Seasons Greetings!
I figured there isn’t a better day to release which Christmas slot is my favourite than today. 🎅🎄 So here it is!
No surprise here, my top pick is Pragmatic Play’s Christmas Carol Megaways (as I had predicted). I’m going to keep my experience about this one short and sweet, because it’s the end of the year, I’m tired, and I’ve got a million things to do before Christmas (…you didn’t think I actually wrote this today, did you? 😜)
Note: All details I’ve included about Christmas Carol Megaways below are related to the version of the game I played at an Ontario online casino. As such, it may not reflect your experience if you play this game from a location other than Ontario. For instance, some versions of this game have an autoplay feature and the option to buy the Free Spins feature. These features are not available in Ontario.
Christmas Carol Megaways – General Gameplay Facts
General Gameplay Facts
- Software developer: Pragmatic Play *
- Release date: November 2020
- Theme: Christmas Carol, Scrooge
- Reels: 6
- Rows: 8
- Paylines: Up to 200,704
- Notable features: Tumble Feature, Free Spins, multipliers
- Bet range: $0.20 – $100.00
- Max win: 20,000x
- Jackpots: No
- Volatility: High
- RTP: 96.58%
- Free version available: Yes (you can demo it at Pragmatic Play’s official site)
- Where I played it for real money: PlayOJO*
About Christmas Carol Megaways
Christmas Carol Megaways is a 6×8 video slot themed after Chares Dicken’s Christmas classic, a Christmas Carol. This game features all the characters you’d expect, including Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim, the three ghosts (past, present and future) and Scrooge (who is also the Wild symbol).
On every spin, 2 – 7 symbols land on each main vertical reel and 4 appear on the top single horizontal reel. During each spin, the number of ways to win changes based on the symbols that land, with a chance to hit 200,704 ways to win.
The game has two main features:
- A Tumble Feature – After each win, the symbols a part of the winning combo explode allowing for existing symbols from above to drop into play, potentially resulting in more wins.
- A Free Spins Feature – Land 4 or more scatter symbols (Scrooge’s gold pocket watch) anywhere on the reels, and you’ll trigger the Christmas Carol Megaways Free Spins round. At the beginning of the round, you can pick 1 of 4 options (depending on how many scatters you landed). I’ve included a screenshot of an example of the different options below when landing 4 scatters, which I captured from the game demo.
One cool thing to note about the free spins feature is that spins can be retriggered by landing 3 scatter symbols and there is no limit to the number of free spins you can retrigger.
My Christmas Carol Megaways experience
As soon as the game loads, it takes you right into 19th century London’s snow-filled streets (with falling snow and flickering lamplight). The music has a magical-festive vibe and the graphics are colourful and cartoonish without being goofy.
For the most part, I bet the lowest possible amount when I played Christmas Carol Megaways because I wanted to play it for as long as I could knowing that it’s a high volatility slot. The lowest I could bet per round was $0.20. The highest I ever bet per round was $0.80.
My favourite element of the game is its Tumble Feature, which I triggered multiple times. It was cool watching the winning symbols shatter like glass while keeping my fingers crossed that the symbols that landed in their empty spaces would result in another win. I think the most consecutive wins I scored via this feature was 3.
Christmas Carol Megaways features I triggered
Okay, so, full disclosure, beyond the Tumble Feature, I didn’t trigger the free spins feature, and I couldn’t buy it, so that was kind of a bust…but that’s the way it goes when you play high volatility slots. You need to play loooooots of rounds to trigger the free spins feature, and my budget limit couldn’t accommodate that by the time I got around to playing this game. C’est la vie!
What do I like most about Christmas Carol Megaways?
- It’s themed after a Christmas Carol, one of my favourite Christmas stories
- The Tumble feature
- It has excellent graphics and a fun soundtrack
- Very festive
- The chance to trigger a Free Spins feature that lets you pick 1 of 4 rounds
- Up to 200,704 ways to win
What do I like the least?
- It’s a high volatility game. I’m not typically a fan of these for the simple reason being that to trigger special features in the game you usually need to play hundreds of spins.
What I thought of the other four casino games I played
Invading Vegas Las Christmas – It was cute. It’s pretty much what you would expect if you mix Christmas in Vegas with an alien invasion LOL!The game is light-hearted and fun, and I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed playing it more than I thought I would. I triggered the Lock On Re-Spin a couple of times, and got a Walking Wild with it once. This was pretty neat, and I scored a nice little win from it to boot. All in all, it’s a surprisingly festive game that left me with the odd desire to watch Mars Attacks hahaha!
Fiona’s Christmas Fortune – This one was okay. It lacked a little magic for me. That said, I’ll be entirely honest, I only played a few rounds until I found I was entirely board with it. This is one of those slots that I find has a lot going on, but at the same time isn’t really doing much at all for me personally in terms of entertainment (if that makes any sense!). Mostly, it just felt like it was sucking my bankroll dry. Sorry, Fiona, you can keep your fortune.
Christmas Santa – This was a cute game. In fact, I liked the graphics of this game the best of all the slots I played. They were very simple, but called to mind old school animation from old-timey Christmas TV specials (you know like the didn’t-age-well-but-it’s-still-a-classic-your-parents-can’t-help-watching-each-Christmas Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer kind?) In an odd way, the layout of the slot also sort of reminded me of an Advent calendar too (had some serious chocolate craving playing it). As for the actual gameplay, I didn’t win much or trigger to much, but it was fun to play regardless and definitely put me in a festive mood.
Crabbin’ for Christmas – Just like Invading Vegas Las Christmas, this game is a pretty much what you see is what you get in terms of its theme…you know, if you mixed fishing with a Christmas stereotype. All in all, it’s a standard fishing-theme Blueprint game. So, if you’ve played Fishin’ Frenzy for instance, it’s the same sort thing with similar cartoon graphics, except this time the sea critters are wearing Santa hats LOL! For me, these games don’t have much of a wow-factor on the whole, but I got a few good wins out of it, even though I failed to trigger the free spins during my play session.
Mia’s 5 Star Rating for Christmas Carol Megaways
I give Christmas Carol Megaways 4 stars for:
- Being themed after one of my favourite Christmas stories
- The Tumble feature
- A fun Free Spins feature that lets you pick 1 of 4 rounds (even though I didn’t trigger it LOL!)
- Nice graphics and soundtrack
- Up to 200,704 ways to win
Essentially, if you like Christmas Carol themed stuff and you like Christmas-themed slots or Megaways slots (and don’t care about reskinned slots), this is a fun one to play.
Have you played Christmas Carol Megaways? What would you rate it? Also, did you have a favourite Christmas-themed slot this year?
Taking a bit of a play and blog break
Now that the holidays are here, I’m taking a chill break to spend some time with my hubby, our pets, and my family and friends. So, if you don’t see anything new from me for a while, don’t fret. I’ll be back.😉
I hope you have a safe, happy and healthy holidays (in whatever way you like to enjoy them!) and wish you all the best in the New Year! 🎉
I can’t believe 2024 is almost here. 😮 Catch ya later in January.
Until next time, good luck and have fun.
Mia 👩💻
*I am not affiliated with PlayOJO or Pragmatic Play. All opinions about Christmas Carol Megaways are my own and are not intended to provide advice of any kind. If you choose to play this game, or any of the games that I mentioned in this post, remember that my experience won’t be the same as yours. Play at your own discretion and please keep it fun and play responsibly.
**All links and images in this post are for informational purposes only.
