Santa LinKing

The holiday season is well underway, and the Christmas slots are coming thick and fast. And Inspired Gaming is not going to miss out, with Santa Linking being their addition to the festive season's releases. And we have to say; the studio showed more creativity with the name than they did with the gameplay. This is basically a Reel King slot with Christmas cheer in the form of snow and festive symbols sprinkled on the reels.

There are 5 reels, 3 rows and 20 paylines, combining a Christmas atmosphere with classic Reel King slot action in all other aspects. But to be honest, it looks like the graphics department left things a bit late, and the visuals are not as polished as they could be. 

The paytable is again turned on its head, with cherries and plums as the low pays. Both are worth the same, paying a max of 2x the bet for a combination of 5. 10 to K card ranks make up the premiums, with the Ace replaced by a jackpot symbol as the most valuable of the premiums, paying 25x the bet for five on a payline. The cost per spin ranges from 0.10 to 100.00, and to calculate potential wins, divide your chosen bet level by 20 to get the line win. 

A Wild in the shape of Santa’s hat will substitute for missing symbols to help form winning combinations on a payline.

Coin symbols with cash values of  1x, 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x, and 25x the bet land in all stages of the game, but can only be collected in the Santa King bonus round. The player also has a chance of receiving some additional gifts from Santa in this round.

During the base game, reels can become highlighted with yellow. Five highlighted reels on one spin trigger the Santa King feature. During this, Santas appear to collect all the coin values in view. Then, each Santa spins his own set of mini reels to land gifts. Landing three matching presents awards it to the player. 

The Santa LinKing feature triggers from the Santa King feature if six coin symbols land. This is basically a Hold & Win feature. The coin symbols stick in place, and three re-spins are awarded. Each new coin symbol landing during the re-spins resets the counter to 3. And the feature ends when this runs down to zero. At that stage, the value of all coin symbols present on the reels will be added together and awarded to the player as the final payout.

Santa LinKing might not have original gameplay, but it's still an excellent game for the holiday season. If I have one problem with it, it's that the snowbound grid is a bit bright on the eyes. Just don't get carried away by the usual Christmas extravagance, and remember this is a gambling game, so always set a loss limit before playing. Try it now at Gala Spins.