Cupcakes
Net Entertainment’s Cupcakes online slot is a sugary adventure for some sweet wins. A plethora of features and mechanics make it easier to get paid than you might expect. What’s more is that every single symbol is a scatter on a large 42-spot board.
Casinos with Cupcakes
- Cupcakes
An Introduction to the Cupcakes Slot
Sweets and other sugary items have been the focus of a variety of slot titles. From The Candy Crush to the Cupcakes video slot, a lot of the motifs stay the same visually because we only have so many sweet treats in existence. However, it’s the quality of those graphics and the gameplay styles that vary so much.
In this way, Net Entertainment was able to create a unique experience within a popular sub-genre of slots.
From there, we want to point out the background of this title. It looks like an amazing icing desert (and dessert!) with large cupcakes intricately decorated all over. A river of a different color of frosting is shown in the bottom-left corner as well. Additionally, this somewhat reminds us of the Grand Canyon for some reason. Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful title with fun gum drops and beautifully designed cupcakes on the reels.
NetEnt slots are generally known for feature-based gameplay. From early on, that’s just something they have really pushed as a stylistic element of their game developing process. As such, it’s not surprising that the same style shows up here. However, with the base approach to the game being all about scatter symbols, the features are a bit different too. Everything has been set up to increase the hit-rate and maximize the size of your total payout on winning spins. With that said, the pay table is fairly balanced while the features offer the biggest values in the game.
Betting and Layout
We can’t remember having seen a game laid out like this before. However, it’s similar to some other titles you may have seen. If you’re the time of player who gets a little intimidated by unfamiliar formats, you can relax. This game is actually easier to learn to play than learning to play line-based video slots. Here we’ll break down what we mean:
- A grid of symbols is used in this game that consists of seven rows and six columns. That gives a total of 42 symbols of screen real estate.
- Some symbols can appear larger and take up more than one position. However, we’ll get into how that works down below.
- Payouts are awarded when you get at least eight matching symbols anywhere on the grid. Additionally, these are all scatters. That means the location of those symbols doesn’t matter for the purpose of payouts.
- NetEnt offers one of the best bet selection screens we have seen in this game. You simply choose which bet size you want from a large grid of a few dozen increments.
- This betting spread includes both a minimum bet size of €0.10 as well as a maximum of €200.
- Note that some casinos and jurisdictions limit their maximum wagers to smaller amounts than this.
Other Information
Ultimately, the style of play here is the main thing that determines the volatility. That’s because the regular game mode has a reasonable hit-rate with a super balanced pay table. Nonetheless, the volatility here is a little bit above the average. However, most of this is due to the significant amount of value congregated in the feature set.
For each of your payouts, the amount listed is a multiple of the wager you’re making. For example, a 1.5x win on a bet size of €5 would be worth a €7.50 prize. We like this approach, especially with games like this, because it dodges the over-complicated coin-based options we often see. As a result, it’s really easy for players to get an idea of what they stand to win regardless.
Gameplay and Features for the Cupcakes Video Slot
One title that has a somewhat similar play style from a conceptual standpoint is Dropz. However, it’s still different enough from the Cupcakes online slot that they are wildly different titles. Along these lines, we felt the need to really dive into each feature and mechanic in the following. We believe this will help players to know what they’re able to score during their sessions with this slot.
Avalanche Feature
Two primary features drive the majority of the gameplay for this slot. The first of those is the Avalanche Feature. In situations where you get a win of any kind, this feature starts up. All winning symbols (and some other symbols like the cupcakes themselves) can disappear after your initial spin. When this happens, new symbols take their place. Additionally, this leads to another opportunity to pick up some wins.
We believe that the Avalanche Feature is the most important mechanic in this title because of how much of the play it pushes along. It’s also probably the feature you’re most likely to run into first.
