Play Gift Rap for Free

You’ll find many of Santa’s helpers on the reels of Gift Rap. There are several elves, including an elf with a green hat who might or might not be Irish. There’s also an elf with a purple hat, a pair of punky female elves sharing a microphone and a ghettofabulous character called Rappin Jack Frost, who’s rocking a massive pendant.

Elsewhere, you’ll find a variety of old-fashioned toys: a cuddly teddy bear playing a drum, a spinning top, a music box, a toy hammer and a monkey clapping together a couple of cymbals. The innocence of youth, indeed: these are gifts that kids would have been happy to receive in the mid to late ‘70s. Hand a child a cuddly bear playing a drum in 2016 and they’re liable to throw the mother of all tantrums. Take my word for it: it’s not worth the aggro.

The gift rap bauble is the game’s wild, meaning it can substitute for all other symbols except the scatter and the Rappin Jack Frost bonus. The scatter in Gift Rap is a can of snow spray (I wasn't sure what snow spray was either). While you spin the reels, you’ll be treated to a selection of festive songs. That might be nice if you’re playing in the month of December, but a little weird to listen to in spring. Simply hit mute if you’re not feeling in the Christmas spirit. Santa won’t put you on the naughty list for your insolence, I’m at least 70% sure of that.

Gift Rap is fairly formulaic, as far as gameplay is concerned. Simply land winning combinations on active paylines to win cash. The game’s highest paying symbol is the gift rap bauble: five of these is pay-dirt, paying out 6,000 coins. Five Irish elves nets 1,000, while five of the purple-hat-wearing elf yields 800.

Most slot game scatters trigger free bonuses, but that isn’t the case with Gift Rap. Instead, scatters are linked with multipliers. Land three to pick up a 5x multiplier on your total stake; four to win a 20x multiplier; and five to receive an 80x multiplier. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you can win some serious dough if you hit combinations of scatters. Most gamblers would probably prefer big multipliers to free spins, unless stacked wilds are involved.

The Rappin Jack Frost icon, meanwhile, triggers the Select a Gift Bonus game. All you need to do is land three, four or five of these symbols. On the bonus screen you’ll see a 6x5 grid containing gift boxes. Simply choose your gifts until RJF tells you to stop. At that point, you won’t be able to choose any more – but you will walk away with whatever cash was in the boxes you selected. There’s the potential to win up to 32,250 coins in this round; all bonus wins are added to your pay-line wins.

Considering you can bet up to 250 a spin, Gift Rap should appeal to high rollers as well as low rollers. Keeping the minimum coin values and maximum coin values so far apart is definitely a strong move on the part of Microgaming. After all, you can choose to wager as little as one coin per pay-line, or ten. The cartoonised symbols might make you feel like you’re playing a kids’ game, but a combination of multipliers and fun bonus features is enough to keep most slot junkies eager for more.