Secret Sauna

Secret Sauna: Slot Overview

Software provider Slotmill has designed a game that matches the colder end of the year, which might not be a strictly Xmas slot, but does contain a humorous nod to jolly ol' Saint Nick. Rather, Secret Sauna tells the story of two brothers and their yearly Christmas sauna tradition, told through a cluster pays slot that cranks up the anticipation and steam by marking positions on the grid to later drop wilds onto, or even wild multipliers if you're lucky. Slotmill has a strong affinity with cluster pays-driven slots, with games like Dead Man's Crew and Coin Quest 2 already in the bag, and Secret Sauna continues the studio's expansion into this area with offbeat humour and a main wild-reveal feature.

Everyone might love Christmas, well maybe not the Grinches amongst us, but it's nice when a casino game maker does something different with the theme. There's a time for presents under a decorated tree, a comfy seat next to a roaring fire, and Santa sneaking down the chimney to deliver goods from his workshop. But Secret Sauna doesn't do that. Instead, Santa literally crash-lands his sleigh at the beginning of the game, and players find themselves somewhere icy cold. At least, they do in the base game. The bonus round moves into the sauna, and what a cosy place it is indeed, complete with a pink flamingo, disco ball, and a rubber duck wearing a Viking helmet. Whatever the phase, Secret Sauna has a bit of fun, shunning the Xmas clichés to exude a cockle-warming Northern Hemisphere-styled experience.

The gaming grid possesses dimensions of 7x7, creating wins when 5 or more matching symbols are connected vertically and horizontally. The winning symbols vanish from view, and symbols drop down, filling the screen for more chances to win. The lads might be kicking back in a sauna, but this is a highly volatile cluster pays slot, with two RTPs topping out at 96.04%. Players can stake $/€0.20 to $/€100 and may do so at great velocity when using Burst Mode.

Secret Sauna drops nine pay symbols onto its grid. They are blueberries, gooseberries, cranberries, blackberries, helmets, flasks, sausages, boots, and reindeer. A cluster of 5 matching symbols in size pays 0.2x to 1x the bet, and a cluster of 20+ pays 5x to 50x the bet. Wilds substitute all symbols on the paytable.

Secret Sauna: Slot Features

Secret Sauna's bag of gifts contains Wild Hotspots, free spins, super free spins, Fast Track feature buys and the Xtra-Bet.

Wild Hotspots

Wild symbols that are part of a win leave a Wild Hotspot in their position. At the end of an avalanche sequence, all Wild Hotspots turn into wild symbols, starting new avalanches.

Free Spins & Super Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters triggers 6, 8, or 10 free spins, respectively. Each wild that is part of a win leaves a Wild Hotspot in its position, which stays there till the end of the round. Wild symbols landing on a Wild Hotspot add a multiplier mark that increases by 1 for each wild landing on the Wild Hotspot. At the end of the bonus, all Wild Hotspots turn into wilds, and Wild Hotspots with a multiplier transfer the multiplier to the wild symbol in their position. Multipliers are multiplicative.

Super free spins are triggered if one of the 3-5 scatter symbols is a super scatter. During super free spins, at least 2 wilds will land on every spin.

Fast Track & Xtra-Bet

The Fast Track is where players can buy features. Guaranteeing a spin triggering Wild Hotspots costs 10x the bet, the bonus round costs 100x, or the super bonus can be bought for 400x. Switch on the Xtra-Bet and the stake increases by 50% to increase the chance of getting free spins by 2.9x.

Secret Sauna: Slot Verdict

Secret Sauna is an entertaining addition to Slotmill's growing collection of cluster paying slots, bringing together an unusual 'Christmas' setting and a Wild Hotspots mechanic which gives the game suspense. It may not be the most festive experience players have ever had, but that theme tweak helps it stand out. The contrast between the icy opening scene and the warm, colourful sauna bonus round adds depth to the game's personality, while the brothers' annual tradition provides an amusing backdrop for the action.

On the mechanical side, the Wild Hotspots feature has something of a Christmas ring to it, in that you wait while it loads the reels with hotspots, never quite knowing what is going to happen until the very, very end when the reveal occurs. The anticipation is there in the base game, during avalanche sequences, but far more so in free spins, as the round ticks over and positions are highlighted with hotspots. Will it be a final spin bonanza, will it be a dud? Like opening your stocking on Christmas Day, you just never know what's going to come tumbling out. In this way, Secret Sauna brought to mind Relax Gaming's Wild Chapo, which did a similar thing, adding wilds, wilds with multipliers to bomb highlighted squares on the final free spin. Like Chapo, Secret Sauna is able to build up the tension quite well before pulling everything together at the last moment, or not.

Away from the reveal attraction, Secret Sauna has a few other things going for it, such as the super free spins mode, where at least two wilds land on every spin, and the overall pleasant vibe. With a max win of 10,000x to play for, payouts can potentially be substantial, making Secret Sauna a solid cluster pays slot. It might not be a stuffed stocking with a ton of features, but what it's got is able to trigger emotional responses when its sauna hits just the right amount of steamy heat, making it an entertaining package that brings a little festive warmth to the cluster pays genre.