Play Donuts

Donuts by Big Time Gaming takes a roadside diner, a jukebox and enough sugary pastries to make moderation seem like a distant concept. The game starts on a 4x4 setup that can expand to as many as 2,401 ways to win, with Donut Boxes capable of changing the reel structure. Its main feature combines a Scatter-collecting bonus round with bonus spins, where the accumulated multiplier carries into every potential win. 

Donuts drops the reels beside a brightly coloured 1950s-style diner on a desert highway, complete with retro signage, blue skies and a jukebox-shaped game cabinet. It looks like the sort of place where a milkshake arrives with three straws and nobody has considered the nutritional information since 1957. 

The symbols keep things similarly cheerful. Four glazed donuts sit above the familiar card ranks, while the Wild resembles a stack of colourful records inside a jukebox. Big Time Gaming doesn't complicate the visual concept, and that works in the game's favour. Among online slots that use food as their main theme, Donuts is less interested in building a fantasy confectionery world and more concerned with capturing the exaggerated charm of a roadside American diner. 

Donuts uses a fairly compact collection of symbols, with the coloured pastries comfortably outranking the card symbols. Regular potential wins run from left to right on consecutive reels. 

• Wild: Substitutes for regular paying symbols and can appear on reels 2, 3 and 4. 
• Gold Donut Scatter: Three or four Scatters trigger the bonus sequence and award 12 or 20 bonus spins respectively. 
• Donut Box: Can reveal as many as four Donut symbols, increasing the number of available winning ways, or uncover a Wild carrying a multiplier from x2 to x4. 

Donut Boxes 

Donut Boxes are responsible for expanding the otherwise compact 4x4 setup. When one opens, it can reveal up to four matching Donut symbols, creating additional positions and increasing the number of active ways to win. With enough expanded symbols in play, the game can reach a maximum of 2,401 ways. 

A box may instead reveal a Wild carrying an x2, x3 or x4 multiplier. These substitutions can therefore do more than simply complete a potential combination, since the multiplier raises the value attached to the resulting win. 

Bonus Round 

Landing three Gold Donut Scatters starts the feature sequence with 12 bonus spins waiting in the background, while four Scatters raise that starting total to 20. 

Before those spins begin, the game switches to a separate 4x4 board containing 16 individual positions. The round begins with three attempts. Each position may reveal either nothing or another Gold Donut Scatter. 

Every Scatter that appears contributes a value between x1 and x50 to the multiplier being built for the subsequent bonus spins. It also resets the remaining attempts to three, allowing the collection stage to continue. The round ends once three consecutive attempts produce no new Scatter or all 16 positions have been filled. 

Bonus Spins 

Once the collection stage ends, the accumulated multiplier carries across to the bonus spins and applies to potential wins throughout the round. This makes the preliminary collection phase rather more important than its simple 4x4 presentation might suggest; a strong multiplier changes the character of everything that follows. 

Scatters can extend the feature as well. Landing two, three or four Gold Donut Scatters during bonus spins adds 10, 20 or 30 more spins respectively. A retrigger also sends the game back into the multiplier-collection round, where further values may be added before play resumes.

The base game begins with four reels and four symbol positions, but Donut Boxes mean the visible arrangement doesn't always remain quite so tidy. When they reveal additional Donut symbols, the number of possible combinations expands, eventually reaching as many as 2,401 ways to win. 

Matching symbols pay from the leftmost reel across consecutive reels, and potential payouts are multiplied by the active stake. The expanding setup gives Donuts a slightly unusual rhythm compared with more conventional fixed-reel games found across online casinos. Most ordinary spins remain straightforward, but a well-timed Donut Box can suddenly increase both the number of symbols and the number of possible connections. 

The distinctive slow-spin effect also appears when certain stronger combinations are approaching, stretching out the reveal in typical Big Time Gaming fashion. 

For anyone comparing Donuts primarily on its sugary theme rather than simply hunting for another game with the same mechanics, several confectionery-heavy titles make more natural neighbours. 

• Sweet Bonanza 2500: This one replaces diner donuts with fruit and hard candy, but shares the unabashedly sugary presentation and bright, exaggerated visual style. 
• Tasty Bonanza Max Scatter: Another slot that fills its grid with colourful sweets and uses a dessert-shop aesthetic, making it a closer thematic comparison than many feature-driven alternatives. 
• Sweet Vegas: A game heads even further into confectionery territory with a grid built almost entirely from sweets, continuing the same cheerful disregard for sense. 

Donuts is one of those games where the artwork initially suggests something light, harmless and almost quaint, while the mathematics underneath have rather different plans. A cheerful diner, cartoon pastries and a bright blue sky don't exactly scream "multiplier accumulation can get serious," which is part of the fun. 

We think the best part is the way the bonus is split into two stages. Building the multiplier before the spins begin creates a useful sense of anticipation, because the feature's prospects are partially established before the first actual bonus spin takes place. Retriggers then reopen that process rather than merely adding more spins, which gives them considerably more weight. 

The base game isn't quite as memorable. Much of the personality sits in the presentation and Donut Boxes, while the main mechanical attraction is clearly being saved for the bonus. Still, Big Time Gaming has managed to turn a very simple idea — donuts, a diner and a multiplier — into something considerably more combustible than the cheerful artwork suggests.