Candy Starz Slot Review

Candy Starz Slot Overview

Sweet treats make up the backdrop in Candy Starz, a 5x3 slot from Pragmatic Play with an extra sliding reel on top. The first impression is a bright confectionary themed grid glowing against a darker disco style background, with hard candies taking centre stage. It feels a bit like a practice game that escaped the sandbox, yet after a few spins the simple layout and tumbling action start to pull you in.

On the technical side Candy Starz runs on a 5+1 layout with 576 ways to win, paying left to right from the first reel. Bets range from 20p up to £100 per spin, so it suits both low stake testers and more serious balance hunters. As a regular high volatility player I found the game pacey and to the point, especially when the sticky wild multipliers kick in.

Candy Starz Base Game and Features

In the Candy Starz base game wins land when three or more matching symbols connect on adjacent reels starting from reel one. Each hit triggers a tumble, so winning icons disappear and new ones drop down from above. The sliding reel on top spins horizontally and feeds symbols into the main grid. When positions on that strip form part of a winning way they are removed and the remaining icons slide to the left.

Wilds only land on the sliding reel in Candy Starz, which makes them feel quite special. When a wild hits it stays in place for as long as the tumble sequence continues on that spin. In the base game the wild starts with a 1x multiplier that increases by one after every successful tumble, up to a cap of 128x. Any win that runs through the wild gets multiplied.

From a player's point of view the base game in Candy Starz can feel a bit streaky, which is what I'd expect from this math model. You can spin through patches with nothing but small line wins, then suddenly connect a cluster of tumbles under a growing wild. Those extended sequences are where I saw most of my better hits, even without touching the bonus round.

Candy Starz Symbols and Paytable

Symbols in Candy Starz follow the pattern shown on the paytable, with four premium sweets and four card royals. The purple sweet is the top payer at 7.5x for five of a kind, dropping to 3x and 1x for four and three. Other sweets range from 3x down to 2x on a full way, while A, K, Q and J pay between 1.5x and 1x. Wilds substitute and scatters trigger free spins.

Symbols and Paytable

Symbol	Quantity	Payout
	5	x7.5
	4	x3
	3	x1
	5	x3
	4	x1.25
	3	x0.5
	5	x2.5
	4	x1
	3	x0.5
	5	x2
	4	x1
	3	x0.25
	5	x1.5
	4	x0.75
	3	x0.25
	5	x1.5
	4	x0.5
	3	x0.25
	5	x1.25
	4	x0.4
	3	x0.15
	5	x1
	4	x0.3
	3	x0.15
	Wild
	Scatter

Candy Starz Free Spins

To reach the free spins in Candy Starz you need three diamond scatters on reels one, three and five in a single spin. That combination awards eight spins on the same 5x3 grid with the sliding reel still active. During the feature at least one wild is guaranteed to appear on the top row on every spin. It drops into a random position, giving the bonus a different rhythm compared to the base game.

The big change in Candy Starz free spins is how the wild multipliers behave. Here each wild starts at 2x and doubles after every successful tumble sequence, still capped at 128x. Hitting a long chain with a high value symbol under that kind of multiplier can send the win counter racing. Landing three more scatters during the round adds five extra spins, which helps stretch those hot streaks towards the 5,000x cap.

Candy Starz Bonus Buy Feature

In some regions Candy Starz offers a bonus buy, priced at 80 times your chosen bet. When I used it the game dropped straight into the free spins, usually with three scatters but occasionally more. The paytable states that the theoretical return on bought bonuses sits a touch lower than the default, around 96.26%. Even so, for impatient players it is a tempting shortcut to the wild action.

Candy Starz RTP, Volatility and Max Win

Candy Starz runs on the usual trio of RTP settings from Pragmatic Play, with configurations at 96.47%, 95.02% and 94.31%. Operators pick which one to use, so I always check the help screen before spinning. Long term stats based on millions of test rounds put the practical return around the mid 95% mark, with a hit rate close to one in three spins and bonuses arriving roughly once every two hundred spins.

Volatility in Candy Starz sits right at the sharp end, officially rated as high, and you can feel it in the balance swings. The max payout is limited by a 5,000x win cap, which lines up with other games from the studio. Simulation numbers show x10 wins dropping about once in seventy seven spins and x20 wins roughly half as often again, with the biggest hits coming almost entirely from free spins.

Candy Starz: My Verdict

Candy Starz did not blow me away at first glance, the graphics feel modest and the theme is fairly familiar. After a longer session though I started to appreciate how tight the feature set is. The combination of tumbling reels, sliding row and sticky multipliers gives the slot a mini-megaways kind of flavour. It stays simple and pacey, which suits short, sharp gambling sessions very well.

For me Candy Starz works best as a high variance, no nonsense option when I want clear rules and punchy bonus potential. The sticky wilds can create eyebrow raising hits, especially in free spins where the multipliers climb so quickly. It is not the most ambitious release from Pragmatic Play, yet the maths feel solid and the 5,000x ceiling keeps the game relevant for serious slot fans.

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