Sweetopia Royale

Calling all royal subjects! The Kingdom of Sweetopia has now opened its doors to players from all around the globe to put together clusters of delicious sweets in exchange for a taste of the royal treasury. Or something like that… In any case, Relax Gaming carries on the video slot trend of sweet-themed games with Sweetopia Royale.

The provider has built a solid reputation for visually striking games, and while these graphics aren’t all that ground-breaking, they still look great and made me head over to my cupboard several times to see if I can nibble on any left-over treats.

You also get a set of intuitive mechanics which focus on the slot’s cluster pays to give you wins of up to 5,000x your stake. It can be quite the challenge given the game’s extreme level of volatility, so you’ll need to be patient and resilient if you hope to make this worth your while.

But is Sweetopia Royale any good? Or is it yet another candy-filled video slot with lots of flair and very little substance? Read my full review below to find out!

⚡ RTP	96.10%
🎲 Volatility	High
💰 Paylines	Cluster Pays
🔼 Maximum Bet	100
🔻 Minimum Bet	0.10
⭐ Bonus Features	Free Spins, Multipliers, Wilds, Autoplay

Sweetopia Royale Slot Game Free Demo

I wouldn’t jump head-first into Sweetopia Royale if I were you. Instead, check out the slot’s free demo first. The free version of the game can be the perfect way to familiarise yourself with all the features that the slot has to offer.

You can test out the cluster pays, as well as the bonus features, reel modifiers and bonus buy options without putting any of your money on the line. This can give you a good head start once you play the game for real and it can also guide you towards an ideal bet level to suit your gambling budget.

Pro Tips:

First off, Sweetopia Royale is an extremely volatile slot, so be sure to dial down those bet levels to get the most out of your gambling budget. I went through over 150 spins before I finally activated free spins and for the most part, those base game rounds didn’t even deliver any low-paying wins. So, brace yourself for the challenge and play the long game here, managing your bankroll efficiently to trigger free spins as many times as possible. You could also check out the bonus buy options but these will of course come at a cost.

Sweetopia Royale Slot Bonus Features

The sugary kingdom of Sweetopia Royale rests upon a massive grid made up of 7 reels and 7 rows. Forget regular paylines, this time round you’ll be looking to cluster pays to deliver the goods. Clusters are formed by four or more identical symbols that are connected in a horizontal or vertical direction. They don’t trigger any cascades but instead are stuck to the reels while the rest of the grid respins.

As you may have already surmised, Sweetopia Royale has all sorts of treats represented through its symbols. Candy bits serve as the low-paying symbols, while more intricate cake symbols take up the higher part of the paytable. Four identical symbols will pay anywhere between 0.1x to 1x your bet, but land bigger clusters and should you hit the maximum cluster of 49 symbols, you could bag wins of 1,000x and 5,000x your stake.

That’s pretty much what the basics are like here, but they take on a whole new twist once you add the special features into the mix.

Wilds

The slot has no wild symbols, so there’s no way to boost your gameplay with these tokens.

Respin

I briefly touched upon the respins that occur whenever you score a cluster win on the reels. All of the winning symbols are stuck to their positions, while the rest of the symbols respin. This carries on as long as your cluster continues to grow. Once there are no more respins, the overall win is paid out. You could also land feature symbols which activate reel modifiers to help you beef up those clusters. These include:

• Candy Cannon – The cannon fires, adding anywhere between two to eight symbols that match the cluster to the reels.
• Sweet Upgrade – Upgrades your entire winning cluster as well as other matching symbols on the reels to the next higher-paying symbol in the paytable.
• Candy Cluster – Any symbols identical to the cluster that happen to be on the same reels or rows are drawn in and added to it.

Random Feature

At the very start or end of a game round, a random feature may be added to the reels. Should this random feature manage to form a win or enlarge your cluster, then you’re awarded with a respin. The random features include:

• Sweet Surprise – A mystery symbol is added to the reels, instantly revealing identical pay symbols or coins. This can be the size of 2×2, 3×3 or 4×4 tiles and once the symbol is revealed the mega symbol dissolves into smaller symbols.
• Lucky Respin – As soon as a game round ends, you may get a lucky respin. This doesn’t respin the entire grid. Instead, it simply respins the positions that are adjacent to your winning cluster.

