Holiday Season Slot Review

This the season to be jolly! OK, now that the obligatory holiday pun is out of the way, let’s actually discuss the topic at hand – Holiday Season slot from Play ’n’ Go. Right as you enter the game, you’re greeted by nice and gentle season music. It’s one of the freshest slot games on the market, timed to almost neat perfection. The gameplay is quite similar to Pimped or Masquerade, but it’s got that holiday feel to it.

In a nutshell, this is a slot with five reels, three rows and ten paylines total, with the max payout of 1,000 times your stake, provided you land five wilds. There’s no progressive jackpot, but you do get the opportunity to take the 50,000-coin jackpot in the bonus round.

The RTP on this thing is quite good, some 96.51%, placing Holiday Season somewhere in the upper-middle class of slots. There’s a minimal bet amount of one coin per line, per spin, and the coin values range from 1p up to £2. It’s not overwhelming, sure, but with clever, or rather, lucky bets, you should get by.

Get Ready For Some Christmas Gifts!

As far as the icons go, you get the standard high value card symbols – tens, jacks, queens, kings and aces, as well as some festive icons unique to the game. There’s a man toasting with a glass of, presumably, champagne, an attractive young woman, an old-fashioned clock with dials, showing near midnight, a baked turkey and a plate of delicious-looking pudding.

Max payout per symbol (assuming you get five of any) is 750 times your stake for the man toasting, 500x for the woman in Ms Claus outfit, 400x for the clock, 250x for the turkey and, finally, another 250 for Christmas pudding. The card symbols bring 150x, 125x, 100x, 75x and 50x, for five aces, kings, queens, jacks and tens, respectively. Of course, you can win with only three of any, this is just thinking about what-ifs.If you want to know more, simply go to the game’s paytable (bottom right corner on the user interface, just above the autoplay button).

You’ll easily recognise the wild – it’s got a Christmas present – a red box with nice golden-shade yellow ribbon on it, and big gold “WILD” in front of it.The game features stacked wilds on every reel. This does not mean you’ll get a full reel of wilds every time, as it may appear all by its onesies. Of course, just as in every slot you’ve ever played, the wild substitutes for any symbol, save scatter. Moreover, it can also have its own combos, whereby for three wilds you win 50 times the stake, for four wilds 200x, and for five, 1000x. Factor in the ten paylines and the fact that it may appear as stacked wild, and you get a pretty hefty win.

The scatter sports a champagne bottle and a half-empty (or half-full?) bottle for its icon. There is no bonus game, but there is bonus round, which is triggered when you land three or more scatters anywhere on the reels. This is a nice and fairly uncommon feature. While most similar slots condition you in this regard – the scatter must appear on reels three, four and five, or one, three and five, or one, two and three… you’re probably familiar with these limitations, and equally confused. With Holiday Season, you get none of that. As long as you get three scatters, you’re golden.
Now, the bonus round activated by the aforementioned scatters is sort of a hit and miss, in our opinion. The chance of its occurring is somewhat increased, but the most you can get is five freespins, or win spins, as the game calls them. This feature is fairly lucrative, as a scatter on the reels during the bonus round (or winspins), awards 2 additional winspins, so you can prolong it. Though, it is capped to twenty freespins, so it’s not as if you can do it indefinitely.

The final word

If you’ve spent some time playing slots, you may be reminded of Pimped, or Masquerade, which feature similar gameplays. If you enjoyed these two, then you’ll certainly enjoy Holiday Season. On a balance, it’s fair to middling, shall we say, with decent RTP, but somewhat lacking in bonus department. Still, it comes just in time. Hohoho, and a-spin we go!