CherryPop Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

CherryPop Review

Avatar UX is back with a third installation featuring their innovative PopWins mechanic. The previous releases have not really gotten the attention they might have deserved, and this might be due to the somewhat obscure and asian-inspired themes. Judging from the glossy fruit machine inspired appearance of this release, it looks like CherryPop slot is an attempt to break into the mainstream. The math model is somewhat in the middle of the two previous releases, but the 56,386x potential is still a lot bigger than most slots out there.

The reel setup is a standard 5x3 by default, but this will soon change as you get started. Every win is followed by the PopWins mechanic, which removes the winning symbols and splits the empty reel positions into two for a cascading refill. This is really the only thing that goes on in the base game here, as there are no wilds or other features that can come to the rescue like in the previous release. This makes the base game a bit dry after a while, and it can take a while to trigger the all-important bonus round.

Visually, the game is quite pleasing to the eye, but Avatar UX really needs to do something about the pace. Waiting for the empty positions to be filled takes way too long, something we pointed out about the previous release also. A fast play option would be nice, at the very least, but an overall change of pace and fine-tuning is recommended to make the next game a more satisfying experience. The bonus round is the big highlight here, and it comes with an expanded reel set and the possibility of locking in a 5x9 grid with a progressive win multiplier to boot.

Cherry Pop

What are the bonus features?

There is a lot more to this game than just another glossy fruit machine looking kind of game, as the features are anything but ordinary. Perhaps you’ve already tested the previous PopWins mechanic games from this developer, and in that case you know what the defining feature is all about.

Either way, we will walk you through everything here.

Everytime you land a winning combo the PopWins mechanic comes into play. The winning symbols will be removed, and the empty positions split in 2 with a “pop”. This effectively expands the reel set, and the doubled up empty reel positions are then filled with new symbols. The reels can be expanded from the regular 3 rows in height to 6 rows in the base game. The process goes on as long as you keep winning, and then the reel setup is reset back to the standard 5x3.

Free spins in CherryPop

In order to trigger the free spins bonus round in this game, you need to expand all 5 reels to the maximum base game height of 6 rows. This gives you 5 free spins to start with, but you can choose to gamble for more spins before the bonus round starts. You’ll then spin a Wheel of Fortune where you can win up to 11 extra spins. However, you also risk losing everything here, and get booted back into the base game with nothing.

You will benefit from a progressive win multiplier that starts at 2x, and each PopWin will increase the multiplier by +1 in the bonus round.

There is no upper limit as to how high this multiplier can go, and all PopWins also double the reel positions of the winning symbols, just like in the base game. The difference is that the reel setup by default is expanded to a 5x6 grid here, and the PopWins feature can expand each row further up to 9 symbols in height.

If you manage to expand all 5 rows to the maximum height, the progressive multiplier is increased by +3. What’s more, each new PopWin on a fully expanded reel set will increase the win multiplier by +4 instead of just +1. You are now playing with 59,049 ways to win, but in reality it’s 2x that because of the win both ways feature. On non-winning spins, the reels will reset to the height of the shortest row, instead of resetting completely.

Avatar UX Studios has decided to include a Bonus Buy option in CherryPop slot, and it will cost you 75x your stake to get the bonus round whenever you want. Of course, this option is not available in all jurisdictions, and UK players cannot buy the bonus round.

How to play

The PopWins mechanic is really quite simple to grasp once you get into the gameplay, although it might sound a bit complicated when reading about it.

We will take a closer look at all the essential info you need to get started with this game, and tell you all about how to play CherryPoP slot below.

The first thing to know about this game is that you win by landing at least 3 adjacent identical symbols starting from reel 1 or reel 5. This is due to the win both ways mechanic, and it effectively doubles the default ways to win from 243 to 486. We have already described the PopWin mechanics above, so we’ll move on to the paytable.

You’ll find the paytable via the hamburger menu down in the right-hand side corner, and there are a total of 13 symbols here. The premiums are all classic fruit machine symbols, and the cherries are naturally the most valuable of the bunch. Land 5 of these juicy looking things, and you will win 15x your stake. However, the cherries can only appear via the PopWins feature, or during the bonus round.

Cherry Pop

Right below the spin button you’ll find a button to choose your stake. The bet range goes from 20p to £40 per spin, which is decent enough for most players.

You can expect to land winning combos on roughly every 5th spin or so, as the hit frequency is 22 % according to the developer. However, you will most likely get smaller to medium sized wins only during the base game.

Above the spin button you’ll find the autoplay feature button, and here you can set up between 10 and 1,000 autospins. You can even choose to let the reels spin for “all eternity” if you want, but there are no advanced options to automatically stop the feature. Of course, you can also choose to spin the reels manually, and double clicking on the spin button is the only way to increase the game’s pace.

Where to play CherryPop?

The wide release of this game has not yet happened at the time of writing this review, but judging from the reception of the 2 previous games in the PopWins series, you can expect to find CherryPop slot in many different quality casinos. We will present you with your main options below, and tell you how to best proceed to get started with this game immediately.

