Merry Christmas Slots
When it comes to online slot playing, any player with a few years of experience under his/her belt will remember the bucket-load of online slots which celebrate Christmas time that have appeared over the past few years. But despite so many games out there, only a few have managed to truly capture the spirit of Christmas, both visually and audibly. The Merry Christmas video slot belongs to this small category of games as it is indeed a slot that will engulf you in its holiday cheers and bring that Christmas-y feeling to you whenever you find yourself missing the holiday, no matter the time of year.
Built by multi-faceted game providers BetConstruct, Merry Christmas is a stunning-looking slot game that features the same bonus package found in many slots from the company. It is a 5-reel, 9-payline slot with 3 rows of winning symbols and a visual presentation that makes it look like a creative and animated postcard. With its pastel-coloured graphics, symbols of Santa, snowmen, mistletoes, and sparrows, as well as its Christmas music theme that will make you feel like in a Hallmark movie, the Merry Christmas slot couldn't be more appropriately named.
Gambling for Christmas?
No matter if you're a child or not, Santa's treasures won't be handed out for free at this slot game. Since the paylines aren't fixed, you'll be able to select which lines you want active and increase or lower your stake accordingly. The minimum line bet is 1 credit, which is also the minimum stake you can place when you play with only the middle payline engaged. But if you engage all 9 paylines and choose the maximum line bet of 100 credits, you can even spend 900 credits with any press of the spin button.
The game's pay table is easy to understand as it is only expressed in credits. As you might expect, the best-paying symbol in the game is Santa's symbol, which can pay a minimum of 200x your bet per line for the basic combo and up to 5,000x when you collect 5 of his cards on any payline. The only other symbol that somewhat compares to the value of Santa is the wild symbol, which pays 100x your coin value for a single combination of 3 symbols as well as 500x and 2,000x when you collect 3 or 4 of the symbols, respectively.
As it's a Christmas-themed slot game, the Merry Christmas video slot also features other holiday icons (sparrow, clock, and Christmas tree), which can pay you out between 10x and 500x your bet per line. At the bottom of the pay table, you can find the snowman, snowflake, and mistletoe leaf, which offer the smallest payouts in the game, the lowest of which is 2x your line bet for collecting 3 mistletoe leaves.
When it comes to special features, the slot has only a few to offer. The first is the wild symbol which can substitute any symbol except for the Santa and scatter symbols to bring you a win. The second bonus symbol is the scatter, 3 or more of which activate the fever bonus game where you'll get to win a bet multiplier by playing a bonus 3-reels slot machine.
The bonus slot spins to produce 3 symbols which are matched against an outside row of circulating symbols to find a pair. When you win a pair of two symbols, then the slot will award a multiplier prize to your total bet. The lowest multiplier is 2x while the highest is 100x your total bet. If you trigger the game with only 3 scatter symbols, you will get only one shot at the game, but triggering it with 5 scatters will give you 3 shots at winning yourself a "symbol pair" and claiming multiple cash prizes.
Whatever winning you collect during a spin can also be doubled by using the gamble feature that's built into the game. The gamble feature is a classic game of 50/50 and it will have punters choose between 2 stamps for a Christmas postcard. Once you make your choice, the slot will randomly pick a stamp and show it to you. If you guessed right, you can claim a cash prize equal to 2x your winnings. But if not, you can lose anything you've collected during the previous spin.
Free Holiday Goodies
BetConstruct, like many game providers, supplies online casinos with free game demos so that any punter can try a game for free and review its features before deciding to play for real money. Free demos can be found at any online casino as well as our own catalogue of free slots online which has over 7,500 free games and counting. If you want to enjoy a free Merry Christmas slot, just use the demo you can find on our website or, alternatively, head down to a BetConstruct casino and play the game there.
The same casino that has free games to offer will also provide you with real money versions of its games, should you register and deposit money into your player account. But before you fill up any registration form, first make sure that the casino is licensed and that it can provide you with trusted payment options like Visa/MasterCard credit cards, Neteller/Skrill, e-wallets, or any other payment method that works best for you. Any reliable online casino should also have an SSL-secured gaming platform that offers a variety of games as well as good player rewards for its regular punters.
And last, but not least, a top casino online should also be able to provide you with fair banking limits and fair games. This is something you can easily check by browsing through the payout policy of the casino and looking for any fairness certificate or a list of the RTP (return to player) rate of all available games.
Staying True to the Roots
The Merry Christmas video slot doesn't stray much from the type of games BetConstruct has made over the years. The WolfsBet slot, for example, is one of the older games from BetConstruct that feels very close to this slot game. Based on the old Soviet cartoon "Nu Pogodi!", the WolfsBet video slot is a 9-payline game with the same betting limits and a gamble/risk function built into it. It also has a wild symbol as well as a bonus game where the slot plays out a sequence (shooting the wolf) to determine whether you'll win a prize.
The exact same game but with a different theme can be found in BetConstruct's Crazy Duck video slot. Full of symbols like Zippo lighters, pipes, dumbbells, and cannabis leaves, the Crazy Duck really deserves its name. Like the WolfsBet, the Crazy Duck is a 9-payline game that has wild symbols, a gamble feature, as well as a bonus round where the duck has to survive through a boat trip to earn rewards. Both slots are, in many ways, predecessors to the Merry Christmas game.
Get Santa!
As a slot game maker, BetConstruct has stayed within the borders of traditional gameplay for most of the studio's operation, producing games that offer simple bonus features and don't blur the line between playing video games and slot machines. The Merry Christmas video slot is exactly such a game in the sense that it offers a more traditional playing experience that's wrapped in a stunning visual package. The end result is a slot that won't over-confuse you with visual effects, multi-tier side-games, and whatnots, but it will still provide you with a chance to earn big payouts. Whether this appeals to you as a player is entirely your call.
