Candy Cashcades: Overview

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Candy Cashcades is a sugar-soaked slot from Blueprint Gaming, created as a follow-up to Sweet Success Megaways, their first release of 2020. Anyone who has tried the Megaways title will recognise plenty when playing Candy Cashcades, as much of the original has been carried across, including the look and the sound. The big difference is the layout: instead of traditional reels, you now spin a grid.

You’re welcomed back by the same candy-mountain backdrop when Candy Cashcades loads. Tap the arrow to jump in, and you’ll see an 8×8 grid packed with bright candy symbols. Along with the familiar visuals, the game also keeps the same soundtrack, delivering music that somehow feels cheerful and gloomy at the same time.

This is a bit specific, but if you’ve ever watched those “Hug Me I’m Scared” videos, the tune feels like the moment just before everything slips into a Kafka-esque nightmare. If this were Woodstock, you definitely wouldn’t want to take the brown acid while spinning. Who knows what kind of mental rabbit hole you might end up falling into.

Candy Cashcades can be played on any device with stakes from 10 p/c to $/€500 per tumble. The RTP sits slightly below what you often get from Blueprint at 95.5%, and volatility is medium. While it shares some DNA with their earlier grid slot, Dragonfall, Candy Cashcades is noticeably gentler, particularly once you reach the bonus.

Wins are paid using a cluster pays mechanic. A winning cluster is formed by at least 5 matching symbols connected horizontally or vertically, scaling up to 25+ symbols for the top rewards. Any win triggers the cascade feature, where the winning symbols disappear and new ones drop in from above. This can spark additional clusters, and cascades keep going until no further wins appear.

Symbols include a mix of returning icons from Sweet Success alongside a few newcomers. There are 6 standard symbols, all hard candies in different colours: orange, purple, green, blue, red, plus a pink heart. Hit clusters of 25+ to collect payouts ranging from 10x to 100x the stake.

Candy Cashcades: Features

Following any cascade that doesn’t produce a win, Colossal Candies can drop in. When the grid starts trembling, it’s a sign that one or more is about to land. Each Colossal Candy is a chocolate sweet measuring at least 2×2 in size, and it falls onto the grid to transform any covered symbols into a single matching symbol. The wild cannot be changed by Colossal Candies.

The real action revolves around the red-and-white swirling candy wild. To start with, it substitutes for all other symbols to help build clusters. When a wild contributes to a winning cluster, it doesn’t get removed with the rest. Instead, it stays on the board and shifts into an adjacent empty space, ready for the next cascade.

Wilds also carry a progressive multiplier that starts at x1. Each time a wild is used in a winning cluster, its multiplier increases by +1. If a win includes more than one multiplier wild, their values are multiplied together. Wilds remain on the grid throughout cascade sequences even when they aren’t part of a winning cluster. Once the sequence finishes, multipliers return to x1 and the wilds are cleared from the grid.

If 3 or more wilds land on the screen, you receive 8 free Sugar Rush Win Falls. These play much like normal spins, except every Win Fall guarantees a win, and a Colossal Candy is guaranteed after non-winning cascades. Win Falls cannot be retriggered.

Candy Cashcades: Verdict

Blueprint Gaming is gradually pushing further into the grid-slot arena, and Candy Cashcades marks their third attempt so far. Up to now, all three have leaned on broadly similar mechanics, even if the stats and maths models have varied. Still, they haven’t fully escaped the Jammin’ Jars copycat label, and Candy Cashcades isn’t likely to shift that perception much.

That ties into another problem: Candy Cashcades doesn’t really establish a distinctive identity. You can see echoes of multiple other slots throughout. From Sweet Bonanza to Jammin Jars, Fruit Party and more, it feels like a bunch of games got together one night, made a questionable decision, and regretted it the next morning. You’d need DNA testing to untangle the milkshake of influences behind it.

It also doesn’t help that, while Candy Cashcades is perfectly fine as a grid slot, it lacks a standout hook to separate it from the crowd. The base game can feel a bit sluggish as well. You’ll sometimes get satisfying cascade runs, and Colossal Candies do add some variety, but most spins don’t deliver many sugar-rush moments, and even the bonus round stays fairly restrained.

It comes across as if Candy Cashcades was intentionally built to appeal to a different audience. Players who enjoy Dragonfall, for instance, won’t find anything close to the same level of intensity here. The wilder swings are toned down, replaced by Win Falls where the excitement and payouts may be smaller, but at least the returns are guaranteed. As for returns overall, the maximum win per game may be capped at $250,000 or 50,000 times the bet, but with what’s on offer, reaching anything near that seems improbable.

Overall, Candy Cashcades is a solid grid slot that could suit anyone who likes the candy-themed, light-hearted style. However, its fairly generic feel means it probably won’t leave a strong lasting mark, and it would be good to see Blueprint move beyond the formula next time.