Jason Alan Carvell)---and the gay jury foreman, Juror #10, played by the other co-director/co-writer and editor Zach LeBeau, trying in vain to keep the peace. Curiously, to a degree, yet matching Lesson #2’s course of action, more than half of The Plea follows these people outside of the deliberation room. 

Coyly paired in hotel rooms (like the ardent Christian with the incensed Gen-Z atheist and the gay guy with the misogynist) and allowed to congregate at the baobab tree that is the hotel bar manned by the lone bartender (The Wire’s Gbenga Akinnagbe) after each complete day, the ensemble lets their characters’ hair down in these unlocked moments. The assigned quota of liquid courage bends moral judgments, ignites more politics, blurs boundaries, and closes generation gaps in a host of interesting and telling conversations and encounters that become the pinnacle moments of the collected performances. This large group of actors is given wonderful latitude to extract unique depth from their assigned tropes and lanes. Two headturners from this downtime are the aggressive flirts of Juror #2 (Danny DeFerrari of Oppenheimer) and Juror #9 (Starlit Diner’s Carolina Gutierrez), who also hold the position as The Plea’s second loudest and meanest of their gender in the room, after Juror #1 and Juror #7.

Without a doubt, this hypothetical premise in The Plea is a fascinating clash of ideals, even before considering the particular people weighing the verdict. The pendulum swaying between the debate of what constitutes being alive is as precarious as the wavering strength of sacredness towards jury duty itself, and all the buzzwords, labels, and derogatory terms are lashed. Their first vote is 7 to 5 in favor of guilty/personhood, showing they have a long way to go. Add in the chasm represented by wildly different measures of reasonable doubt, and The Plea can press more hot-button talking points than Buddy the Elf hitting floor numbers in an Empire State Building elevator. 

The Plea labels itself as a “comedy noir” within the courtroom subgenre, though, other than a few witty retorts and comeback burns, there are very few laughs. Sure, the bailiff comes in loud, and the scope of this fictional case is grandiose, which can create rub-your-nose-in-it satire between the altruistic and the merciful. However, other than one character briefly acknowledging the unshown media circus out the window, Zach LeBeau, Dean Imperial, and the third contributing writer, Scott Organ (What Comes Around), keep everything on the tremors of group dynamics rumbling one step further than the usual behind-the-scenes setting of a jury room. There’s shrewd wisdom in that call, because, like this film’s second lesson, that’s plenty and that’s where the real intrigue is. While the overarching rhetoric is scintillating and probably deserves more time in actual deliberations, The Plea found the right territory to explore in this all-hands-on-deck indie standout.

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London Film Festival 2026 – Wildwood ★★★★★

Released: 23 October 2026 Director: Travis Knight Starring: Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Carey Mulligan, Mahershala Ali, Awkwafina, Angela Bassett, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Jemaine Clement, Tom Waits, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, Richard E. Grant, Len Cariou, Blythe Danner, Rob Delaney & Arthur Knight Every year, we get one animated feature that pushes the boundaries […]

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MOVIE REVIEW: Love of Your Life

Images courtesy of Amazon/MGM Studios and Amazon Prime Content Services.

LOVE OF YOUR LIFE— 4 STARS

LESSON #1: SUBTLE TITLING— The title of director Rachel Morrison’s new romantic drama, Love of Your Life, debuting on Amazon Prime, subtly announces the film’s central theme through two of the simplest grammatical nuances. Not beginning with a declarative “The” suggests people, under any number of circumstances, may experience more than one impactful chapter of romance in their lives. Even more delicately, there’s the use of the second-person possessive determiner “Your” instead of the first-person adjective “My.” That could imply the amount of adoration being experienced may not completely feel like one’s own. Label that a serious prophecy hidden right in the title. 

Love of Your Life begins with a “Meet-Cute” between a 26-year-old hospital nurse named Maya (The Substance’s Margaret Qualley) and the Ph.D. student, Charlie (Gabriel Basso of Hillbilly Elegy), who is selling her an old nightstand for refurbishment via Facebook Marketplace. Immediately smitten, he asks her out on a date, and she obliges, beginning a lovely and spirited courtship of exploring interests and being each other’s decompression partners from their professions. Time-hopping to the next year in labeled chapters matching Maya’s age, the two have become a cohabiting long-term relationship, joined by a shared bestie named Jason (Patrick Schwarzenegger of TV’s The White Lotus) always along for the youthful adventures and supportive encouragement.

