Holiday Season pokie review

Holiday Season pokie review

Tis’ the season to be jolly – but when it’s not, is Holiday Season worth playing? We find out just how season-specific this pokies game is, and whether it’s worth enjoying a night out with this game, when only a Christmas day feast will cure the following day’s hangover.

United States Where to play Holiday Season pokies online

Where to play Holiday Season pokies online

Holiday Season format

Created by Play’n Go, this real money slots isn’t doused in snow, rather the focus is on the party elements of Christmas, so Australians can very much relate.

auto play on holiday season
Set the number of automatic spins you want to play on Holiday Season.

Holiday Season has 5 reels and 10 paylines set on a backdrop of a starry night covering a brightly decorated street.

Players can alter the size of the coins – from as little as 0.01 to as much as 2.00 – under the reels, which will also change the bet size. There’s a minimum of $0.01 (one coin and one payline activated) and a maximum of $100 available to play on Holiday Season, making it suited to both recreational punters and high rollers. You will also find a Bet Max button under the reels, which will play the maximum bet for the selected coin value. The number of coins are set at five and all pay lines are automatically activated.

AutoPlay is also available, allowing you to set up to 50 rounds to spin automatically. You can customise when you want AutoPlay to stop, for example if Free Spins are won. The automatic spins rely on the bet size which was set when opting in for AutoPlay, so be sure to adjust this first to suit your desired bet size.

Holiday Season symbols and payouts

paytable and symbols of holiday season
Spin three of a kind on an active payline on Holiday Season to win.

The symbols in Holiday Season are meant to capture the good times of the Christmas break, and while some do – some don’t.

When you’re in the game, click the paytable to view the symbols and payouts with the low paying symbols on the third page – you can use the arrows to view. These are the traditional symbols, your usual A-K-Q-J-10, which we aren’t a fan of since they take away from the festive theme. You need at least three of a kind of any of these symbols to receive a payout on an active payline.

Click on the left hand arrow to view the middle and high paying symbols which includes the pudding, the chicken, the clock set at midnight, a lady dressed in a christmas outfit, and a man holding a glass of champagne. You need three of a kind of any of these symbols to receive a payout, and they need to be on an active payline from left to right.

The Wild symbol – the present – is the highest paying symbol with a minimum of three on an active payline scoring you a payout and it also performs the usual function of substituting for all symbols except the Scatter. Additionally, the Wild can appear Stacked for big wins

The Scatter is the champagne bottle with glasses and if you spin at least three on an active payline you will trigger the Wins Spins feature.

Bonus features on Holiday Season

playn go win spins
Win Spins offer guaranteed wins.

The bonus features are quite simple in comparison to what we’re used to seeing in video pokies these days. The Wild does pay out a fair bit due to being stacked and acting as a high paying symbol. The other bonus can be profitable, depending on how long it takes to trigger.

When you spin at least three Scatter symbols, the Win Spins feature is triggered and here you’ll receive five Win Spins, which are free spins where you are guaranteed a win on every spin. You can score up to 20 – simply get the Scatter symbol on the reels during the bonus feature. For every Scatter symbol you land, there’s two additional spins awarded.

Play’n Go has also included the classic gamble feature, where you can attempt to double or quadruple your winnings by picking the colour (red or black) or the suit (Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, or Clubs) of a face-down card. If you win your guess, you can continue to gamble up to five times consecutively.

Audio and graphics

graphics of holiday season
Animated graphics on Holiday Season by Play’n Go.

The graphics in Holiday Season are classic. There’s some 3D elements to the the game – including coins being thrown out on a big win – and each symbol offers its own visually appealing quirk. However, the graphics are nowhere near as three dimensional as say BetSoft’s Slots 3 titles. The theme is clearly trying to capture the celebration side to the Christmas holidays and while it does have a magical essence to it, it’s a bit to simple to represent the hectic festivities of the season.

There’s a soundtrack which is reminiscent of childhood cartoons and sounds, as if it has been produced by an orchestra, and throughout gameplay the addition of intense wind instruments amps gameplay up. The traditional mechanic slots sounds are still included, but you may not notice these. Simply mute via the audio icon in the bottom left hand corner if you’re not a fan of the music.

Our thoughts

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our thoughts of Holiday Season
Holiday Season offers the chance for some big wins, but all up, it’s quite a simple game.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing really special about this pokie. It features a Wild and a Wins Spins feature and while the latter sounds unique it is just a watered down version of a Free Spins feature. Additionally, the Wins Spins bonus took a lot of spins for us to trigger during our testing. While you are guaranteed a win on every spin, you aren’t guaranteed the full 20 free spins you can re-trigger. We managed to get 11 and won just over 2,000 coins.

If you like simplicity, there is the chance to win up to 500,000 coins, which will definitely help out with Christmas shopping. Would we play this title any other time of the year? Probably not.