Secrets of Christmas slot review

Secrets of Christmas gives us a look through the frost-covered window of a family home as they eagerly await the coming of Santa Claus and his big wins!

This wintery game was released by NetEnt in the winter of 2016, an excellent time to settle into a comfortable chair with a hot cup of chocolate milk and play this 5-reel, 3-row game with 25 paylines! Secrets of Christmas opens with a brief animation showing us a beautifully decorated house deep in the snow-covered forest. This opening shot did a really good job at setting the mood for me.

As I’ve come to expect from NetEnt, the graphics are excellent. All the symbols are highly detailed and animated, while the background also brings to life the idea of a Christmas winter. The base game takes place outside as we look inside the house, the reels coming down through the window. There is a string of pine branches framing the window with lights flashing on and off. It all looks very good.

When triggering the free spins mode we move inside to the living room where we see a whole mountain of toys and presents. Here we pick special modifiers for the free spins mode before the screen moves to the actual fireplace and we play the free spins.

The sound is as expected the same high quality as the rest of the game, even though it’s not very original. It does a very good job of getting us in the mood, even in the middle of summer!

Symbols

The symbols in this game are all beautiful with a great amount of care and detail put into each of them. The high-paying symbols are also animated when they’re part of a winning payline, like the glass of milk draining or the lights in the gingerbread house going on. Even the low-paying symbols, based on the usual high cards, look like they’re made out of pines which adds to the setting.

From highest to lowest they are:

• Scatter: Get 3 or more at the same time to start the free spins mode.
• Wild: Substitute all other symbols in the game except the Scatter Symbol.
• Bell: Max. 1,250 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• Candle: Max. 750 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• Gingerbread House: Max. 500 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• Milk and Cookies: Max. 300 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• Stocking: Max. 200 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• Ace: Max. 150 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• King: Max. 125 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• Queen: Max. 100 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• Jack: Max. 75 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.
• 10: Max. 50 coins with five-of-a-kind on a winning payline.

Because of the large number of symbols the game also has a listed High Volatility which fit my experience. There aren’t a lot of wins during the base game and they aren’t very high, but the free spins mode can be very lucrative.

Features

Secrets of Christmas doesn’t have a set of strange, extravagant features. Instead, it stays pretty close to the familiar, popular ones that will be well-known to most players.

First a quick overview:

• Wilds: Wilds show up randomly during playing, substituting all other symbols in the game except the Scatter Symbol.
• Free Spins: With 3 or more Scatter Symbols at the same time the free spins mode triggers. Players get 10 free spins plus they get to pick different bonuses to add to the experience.
• Multiplier: Players can get up to a 6x multiplier in the free spins mode.
• Stacked Wilds: Reel 2 and/or 4 can be filled with Stacked Wilds.
• Random Wilds: A random high-paying symbol can become a Wild during the free spins mode.

During the base game, only the Wild feature is activated. This helps in getting wins but not a ridiculous amount and there wasn’t more than 1 Wild on the screen at the same time. The Scatter symbols showed up pretty regularly though, and it caused the free spins mode to trigger reasonably often. I wouldn’t say they were frequent but they weren’t completely invisible either.

When the free spins mode triggered I’d get taken into the warm, cosy house and presented an entire pile of gifts! They were spread across the living room floor in 3 separate piles. Here, I got to pick 1 gift out of each of the piles, granting a random feature to the free spins mode. This could be extra free spins, multipliers, stacked Wilds and random Wilds.

After making my choices I’d settle in in front of the fireplace and the free spins would spin, using the different bonuses as the mode progressed. In my experience, almost every combination of features would in some way be beneficial, although there were obviously better and worse ones. Since you have to pick the presents blindly, there’s no way to develop a kind of strategy during this part.

The features were pretty standard but presented in such a beautiful way that it really didn’t matter. They all work well and there is a lot of variation thanks to the random element of picking additional features. I had a really good time, especially with the free spins mode!

In Conclusion

Secrets of Christmas is a representation of the classic NetEnt slot. It is competent, beautiful and doesn’t stray too far from the standard slot experience. It has different features that keep things interesting while the presentation is absolutely gorgeous. All the graphics are sharp and detailed, animations keep things visually interesting and the soundtrack keeps the player in the mood.

With the ability to pick a bet between £0.25 and £125 per spin and a max. win of 14,000x your bet there is enough to entice players to keep playing.

I found the game to be very entertaining even though it doesn’t add a lot of new things. It looks fantastic and the entire theme is enforced through every detail in the game. I never felt disconnected from the atmosphere since all the elements worked together in building that Christmas setting.

If you’re a player that’s looking for a classic slot with modern features that doesn’t overwhelm, Secrets of Christmas is definitely recommended. If you’re someone who gets really happy during Christmas-time, this game is a really easy pick! Even though Christmas is a popular slot theme, I don’t know many games that have captured the feeling so well.