Cluster Combo

If you have two clusters with different symbols in a single round, these can combine to form an even bigger cluster if they ever touch. So, the closer these clusters start getting to each other, the better. Clusters always combine into the highest paying symbol before every respin, so you can potentially upgrade your clusters for bigger and better payouts.

Candy Coin Respin

Whenever you form a cluster of coin symbols, you get a candy coin respin. Coin symbols can give you values of up to 1,000x your stake. As with regular respins, these clusters are stuck to their positions while the rest of the symbols on the grid respin.

But the difference here is that during this respin, only coins, blanks and feature symbols can land. Feature symbols can dish out similar modifiers, including respins, adding coins, upgrading coins, or attracting coins towards the winning cluster. You could even land the sweet surprise or lucky respin random features. The feature carries on for as long as the coin cluster continues to grow.

Scatter Symbol

You may have already guessed this, but if you hope to get into free spins, you’re going to need scatter symbols. Landing three, four, five, six or seven of these tokens awards you with five, six, seven, eight or nine free spins, respectively.

Free Spins

Free spins are where you get to push the limits of these cluster pays. The candy cannon, sweet upgrade and candy cluster reel modifiers can be upgraded during these rounds. One of these modifiers is randomly upgraded every five respins, with one extra free spins being added to your tally. Once all of the modifiers have hit their maximum level, another free spin is awarded with every five respins you manage. The reel modifier upgrades give you the following:

• Candy Cannon – Between two to eight symbols matching a winning cluster are added to the grid with each new level reached and you can upgrade up to level five.
• Sweet Upgrade – Upgrades all of the clusters and their matching symbols to a higher value symbol based on the modifier’s level. Once again, you can upgrade up to level five.
• Candy Cluster – Any symbols that are identical to a cluster and happen to be on the same reels or rows are immediately drawn to the cluster. Once the modifier is upgraded, all symbols between the winning cluster and the identical symbols to it are also converted to the same symbols as the winning cluster. You can only upgrade this feature to level two.

Buy Feature

Scatter symbols might take a while to drop, and if you’re not the patient type, you can always turn to the bonus buy feature. You can pay 50x your bet for the candy coin respins feature, or 60x your stake for the free spins bonus. Either way, when buying these features your RTP is changed to 96.5%.

RTP & Volatility of Sweetopia Royale Slot

Despite the sweet theme and the overall friendly setting, Sweetopia is no walk in the park. Volatility is pushed up to the maximum setting, making for a pretty challenging experience. Wins and special features are incredibly rare, so brace yourself for a tough time at the reels. RTP is set to a rather favourable 96.10% and this figure goes up to 96.5% when using the bonus buy feature.

Relax Gaming has built a strong reputation over the years, so you can rest assured that Sweetopia Royale is a fair and safe game to play. It goes without saying that you should play the slot at an equally reputable online casino to get the safest experience possible.

Sweetopia Royale Slot on Mobile

Sweetopia Royale can sit right beside your Candy Crush apps on both Android and iOS devices, thanks to its excellent mobile compatibility. The game runs great in both landscape and portrait modes and the interface adapts itself to fit your screen size perfectly. You also get the same graphics, mechanics and win potential here, so the experience is identical on all platforms.

Conclusion

For me, Sweetopia Royale has proven to be quite a mixed bag. On one hand, the slot hits its mark with excellent visuals and solid features. But on the other hand, the relatively low maximum win cap doesn’t quite justify the extremely high level of volatility.

5,000x isn’t all that low, but when you consider just how tough the game is, it may not be worth the hassle. Despite all of its special features and bonuses, you will take a while to score big wins and activate mechanics, and unless you turn to the bonus buy options, the slot can at times feel like a bit of a bore.

For sweet-themed video slot fans who love a challenge, Sweetopia Royale ought to be quite the treat, even if its max win cap somehow makes me question if this sugary feast is worth the effort.