Play for real money

If you’ve already tried at least one of the two previous PopWins games from Avatar UX, you will have no trouble getting right into this one. You already know a lot about this game from what you’ve read above, and this means you’re pretty much ready to get started. To give you the best overview of where to play, we scan the whole casino market for you. You’ll find the best casinos to play CherryPop slot at the top of this page. Simply follow the link up there, and grab a sweet welcome offer while you’re at it.

Play free demo version

If you’re brand new to the PopWins feature, you might not feel quite ready to go for the real money play right away. You can then check out the free demo version of the game first, and see if this innovative mechanic is to your liking. This way you don’t risk anything, while gaining valuable experience with the game at the same time. Just follow the link to the very top of this page, and get started with CherryPop demo game immediately.

The 200 Spins CherryPop Experience

Having already tried the previous games, we knew pretty much what we were getting ourselves into with CherryPop slot. We enjoy the innovative PopWins mechanic for sure, but we just wish there was a fast play option. The pace of the game is quite annoying, and this becomes especially apparent in lengthy winning streaks that might not even pay that much.

This game could have scored 8 out of 10 on our unofficial “oddly satisfying” gameplay scale, if the speed of the PopWins mechanic was up to par. It doesn’t take all that long before the novelty wears off somewhat, and having to endure the new symbols popping into the empty positions one by one becomes rather tedious. For this reason, we give CherryPop 6 out of 10 points instead, and you can double the speed on the video to see how much better it feels.

Anyway, back to the 200 spins session at hand. We expected nothing less than plenty of dead spins and smaller wins from such a high volatility game as this, and that’s exactly what we got for a while also. We then hit a bit of a winning streak, and managed to get 4 reels expanded to the maximum of 6 rows. We really hoped to get the final reel onboard too, but it just didn’t happen.

We were left with an okay base game win of 10.7x, and it felt somewhat bad coming this close to triggering the bonus round only to see our chance vanish. For this reason, we decided to simply buy the bonus round instead. It kind of felt like a satisfying middle finger to the game, and we crossed a few other fingers for a successful free spins round (although it was hardly “free” now, was it).

We took our chances in the gamble feature, and luckily we won 3 extra spins instead of losing the 75x we had invested in this feature. Nothing could stop us now, and we saw the grid expand as the first spin started. Our first 4 spins were dead as a doornail, but then we had a few cascading PopWins that increased the multiplier to 4x.

The reels got reset to 6 rows again, and the next spin landed us a 40x win. This was due to the 5x multiplier we’d racked up so far, and the final spins got us a few smaller wins. The multiplier never got above 8x, and we did not manage to increase the rows above 6. In the end we won 63.3x from the bonus round, which was less than we spent buying it.

Review Summary

CherryPop walks the tightrope of the golden middle way between the 2 previous releases. The first game in the series had an insane potential and ditto volatility, while the second game was a bit more forgiving due to the wild feature that kept the cascades going. CherryPop comes with a very solid 56,386x potential, and it’s more brutal than the second game for sure.

There is no base game feature to help you out here, and triggering the bonus round can take a while. The big difference is the fact that you can now buy the bonus round if you don’t feel like waiting, but this is not available for UK players. The classic fruity visuals are more mainstream than the previous releases, but we feel that more fine-tuning and tweaking is necessary before the PopWins mechanic will “pop its cherry” with a proper mainstream breakthrough.

Pros

• PopWins mechanic still feels fresh and innovative
• Free spins with progressive win multiplier
• Bonus Buy option (not UK) and free spins gamble feature
• High volatility and 56,386x max win potential

Cons

• The PopWins pace is still a bit tedious and slow

If you enjoy CherryPop you should also try:

You’ll find more than enough fruit slots in our catalog, but none of them come with the unique and innovative PopWins mechanic. You can still try the 2 previous games from Avatar UX of course, and below we’ll also introduce you to a third game with a somewhat similar mechanic to the game at hand.

PopRocks - is the game that started it all, and this is a visually pleasing, but very volatile slot from Avatar UX. The PopWins mechanic is the defining feature here, of course, and you can win up to a staggering 72,188x your stake in the bonus round. There is a progressive multiplier in play, and reels can grow as high as 7 symbols here.

Wildpops - is the second in line from the same Yggdrasil associated developer, and this game comes with up to 33,614 ways to win. Of course, the PopWins mechanic takes center stage here too, and the progressive win multiplier will increase on every 7th pop. Random wilds can be a lifesaver here, and wins up to 17,707x is possible in this game, which is a bit less volatile than the first one.

Star Clusters Megaclusters - is the world’s first Megaclusters engine slot from the inventors of the Megaways engine. This mechanic is somewhat similar to PopWins, but winning symbols will be split into 4 smaller versions of themselves, instead of giving you double up of new symbols. Wins with the smaller symbols activates cascading reels however, and you can win up to 23,000x your stake via the bonus round’s progressive wild multiplier.

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