Ding Dong Christmas Bells

Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells: Slot Overview

Time for some dinging and donging folks as we get Xmassy with Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom in the seasonal slot Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells. That is not just a snappy title, either. Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells celebrates the humble bell like few other slots have ever done, and bell ringing is the key to gaining access to the game's bonus round. If it sounds odd already, that's kind of a good tee-up because Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells is an unusual game. Hey, some may love its spirit, others may be horrified by how twee the whole thing is. Join us if you'd care to find out which side of the argument you may be on.

It was a little hard to say exactly where Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells may be set. It's either at the North Pole, where Santa and the Elves work and play, or it's somewhere further south, somewhere equally snowy around the end of the year when the days get shorter and the temperatures cooler. Wherever we are, it's somewhere extraordinarily quaint, some might say corny, what with those five cheerful bells lining the top of the reels, ringing a tune when the high pay symbol associated with them hits. Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells is like stumbling into an Xmas pop-up shop that opens a few weeks before the day for people to stock up on ornaments or decorations to spread cheer through the house. The sort of shop consumers love to lose themselves in or do their darndest to avoid.

Beneath the five swinging bells is Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells' 5-reel, 3-row gaming area, 10 paylines is utilized for evaluating winning combinations. It's a highly volatile slot; Reel Kingdom has given the math model a 5 out of 5 rating in this regard, while the default RTP remains at 96.05% no matter how you play. The three methods are betting 10 c to $/€250 per spin, buying free spins, or activating the ante bet. The ante bet ups the stake by 50% to provide extra bell symbols on the reels.

Bell symbols are Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells higher value symbols, and there are five of them in total. They are coloured green, bluey white, red, pink, and golden, and each is associated with one of the character bells above the reels. Beneath the bell symbols in value are 9-A candy caned card royals. Hitting a line of 5 card ranks awards 4 to 16 times the bet, while a 5 premium symbol win awards 30 to 200 times the bet. The base game does not have wild symbols, but trigger free spins, and they are injected into the round.

Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells: Slot Features

As mentioned, each of the five high pay bell symbols is linked to one of the bells near the top of the screen. Every time a bell pay symbol hits, it sends musical notes to hit the respective bell up top. Randomly, when this occurs, free spins may be triggered.

Free Spins

Free spins trigger with 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 of the bell pay symbols transformed into wild symbols. This depends on how many of the bells were randomly activated when the feature was triggered. During free spins, these wilds substitute for all symbols and are worth up to 30x the bet for a 5 OAK hit. In free spins, each wild has an x2 multiplier that applies to the win of all lines the wilds are part of. If more wilds are part of the same win, the multipliers are added to each other.

During the round, bells that have not been activated at the start may randomly activate when touched by musical notes. When this happens, the pay symbol transforms into a wild for the rest of the feature, and +5 free spins are awarded. If more than one bell is activated on the same spin, only 5 extra free spins are awarded.

Buy Mystery Bell

The free spins round can be bought for 100 times the bet. When bought, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 bell symbols can hit randomly on the triggering spin.

Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells: Slot Verdict

It was a tad hard to take Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells seriously at first, sorry. The whole premise was so darned nice it felt a little silly. Ringing bells shaped like Xmas decorations and maybe triggering free spins where some more bell ringing can take place alongside premium to wild transformations where applicable? Few but the individually creative minds of Reel Kingdom would come up with such a concept, causing Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells to sit in the mind alongside wacky slots like Pizza! Pizza? Pizza!, Star Pirates Code, or Cash Elevator. Out there hit or miss games that are hallmarks of Reel Kingdom's out there hit or miss design style.

The inner critic was silenced to a degree after the first 1,000x win occurred, though. Okay, so the combination of premiums to wilds and multipliers is capable of doing some neat tricks. It probably helps that some of the 5 OAK wins have solid values. However, that one sizable result was more than half of Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells max winning potential of 2,100x the bet. An unexciting figure in this day and age, but it is the same amount as is up for grabs in Big Bass Bonanza, and we all know how well that particular fishing slot (and some of the many subsequent releases which have followed) has been received by the gambling community.

Therefore, a question mark hangs over Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells. On the one hand, it seemed a little too silly to take seriously. All those bells and musical notes flying about the place, nah, no thanks. But Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells can perform, so who knows? Its unusual presentation and light-hearted charm might fling it right into the hearts of Reel Kingdom's fanbase. At the least, maybe we should be grateful Ding! Dong! Christmas Bells isn't another Christmas version of a Big Bass game.