Sweet Baklava Slot Review

The Sweet Baklava Slot Game

Often, online slot developers focus on popular cuisines, especially Oriental ones, when inspiring slot themes. However, Pragmatic Play has done the unexpected by taking players on a Middle Eastern adventure to experience its pastries.

As expected, Sweet Baklava takes shape inside a restaurant. Although the 5 by 3 gameboard covers most of the screen, you’ll manage to see several pastries and bread arranged on the shelf in the background. It seems the diner must be doing so well since the chef standing on the right-hand side has a glistening smile as he readies to serve you his delicious pastries.

A melody fit for the cartoonish design, doused with a hint of cultural Turkish tunes, helps complete the ambience.

Symbols and Payouts

At least now you know what the game looks like. However, what matters more about this gameplay is its symbols and their payouts.

To start with, it includes ten regular symbols ranked as low-value or high-paying in the paytable. While some symbols aren’t thematic, they are crafted skillfully to enhance the game’s top-tier quality.

Kindly note that the video slot has 10 paylines and pays when identical symbols form winning combinations as displayed in the paytable.

99% of the Sweet Baklava symbols pay for 3+ matching symbols that land on adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost reel. However, the highest-paying Square-shaped Pastry pays 0.5-200x bet for at least two of its kind on an active payline.

The other Pastries (Baklava Pistachio, Balah El Sham, etc.) are next in line as high-value symbols, taking after different shapes. They pay between 1x and 100x the stake for 3+ of the same.

Lastly, the ridiculously popular 10 to Ace poker playing cards are the low-paying symbols worth 0.2x to 10x the bet for 3+ OAK.

The Old Chef is wild, which appears on all reels during the free spins and substitutes for all symbols except the scatter. Meanwhile, the scatter (bowl of pastries) appears on all the reels and can trigger the free spins! 

Sweet Baklava Slot Bonus Features

You’re about to encounter a popular set of features synonymous with Big Bass slots. So, money collect, free spins, and a buy feature.

Money Symbol

The Baklava paying symbols are also money symbols. In Sweet Baklava, they take random money values between 2x to 5000x bets per spin. You can only win the money values during the free spins feature.

Free Spins

Hit 3 to 5 scatters to trigger 10, 15, and 20 free spins, respectively. Whenever two scatters hit without the 3rd in the base game, another one may appear through a re-spin or a tong pulling one of the reels upwards.

Before this round starts, the game will randomly select 1 to 5 modifiers applicable to the subsequent round:

• More Baklava symbols appear on the reels during the round.
• More Cooks (wilds) appear during the subsequent round.
• During the round, the chance to hit the Flour Bombs or Tongs spin feature increases.
• The round starts from level 2 in the progressive feature.
• The subsequent round starts with +2 more free spins from the beginning and 2 more spins per retrigger.

Further, each wild that hits collects all the money values on the screen during this Sweet Baklava feature. Also, all the wilds that hit accumulate until the round ends. Every 4th wild collected retriggers +10 free spins and increases the multiplier for Money symbol collection to 2x, 3x, and 10x for the 2nd to 4th levels, respectively.

The multipliers apply to the retriggered spins. But the feature cannot retrigger again after the fourth level. It’s also worth pointing out features that can randomly trigger during the free spins:

• Flour Bombs Spins Feature: When there are cooks but no Baklava, the cook Money symbols can randomly appear.
• Tong: When there are Baklava symbols but no cooks, a tong pulls a random reel upwards to bring cooks to the screen.
• Flour Bomb Animation: When there are cooks but no Baklava, the animation can change all the symbols on-screen, except for the cook, into something else.  

Bonus Buy

Finally, Sweet Baklava lets you buy the free spins from the base game for 100 times the bet. The purchased bonus starts instantly with 3 to 5 scatters randomly landing on the triggering spin.

How to Win at Sweet Baklava Slot

Before outlining how to win, let’s unpack the gameboard’s configuration. It has a standard 5-reel, 3-row, and 10-payline setup, which should be familiar to many enthusiasts.

Start playing by setting a preferred bet between €0.10 and €250. Afterwards, hit the Spin button (crowned circle) or use the Spacebar to trigger a single round. Further, you can use the Autoplay function to preselect and start several spins automatically.

To win in Sweet Baklava, aim for matching symbols that hit from left to right and on predefined paylines beginning from the furthest left column.

A winning spin could see you rack up to 5,000 times your stake!

I can’t forget to note the “i” button, which reveals the paytable and game rules and the Turbo/Quickspin options that speed up the reel spins.

Sweet Baklava Slot RTP & Volatility

The lucrative default RTP for this game is 96.71%, which remains unchanged even when using the buy feature. Then, the slot’s high volatility results in infrequent payouts but greater odds of consistently landing big wins.

The Final Thoughts

Pragmatic Play entered this new year on a good trajectory, creating fresh gambling experiences such as Brick House Bonanza. When reviewing the quoted slot, I celebrated its originality. Little did I know that old tricks die hard, considering we are yet with another cloned gambling experience based on the infamous Big Bass mechanics.

But first, let me decode the Sweet Baklava design. It takes after an under-appreciated Turkish cuisine. The visuals and audio craft were of good quality, which should appeal to a broad audience.

However, the mechanics diluted the excitement brought by the high-standard design. How long do players have to endure the monotonous money collect feature? In fact, playing this game was like playing Big Bass Halloween 2 and many other slots from the popular series. The only difference was a few name twists.

So, in summary, I was disappointed. However, you may find this new slot entertaining if you haven’t played games from the Big Bass range. Above all, it offers a wide betting range and a decent win cap.