RTP 96.48%
Min bet $0.20
Max bet $100
Max Win bet x 21175
Popularity Low
Min bet $0.20
Max bet $100
Max Win bet x 21175
Gamble Feature Buy bonus game, Cascading reels, Multiplier, Freespins, Scatter symbols
Layout 6x5
Devices Support all devices
Configurable Winlines No
Volatility High
Progressive Jackpot No
Christmas is a sweet holiday, so Sweet Bonanza Xmas fits well. This is all about free spins and massive multipliers.
Pragmatic Play released Sweet Bonanza Xmas right before Christmas of 2019. This is a fancy-free slot, where you don’t need to worry about paylines or clusters. Just get some symbols anywhere and you’re good to go.
Sweet Bonanza Xmas is a Christmas-themed re-skin of Sweet Bonanza, a slot released earlier the same year. Both versions are mechanically identical with the only difference being the wintery theme.
The design of both these games is interesting and a bit innovative. The key feature of the slot is the Pay Anywhere mechanic. This means that every single symbol works like a scatter. It doesn’t matter where they are, just as long as there are enough of them somewhere.
But not all of the features were this positive. Players were not fond of some of the choices Pragmatic Play made, especially about the frequency of the actual scatter symbol.
It’s a beautiful mid-winter day. The sky is blue, the sun is shining and it’s barely snowing. The weather seems perfect for some outdoor fun. The candy-land has been covered in snow and everyone seems to be having fun. Even the smiling snowmen have candy buttons and liquorice eyes.
Sweet Bonanza Xmas is a cheery game with a happy feel to it. It’s not so much a Christmas-themed, as it is a winter-themed slot. There is no Santa here, but when you have Xmas in your name, you get labelled as Christmas-themed.
The music is from the original Sweet Bonanza slot, but it too has had some work done. The songs have little bells, chimes all the Christmassy elements you can think of added. The songs sound like they could be from a TV commercial, play in a shopping centre during Christmas or even in some Sims Christmas expansion.
All and all, the game looks good. It doesn’t have much of a personality or anything original going for it, but it is joyous.
The reels are full of sweet things and thematic symbols. There are five pieces of fruit, four different candies and a special lollipop, all in bright and vibrant colours.
The first thing you’ll notice is that this slot has a bit of a different way of winning. You don’t have any paylines or even cluster wins. All you need is to have enough of the same symbol anywhere on the reels and you win. They don’t have to be adjacent to one another or anything like that. Every symbol works like a scatter.
To make the game a bit more interesting, it has the Tumble Feature. Usually known as Cascading Wins, Tumble will let you win multiple times with a single spin. All the wins are removed from the reels and new symbols fall down in their place.
The only special symbol on the reels is the lollipop. You need less of them to win and they also activate the Free Spin feature.
Free Spins are a bit controversial here. They are a good feature, but the way you activate them is a bit dodgy. You see, there is an option to increase your wager to have a higher chance to get scatter symbols. To me, this doesn’t seem like a fair choice, as you basically just have to pay the Bet Multiplier.
The best way to win in this game is to get to the free spins. Regular wins have lacklustre wins, which need to be chained together to get something decent. What makes free spins so different is the multiplier. There are golden baubles that can increase your multiplier to massive heights. A single bauble can have a 100x multiplier on it and if there are several, they are added together.
Sweet Bonanza and its Xmas version have a different way to win. The symbols don’t need to touch each other or be in a specific place. The game just counts how many symbols appear on the screen and if there is enough, you win.
Tumble Feature is your key to bigger wins. You might be more familiar with it by its other names, Avalanche and Cascading Wins.
Every time you win, those symbols are removed from the game and new ones fall down and fill the empty spaces. Those symbols can then create new combinations and the cycle continues until there are no new wins.
Lollipop scatters are super sweet. Get at least four of them and you just won 10 free spins. If you get at least three more during the spins, you get 5 extra spins each time.
The best thing about these free spins is the multiplier bauble. They have a number between 2 and 100 on them and when the Tumble is over, you add all the baubles together and that is your multiplier for that spin. The baubles themselves can’t be a part of any combinations but are worth their weight in gold.
You can add 25% to your wager to increase your chances of activating the Free Spins feature. Bet Multiplier doubles the amount of scatter symbols on the reels.
You shouldn’t really think of this as an optional thing. Without it, getting four scatter symbols is extremely hard. The increased wager is nothing compared to the difficulty of playing without it.
If you don’t like waiting, you can just buy your way to the bonus feature. The cost is always 100x your bet and that will get you the same 10 free spins that you would get from the scatters.
Note: Buy Feature is not available on all casinos.
Bonus type: No Deposit, Low Wagering, Free Play, Sign Up, Free Money, Welcome Bonus, Registration
Min Deposit: No Deposit
Bonus type: Coupon, Code, Welcome Bonus, Registration, Sign Up, Deposit Bonus, First Deposit Bonus
Min Deposit: $10
Wagering: 60x
Christmas slots are an interesting part of online slots. They are only relevant for about a month every year, but we still want them to be as good as the rest. This is why many developers just put a Christmas-themed skin on an existing slot. This is what happened with Sweet Bonanza when it was turned into Sweet Bonanza Xmas.
Sweet Bonanza Xmas is a nice little Christmas slot. It’s colourful and fun, and everything worked out surprisingly well when covered in snow and topped with a little festive magic.
When I first started to play, I was a bit perplexed about the Bet Multiplier feature. The cynical part of me was immediately thinking that if that is a feature, then how hard it is to activate the spins without it. Turned out it was pretty damn hard.
This annoyed me a lot, but eventually, I just pushed away the idea that this is an optional feature and started to treat it as a mandatory part of the bet. If you can get past that, the rest of the game is just fine.
I enjoyed the game, but in the end, I felt like I was playing a re-skinned slot. It didn’t seem original or even that organic. It was just just a snow-covered version of a game that I had already played earlier. Sure, the game is fine and good, but I wanted something a bit more unique.
