Christmas Multihops

Christmas Multihops: Slot Overview

Red Tiger's bud Max Win Gaming has gotten into a festive mood, designing Christmas Multihops, an online slot based off its prior release, Jelly Multihops which was a unique game full of alien jelly-like entities set in an alien jelly-like universe. Christmas Multihops is much more down to earth, so to speak, and offers a thoroughly Xmas experience. Most of the features, pretty much all of them, have returned the same as they were before, but Max Win Gaming has tuned different parts of Christmas Multihops. Has this resulted in a brand new experience, or more or less the same old thing?

To get into the Christmas spirit, players are pulled into a snowy dream world to take part in the festivities. It might be the North Pole, perhaps, where all of the on-screen buildings are used to house elves as well as Mr and Mrs Christmas. Or, it could be a quaint village in the Northern Hemisphere that gets a lot of snow on or around the special day. Wherever it may be, it looks like the sort of neat and cosy place where log fires are warming hearths and lots of other traditional activities are taking place. A long way from the 3D graphiced world of Jelly Multihops, that's for sure.

Some of the stats have come out differently, too. This is a positive in terms of RTP, which is now 96.28%, a few pips higher than before, which is nice, while volatility remains at the higher end of the spectrum. Bet selection starts from 20 c per spin and now goes up to $/€20 at most, larger than Jelly Multihops, but winning potential has decreased to keep exposure the same.

One thing tying the two slots together is a 7x7 game grid sitting in the middle of the screen, creating wins with the help of a scatter-paying mechanism. Basically, when at least 10 of the same pay symbols are in view anywhere, they create a winning combination. Eagle-eyed readers may recall that at least 13 were needed in Jelly Multihops. There are more pay symbols this time, though, swinging the pendulum back in the other direction. These are 3 types of candy cane symbols, a snowman, stocking, rocking horse, gingerbread man, drum, tree, trains, and a gift. Hitting a 10-11 of a kind scatter win awards 0.2 to 10 times the bet, up to a maximum of 3 to 50 times the bet for a 14+ sized scatter win.

Christmas Multihops: Slot Features

Reaching into the gift bag, Christmas Multihops yanks out a Multiplier Grid, Random Wild, free spins and a chance to buy the free spins round.

Multiplier Grid

The Multiplier Grid is active during Random Wild and free spins features. Below the symbols, a grid of numbers appears. Starting values on the grid look to be 2 on the outer ring, moving inwards to 3, then 5, then 10 on the centre position.

Random Wild

The Random Wild feature may activate randomly in the base game. A wild symbol appears on the grid, multiplying all winnings by the progressive multiplier value it displays. The wild gets its value from the position on the Multiplier Grid it appears on. The wild is not removed when used in a win. Instead, the wild jumps to a new position after being part of a win, adding the new Multiplier Grid value to its own.

Free Spins

Hitting 4 scatter symbols in the base game triggers the free spins bonus round, where 10 free spins are awarded. During this phase of the game, the Random Wild feature is triggered before each free spin, but the multiplier value on the wild resets at the end of the spin.

Buy Feature

For 100x times the bet, players can buy the free spins round. The return value when buying doing so is 96.5%.

Christmas Multihops: Slot Verdict

When Jelly Multihops was released, scatter pay slots were on the up and up. By now, they're firmly entrenched in the mainstream and reviewing another one of them is old hat. Gates of Olympus spin-offs abound, as well as do a ton of other choices from other studios. Still, when paired with the right features, they can still supply a surprise or two. One thing about scatter pay slots is that wild symbols aren't always a super common addition. You can see why. If pay symbols are able to award wins from any position, then a wild symbol probably makes the mathematics a tad harder to calculate. Presumably. If so, then it makes a roaming, rising multiplier wild a relatively brave incorporation on the part of Max Win Gaming's technical team to fit in.

Hints of this are dropped at random points in the base game, but having the Random Wild feature trigger on each free spin is where the magic may potentially be worked. It might have been more magical if the roaming multiplier value persisted till the end of the round, yet this is probably just wishful thinking as it might have made the maths even trickier to pull off without getting silly. As it is, the features in Christmas Multihops can technically achieve wins of up to a calculated max multiplier of 5,000x the bet. For the record, this is half of Jelly Multihops' 10,000x the bet max win, which feels a little anti-Christmas? Fortunately for gamblers looking to get into the season, the rest of the game is very Christmassy.

Other tweaks include the extra 2 free spins when the bonus round starts, extra pay symbols on the board crowding the place up, but smaller cluster sizes required for triggering payouts. Rearranging deck chairs rather than overhauling the rig? Maybe, yet for a scatter-paying Christmas slot, there aren't a whole lot of alternatives.