Santa's Great Gifts

2022 has seen a considerable amount of Christmas slot releases. A large majority of these were previous releases in festive skins. But a few developers have gone further and created new games just for the holiday season.

Santa's Great Gifts from Pragmatic Play falls somewhere in the middle of these two. It's a Cluster Pays game, played on a 6x6 grid with a Tumble feature and multiplier symbols. All are very similar to Pragmatic’s Mochimon or Gates of Olympus. But the Free Spins round has been given a few extra twists to keep things interesting. And I’ll explain how below. 

Wins are formed with at least eight matching symbols anywhere on the board. These are the four card suits on Christmas tree decorations as the low pays. The premiums are all tasty Xmas treats, except for the snowman in a globe. He's the highest-paying regular symbol, awarding 50x the bet for a cluster of 15 or more. To try and land some of Santa's great gifts will cost you from 0.20 up to 100.00 per spin in this high volatility game. 

With Cluster Pays, a Wild would be overkill, so you won't see one on the grid. But there is a scatter, good old Santa himself. He can pop up anywhere on the reels and awards from 3x to 100x the bet for 4 to 6 in view. That's in addition to triggering the Free Spins.

Presents in green, blue, purple, and red wrapping paper are multiplier symbols. These land on every reel in the base game and Free Spins and can lead to some big wins in combination with the Tumble Feature.

After every win, the Tumble feature removes the symbols involved from the reels. The remaining symbols fall into the empty positions while new symbols tumble in from the top. This will continue as long as new winning combos are formed. 

At the end of every Tumble sequence, the values, between 2x and 10x the bet, of any multiplier symbols in view are added together and applied to the total win. 

 In addition to potential payouts, Santa will award 10, 15, or 20 Free Spins for 4, 5, or 6, respectively, anywhere in view. The Free Spins bonus is a progressive round, starting at level 1, and moving up as multiplier symbols land and are collected by a metre. As the bonus round levels up the multiplier values increase as follows:

Level 1 –  x2 to x100.

Level 2 – x8 to x100.

Level 3 – x15 to x100.

Level 4 – x50 to x100.

As an added bonus, landing three or more Santa Scatters during the round adds +5 Free Spins to the remaining total.

At this time of year, we love playing all festive slots. But it is nice to come across one that gives a little more than a sprinkle of snow and holiday cheer to an existing game. But keep in mind that Santa, just like his counterpart Zeus in Gates of Olympus, is a volatile character. And there is no guarantee you've made his nice list, so always set a loss limit before playing.