Reel Rush 2

Theme and Storyline

Reel Rush 2 is a Candy Crush lookalike adapted to the style and form of a slot machine by NetEnt. It uses the same cutesy rounded images to tap into that highly addictive social media game’s popularity.

You probably already know if you’re a fan of that style. Or if it is something you can stomach.

As knock-off games go, it seems like a bad idea to remind players of a better game that they could be playing for free though.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

Reel Rush 2 manages to capture much of the tackiness of Candy Crush, while emulating little of the other game’s charm. Where Candy Crush’s bright boiled sweet rainbow was sickly sweet, this slot just looks sickly.

The reels are a washed out blue and the symbols rather blandly colourful. The animations are pretty good though, and inject some life into an otherwise moribund look.

The sound design goes some way to fixing the visual too. The bloops and pops make for a cheery feel to the slot. The music works well with all this. But the good aspects are dragging a dead weight uphill.

Gameplay

Reel Rush 2 has a few interesting gameplay features up its sleeve. Although it initially plays as a 1-3-5-3-1 pattern slot, when the player wins, the reels increase in size with each respin. For example, the first respin uses a 3-3-5-3-1 pattern and the second a 3-3-5-3-3 pattern. This continues up to a maximum of five respins.

Wins are awarded for three or more matching symbols in adjacent reels starting from reel one. It doesn’t matter where in the reel the symbol falls.

This means the number of ways to win increases as the reels increase in size.

During the spins, between zero and three random features can be triggered. These include free super tokens, random Wilds, and – during free spins – additional free spins and multipliers.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all symbols.

For every row that a reel expands by, the player receives 1-5 Super Tokens. These will be explained in just a moment.

There are several ways to trigger the free spin bonus. The most straightforward way is with the Free Spin Meter. For every two rows that any symbol expands on a spin, the Meter gains one star. This resets at the end of each spin.

When the Meter fills, the Free Spin Screen is triggered. In this screen the player has three options.

• The first option is to start the spins. This will award the player 8 Free Spins.
• The second option is to buy Super Free Spins. The price is based on your bet size and how many Super Tokens you have. Each super token discounts the buy-in by 1/2,000th.
• The third option is to gamble. Here the player can gamble their Super Tokens to win Super Free Spins. The chance of winning is based on what percentage of 2,000 Super Tokens the player has.

During Super Free Spins, a multiplier is added to all wins and increases by one with every winning combination. Some random features can also increase this progressive multiplier.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 95.53%, which is way below our yardstick for average of roughly 96%.

The range of bets on the site we tested ran from a minimum bet per spin of $/£/€0.20 up to a maximum of $/£/€40.00 per spin. A rather tight band that excludes low and high stakes players, though most bankrolls will be betting in that range.

The volatility of this game is at the high end of medium. This would make it a possible match for our preferred slot machine strategies, if only the RTP were not so low.