LESSON #2: BRINGING FAMILY TO A FAMILY-LESS PERSON— In their second year together, Charlie and Maya discover a key difference in confidence between them as they approach the topic of marriage and becoming parents someday. Charlie grew up as the adopted son of a stable Cape Cod family (headed by the wonderful Catherine Keener and current Digger ensemble member Corey Johnson), whereas Maya is the product of a one-night stand who has and holds no family attachments. With that lack of history or upbringing and matching that opening lede of “your” versus “my,” Maya never feels fully comfortable around Charlie’s family. Attaching her personal journey to another’s often feels unnatural, borrowed, or out of place. While her character comes to welcome the chance to join a legitimate family, Qualley plays this existence with tremendous apprehension.

Nevertheless, the lovebirds pull off a surprise wedding in their apartment during a monsoon storm that has family and friends sweating from the power outage and partying with candles lit. While this could all fit in the present day, Love of Your Life, through a glance of the couple watching a TV news story, announces that this 27th year of Maya’s is 2020 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, changing the entire gravity of the setting. Charlie is an immunocompromised asthmatic, and Maya gets it the worst as an overwhelmed nurse. When a crushing tragedy suddenly strikes, the screenplay of Julia Cox (Nyad) leaps to “thirty-one,” revealing a drastically changed Maya—traveling in Portugal, smoking cigarettes, and working remotely with telehealth clients. 

LESSON #3: FLEEING GRIEF— The jump in time shows Maya with all the behaviors of a person fleeing grief. She has withdrawn from previous material and personal attachments. Emotional numbness has her drifting through drunken stupors and one-night stands. It may look like what one soon-to-be important presence—a new traveling British suitor named Felix, and played by red-hot Lanterns star Aaron Pierre—will call “solitary hedonism,” but it’s a destructive course of failing self-care after several layers of trauma. This inability of Maya to grieve and create stable connections with new and established people becomes the weight of Love of Your Life.

LESSON #4: SEARCHING FOR THE RIGHT THING TO SAY—In a thicker script, Love of Your Life would be filled with stump speeches and one-sided monologues that pour emotions out by the bucketful. Instead, the shared sentiments struggle as much as the psyche. Morrison’s film is relatably filled with a collection of blemished characters so desperately searching for the right thing to say because, in many instances, there are no perfect words that fit, heal, or propel the difficult moments folks are going through. That’s not an imperfection of a weak dialogue, but rather the reality of the given situations at hand. The challenges, even with their grimness, feel tangible and appropriate to the drama. Nevertheless, bring the tissues.

Heavily established by her edgy resume in other genres, Love of Your Life is Margaret Qualley proving romance is within her acting arsenal as a rising star. Every actor worth their salt should put a movie like this on their resume to show their range. Qualley’s performance is shaped by a wringer of hopeful happiness, stubborn mistakes, worrisome terror, and fragile remorse. Her balance act of resolve elevates this walkabout journey higher than the typical, inescapable feeling-sorry-for-herself doldrums we’ve seen before in movies about mourning. Also, other than the scourge of COVID and Maya’s self-destructive habits, this is, pleasantly, a villain-less picture boosted by its luscious travelogue jaunts of location shooting and two alluring beaus in Gabriel Basso and Aaron Pierre, who bring entirely different levels of appeal to our leading woman.

Love of Your Life proves that there’s always room for a good weeper at the movies. We, as the audience, attach ourselves to figures we love quickly, and process the acceleration of missing them when they are taken away. Watching fictional proxies go through recognizable pain can help viewers reflect, consider, prepare, or push through their own, in classic “what would you do?” fashion. Maybe we’re the type to stay and not run away like Maya, but a good crusher with sweep like Love of Your Life reminds you of what you have and what is possible. As Felix chooses to remember, “This was something.”

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