Xmas Spark

Christmas might be the time for giving, sharing, caring, being generous and kind, but when it comes to online gambling, it's also the time for clones and reskins. Thanks to Pragmatic Play, slot enthusiasts get another one in the form of Xmas Spark, which happens to be a clone of Candy Blitz, and which means a return of a scatter paying slot with a special multiplier reel, free spins and a bonus buy. For Xmas Spark, though, brace your eyes for loads of Christmas references rather than candy ones.

Pragmatic Play has ripped the sweety environment out of Candy Blitz and replaced it with a wintery landscape. Is it the North Pole? Bah, let's pretend it is even if it's not, so hopefully, you're in the mood for a lot of snow, decorated trees, and showers of gifts, not to mention quaint wee buildings where Santa and his elven helpers reside as well as make toys for the good boys and girls of the world. Like Candy Blitz, Xmas Spark has picked a common slot theme and has not done much unique with the audiovisuals to celebrate the occasion.

Like before, Xmas Spark is a scatter paying slot played on a 6-reel, 5-row grid matrix. Wins are created when 8 or more identical pay symbols land in view in any position on the grid. Just to be clear, winning symbols do not have to be connected to each other. The math model is a highly volatile one, pushing out an RTP of 96.08% when betting 20 c to $/€240 per paid spin or 96.02% when buying the free spins bonus round.

The tumble feature blasts winning symbols from the gaming grid after they have formed a win. Any empty spaces this causes are filled by symbols dropping down from the top. Tumbles continue firing in this way until no new win appears. Candies have been scrubbed from the pay table, replaced by diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades as the low pays, then a train, a teddy bear, Rudolf, an elf, and Santa as the high pays. Hitting a scatter win containing 8 matching symbols triggers a payout of 0.25 to 1.5 times the bet, while the most valuable scatter wins have 12+ symbols and are worth 0.75 to 50 times the bet. At no time will wild symbols appear in Xmas Spark to help pull wins together.

Xmas Spark: Slot Features

All of Candy Blitz's features have been brought over, which means a repeat performance of the multiplier reel, free spins, and buy free spins option.

Multiplier Reel

Beside the grid's main reels is a special multiplier reel. On each spin, 5 random multiplier symbols drop onto the multiplier reel with possible values of x1-x6, x8, x10, x12, x15, x20, x25, x50, x100, x250, or x500. All wins are multiplied by the multiplier shown in the bottom position of the multiplier reel. After a tumble, the multipliers on the reel also tumble down one position.

Free Spins

In the base game, players win 10, 12, or 14 free spins when 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols land, respectively. One thing that is different in free spins is the minimum multiplier is x2 rather than x1. Aside from this alteration, free spins function more or less the same as the base game. The round does get an extension, however, when hitting 4, 5, or 6 scatters to win an extra 5, 8, or 10 free spins.

Buy Free Spins

For the cost of 100 times the bet, players can buy the free spins round, guaranteeing 4, 5, or 6 scatters land to trigger the feature.

Xmas Spark: Slot Verdict

Well, ho ho ho, Xmas Spark went about as well as it could. Not kicking the game around, but Candy Blitz is still warm, as it was released a matter of months before this one was, so the lingering taste of its sugary goodness was still fresh in the mouth. So to speak. However, proving that there is always room for just one more Christmas slot apparently (or 100 more, look out), Xmas Spark is with us for better or for worse.

Better, presumably, for players with an appetite for a Christmas-themed scatter paying slot. Xmas Spark is not the only game that might fit the bill in this instance, though. Competitor Max Win Gaming dropped Christmas Multihops, a scatter paying Xmas game not long ago, as well, but there aren't a huge number of slots which mix scatter pays with the holiday season. So, okay. Reason enough to justify Xmas Spark's existence, perhaps? It's a game that successfully manages to fulfil the brief it's been given - it's got scatter wins, sizable multiplier boosts for the lucky, and plenty of cheer. One final bright spot is the shimmering, shining star sitting on top of Xmas Spark's tree in the form of max winning potential equating to 10,000 times the bet.

There you have it; Xmas Spark is, in a nutshell, a Xmas slot that delivers wins via a scatter paying mechanism. As a clone with this particular outer skin, Xmas Spark has almost zilch in the way of originality, but it accomplishes the job it was tasked by its maker to carry out.