Apples may very well be one of the happiest fruits in the entire fruit kingdom. Online slot machine by Red Tiger with an Asian and fruit theme. All red or green, hanging from trees, filled with nutrients, and… okay, yes, we are grasping at straws here. There wasn’t much clarity to be found after browsing the web for a time, so let’s just go with it.
Scatter wins in Happy Apples can trigger a chain reaction that awards more free spins and other bonuses. It’s situated in a creative area, and the scenery appears to have been painted with a brush and a variety of rich oil colors. The regular game takes place in a valley surrounded by mountains, while the free spins take place on what appears like an abandoned mountaintop from a candy-themed slot machine. Appropriate, given many other symbols include Asian candies and a slew of cute animal figures in addition to apples of varying emotional states. The emphasis is squarely on adorableness.
A 6×6 game grid sits in the heart of all this cuteness, from which 36 symbols fall throughout each basic game round and free spin. To trigger a scatter win and release coins, it is necessary for 10 or more matching symbols to appear anywhere on the reels. To begin, players select a wager anywhere from 10 p/c to £/€10 and then either push the spin button in standard mode or, if the opportunity to purchase more features is available, one of three additional feature buys. The maximum RTP in Happy Apples is 95.7%, regardless of how the game is played, and the volatility is rather high.
Payouts for combinations of 10 symbols range from 0.1x to 7.5x the wager, with combinations of fifteen or more symbols paying 1.5x to 35x the wager. The lower-value set of Happy Apples’ symbols consists of four delicious items, whereas the higher-value set features four cartoon animals shown as though they are eating from platters. The possible motivations for this behavior remain a mystery. It’s fairly uncommon for scatter-paying slot machines to exclude wild symbols, and Happy Apples is no exception.
Features of the Fruitful Apple Slot
Chain reactions, a Fortune Tree, Golden Apples, Diamond Apples, free games, and the ability to buy features are all available in Happy Apples. A victory triggers a chain reaction, whereby all winning symbols vanish and are replaced by symbols falling from above. The domino effect keeps going until there’s no more good news.
Lucking Tree
The apple tree in the upper left corner of the screen is the Fortune Tree. There are apples in there, and they might fall at any moment. You can get Golden Apples or Diamond Apples from the Fortune Tree at the start of a spin, before the ordinary symbols fall into place. The Fortune Tree can sometimes trigger at the end of a losing spin or a sequence of losses. Although Diamond Apples are rare, they are feasible when Golden Apples fall.
Apples of Gold
All Golden Apples that land on the reels will turn into the same sort of paying symbol. When the Fortune Tree is activated, up to ten Golden Apples may fall.
Apple, Diamond
You can get a multiplier of x2, x3, x5, x7, x10, x20, x25, x50, or x100 if three Diamond Apples fall from the Fortune Tree at once. All of your accumulated Diamond Apple multipliers will be displayed above the reels. The win is multiplied by the multiplier at the conclusion of the spin. On the next turn, multipliers are always reset to zero.
Bonus Turns
Free games are triggered when three, four, or five scatters appear anywhere in view on the grid, awarding 10, 12, or 15 free games to the player. The Fortune Tree may become active more frequently during the feature than it does normally. More free games may be won by getting three scatter symbols while in the bonus round.
Offer for Sale
Not in the mood to stick around for the special features when the Feature Buy button is displayed? Then, when you click it, you’ll be given three options on how to play Happy Apples. You may either purchase free spins at a rate of 70x your wager, or you can purchase a spin with a guarantee of five Golden Apples or more for 3x your wager, or you can purchase a spin with a guarantee of one Diamond Apple or more for 15x your wager.
The Winner Is…A Fruit Machine!
Is it just us, or has Red Tiger suddenly deviated from their normal methodical approach and experimented with new forms of design? Not exactly complete overhauls, but the atmosphere seems to have changed once Red Tiger began adding in-app purchases for extra features to several of its games. Though you could usually bank on a fair number of releases from the studio having that steel win line slapping on reels effect when victories were generated, such games seem to have dwindled in recent years. Maybe Happy Apples was just a fluke from the studio’s experimental period, and things will get back to normal soon enough. Or maybe the group will be more confident in its ability to ride the creative wave wherever it may go.
Maybe we’re exaggerating the inventiveness here because Happy Apples had a strange title and didn’t fit well into any one category. Features that aren’t monstrous but can play nicely into the scatter-paying mechanic are fruit, sweets, culture, and some elegant background brushwork. The pay symbols themselves don’t offer particularly high payouts, so any multiplier you can snag will come in handy. Although the study often saw small maximums, multipliers can be very substantial. They could prove valuable even then. Each game round is a complete crapshoot because the multiplier disappears after the first few free spins and there is no progressive dynamic. The maximum win in Happy Apples is 6,186.5x the wager, which, like the multipliers, is a rather good number.
After giving it a try, we didn’t think Happy Apples was quite as accessible to a wide audience as games like Fruit Smash or Super Fruit Smash. Perhaps the intended demographic was narrower, but Red Tiger has put together a game where the positives outweigh the negatives, making Happy Apples a satisfying experience for the appropriate player.