Santa's Wonderland: Slot Overview
Pragmatic Play leaps on the seasonal bandwagon with a
Christmas themed slot called Santa's Wonderland. In keeping 🔔 with tradition, the studio
has followed the trend of taking an already made game, in this case, Gems Bonanza and
🔔 giving it a Xmas makeover. It's not a 100% carbon copy of the older slot, as some of
the stats 🔔 and rules have changed slightly, but the bulk remains the same, so if you've
played one, you've definitely played the 🔔 other.
The emphasis in Santa's Wonderland is
on gifts, toys specifically and judging by the name, it appears we are in 🔔 Santa's
workshop at some stage in the process. Most probably the final stage, as evidenced by
the piles of bow-tied 🔔 packages ready to squeeze onto Santa's sleigh for their one-night
trip around the world. Pragmatic Play has devised a nice 🔔 enough Christmas image, though
most of the screen is taken up by a big 8x8 sized grid, covered in trinkets, 🔔 and
surrounded by a feature clock, a meter, and a bonus buy button. Cluttered, but in a
warm Christmas way.
Santa's 🔔 Wonderland is a cluster paying grid slot, forming wins when
5 matching symbols land adjacent to each other in horizontal 🔔 or vertical directions.
Winning clusters trigger the tumble feature, which removes them, allowing new or
existing symbols on the grid 🔔 to fill the gaps. This can create additional cluster wins
from the same spin, ending when no more wins appear. 🔔 One area where Santa's Wonderland
deviates slightly from Gems Bonanza is in an RTP reduction from 96.51% to the current
🔔 value of 96.23%. It does retain a highly volatile math model, though the max win has
also decreased. Not a 🔔 very Christmassy move, yet there you go. Players who still want
to take on the big man can do so 🔔 on any device by selecting bets of 20 p/c toR$/€100
per spin.
Toys and baubles rule the paytable, starting with blue, 🔔 green, red, and
orange decoration low pays worth 5 to 12.5x the bet for a cluster consisting of 20-24
symbols. 🔔 High pays are toy planes, trains, and teddy bears; these ones are worth 25 to
100x your stake for a 🔔 20-24 symbol cluster. The last symbol for this section is the
bushy-bearded Santa wild. Wild Santas appear in any position 🔔 to substitute for all
symbols. It does not hit organically, however, but as part of the Wild Santa or Lucky
🔔 Santa features. Wilds can connect with more than one symbol type at the same time to
help compete clusters.
Santa's Wonderland: 🔔 Slot Features
Working hand in hand with the
cluster paying tumble system is a bunch of snowflake features and a Midnight 🔔 Riches
Meter, which sends players on a 5-level bonus round if enough winning symbols are
collected.
Snowflake Modifiers
When each new spin 🔔 starts, 5 snowflakes appear in random
cells on the grid beneath the regular symbols. If a winning cluster forms on 🔔 top of a
snowflake, its respective modifier is triggered once the current tumble sequence
ends.
Blue Snowflake - Awards Refresh. The 🔔 grid is cleared of all symbols except wilds,
and new symbols tumble onto the screen.
- Awards Refresh. The grid is 🔔 cleared of all
symbols except wilds, and new symbols tumble onto the screen. Purple Snowflake – Awards
Wild Santa. All 🔔 instances of the same symbol type are transformed into wilds.
– Awards
Wild Santa. All instances of the same symbol type 🔔 are transformed into wilds. Yellow
Snowflake – Awards Blocks. Random 2x2 sized blocks of the same symbol type are added 🔔 in
random positions on the board.
– Awards Blocks. Random 2x2 sized blocks of the same
symbol type are added in 🔔 random positions on the board. Red Snowflake – Awards
Supersize. A random block of 3x3, 4x4, or 5x5 of the 🔔 same symbol is added to the
grid.
– Awards Supersize. A random block of 3x3, 4x4, or 5x5 of the same 🔔 symbol is
added to the grid. Green Snowflake – Awards Lucky Santa. Adds 5 to 15 wild symbols to
the 🔔 screen in random positions.
If more than one snowflake is won on the same spin,
they play out in the order 🔔 they are listed in above.
Midnight Riches Progressive
Feature
On every spin, the number of winning symbols is collected in the Midnight
🔔 Riches meter. When 140 symbols have been collected, the Midnight Riches feature is
triggered. The feature begins at level 1 🔔 and activates all spin modifiers mentioned
above, once per level, and all wins are multiplied by 3. Collecting winning symbols
🔔 during the Midnight Riches feature progresses players to higher levels, like
so:
Collect 116 winning symbols to activate level 2 which 🔔 plays with an x6 multiplier
.
to activate which plays with an . Collect 120 winning symbols to activate level 3
🔔 which plays with an x9 multiplier .
to activate which plays with an . Collect 124
winning symbols to activate level 🔔 4 which plays with an x12 multiplier .
to activate
which plays with an . Collect 132 winning symbols to activate 🔔 level 5 which plays with
an x15 multiplier.
The feature ends when not enough symbols have been collected to move
to 🔔 the next level, or if all spin features from level 5 have been played.
Buy Midnight
Riches
For the cost of 100x 🔔 the stake, players can buy the Midnight Riches feature from
the base game. The same five levels may be progressed 🔔 through by following the
collection requirements laid out above.
Santa's Wonderland: Slot Verdict
If there's one
guy who must be concerned with 🔔 population growth, it's got to be Santa Claus. The first
billion people was reached around the year 1800, and it 🔔 took just 200 more years to hit
7 billion. If the growth rate continues like this, how's the guy going 🔔 to fit all those
presents in his sack, let alone find the time to visit everybody? Maybe he does that
🔔 thing in movies where a normal-sized sack is actually magical and opens into a
limitless space which can hold whatever's 🔔 thrown in, like Hermione's magic bag in Harry
Potter?
Leaving the realms of fiction, Pragmatic Play made a pretty good decision 🔔 when
they chose to base Santa's Wonderland on Gems Bonanza. Studios don't often build Xmas
games around cluster paying grid 🔔 slots, so the additional choice could be a welcome one
on Christmas Day. Santa's Wonderland is an entertaining option, too, 🔔 with a potentially
thrilling roller coaster of a bonus game that builds nicely through the levels if
enough wins occur.
The 🔔 main problems with Santa's Wonderland are that the changes don't
feel like they were done in a Christmas spirit. Let's 🔔 see, symbol values are less, more
winning symbols are needed to trigger the features, RTP has been reduced, and potential
🔔 is markedly less. Pragmatic has reeled in the max win from Gem Bonanza's 10,000x to the
7,500x on offer in 🔔 Santa's Wonderland. Add them all up, and it feels like something
Scrooge would pull - before he turned benevolent.
While copying 🔔 an older game isn't the
most original move, Gems Bonanza wasn't a hotbed of originality anyway as it followed
the 🔔 template laid down by the likes of Play'n GO, reliant as it is on collecting
winning symbols to trip features. 🔔 Even still, Santa's Wonderland is a playable grid
slot, capable of slinging off some satisfying Santa infused entertainment.