Cupcakes and the Gumdrop Collection Feature
Different cupcakes can land at the bottom of the reels. They take up a 2×2 space, but they offer a critical feature. When gumdrop wins happen that are the same color as a given cupcake, you’ll see them collected by that cupcake when the resulting avalanche happens. However, these cupcakes also have a multiplier value on them. If you finish collecting all of the gumdrops needed, that multiplier is unleashed. Note that these multipliers can run from 2x up to the 100x level.
However, note that because of the avalanche feature itself, multiple cupcakes can be filled. When this happens, their values are all added together before they apply to your wins. In this way, players can land some pretty substantial prizes thanks to these cupcakes.
Crush Feature
The Cupcakes video slot also has a special Crush Feature that can trigger at random. This is available in both the regular game mode and in the free spins bonus round. When this happens, a new cupcake falls down on a set of matching gumdrops and crushes them. Each matching gumdrop is then collected for the multiplier, but at least five have to be available on the reel.
This is essentially an extra opportunity to pull the cupcake feature into the fold. We like that NetEnt goes out of their way to increase the chances of hitting cool features like this.
Cupcakes Free Spins
The tub of frosting is the bonus symbol in the Cupcakes video slot. While it doesn’t pay, it’s the key to the free spins bonus round. Whenever you get a minimum of three of these symbols on the board, they give you the following:
- Five Frosting Scatters – 16 free spins
- Four Frosting Scatters – 13 free spins
- Three Frosting Scatters – 10 free spins
Something cool about this is that multipliers carry over to the bonus round. That means when you trigger this feature with a multiplier, that multiplier is applied to all of your free spins wins. Additionally, you can add more free turns by picking up scatters in the feature itself:
- Five Frosting Scatters – 9 additional free spins
- Four Frosting Scatters – 6 additional free spins
- Three Frosting Scatters – 3 additional free spins
The idea here is that you’re essentially getting better paying opportunities than the normal game. That makes the free spins bonus a valuable possibility that adds a little bit of volatility to the slot.
How to Win at Cupcakes
We mentioned previously that the volatility of this game is above-average. What this means from a practical point of view is that the swings are more severe than normal. Will they be absolutely crazy? Not at all. However, you will deal with more of them than you typically would on average. To compensate for this, we suggest slightly lowering your bet size. Doing this takes some of the severity off of the swings for players who are sensitive to them. With that said, you’re obviously free to play at whichever level you’re comfortable with.
Another way to play the game is to purchase the free spins with the purple “Buy Feature” button. This allows you to force at least three bonus symbols onto the next turn. However, it also costs 100 times your base wager for this. Accordingly, you can expect the volatility to be much higher for this option. As you might expect from the above, our advice is to lower your wager a lot to keep things in proportion. However, this is a perfectly valid way to play, and many people simply purchase the free spins over and over.
Payout Structure for the Cupcakes Online Slot
Six different gumdrop symbols can be found on the reels. While they each have mostly different shapes, it’s easiest to differentiate them based on their colors. The three better-paying symbols are the purple, red and orange. However, the reason they pay a little better is anti-intuitive. That’s because the top pays for all six symbols are exactly the same.
Instead of having different payouts, the requirements for getting those payouts are different. For the purple, red and orange, you need at least 15 matching symbols on the grid for the top 1x win. However, for the yellow, green and blue, it’s 18 or more. This is an atypical but intelligent approach to how wins are distributed in a slot. We’d like to see more games use something like this simply because of the variety involved.
Overview
Plenty of sweets-based titles like Candy Tower have helped to develop a solid sub-genre of slots over the years. With that said, the Cupcakes slot offers something that stands out from others in the grouping. We like how Net Entertainment integrated some fresh ideas in all of this, and we love how it all comes together to form up a cohesive but sweet experience.
FAQ
Which online casinos have Cupcakes?
Use the list of Cupcakes casinos to see all online casinos that have Cupcakes. We filter the casino top list to only show Cupcakes casinos that accept players from your location.
What is the Return to Player (RTP) for Cupcakes?
The Cupcakes RTP is 96.05%. An RTP of 96.05% puts Cupcakes among slots with an average Return to Players. To be a high RTP slot it would have to be 98% or more.