Deck the Reels: Bragg’s Christmas Slot Games that Jingle All the Way

Christmas is celebrated globally on December 25th and is known for its festive spirit, colorful decorations, and rich and diverse traditions. For many, it is a time to honor meaningful traditions and reflect on themes of peace and goodwill. People exchange gifts, enjoy festive meals, and spend quality time together. The joy of giving and receiving presents brings happiness and strengthens bonds between loved ones. Another important aspect of this popular holiday is the decorations: homes and streets are adorned with lights, Christmas trees, and shiny ornaments. These decorations create a magical and joyful atmosphere that everyone can enjoy.

In short, Christmas is a holiday that combines meaningful traditions, family togetherness, and festive cheer. It is a time to celebrate love, kindness, and the joy of being with those who matter most. Furthermore, it is often celebrated among non-religious people as well, which gives it additional weight and importance.

For this reason, game developers dedicate special attention to Christmas-themed slots and every studio or online casino operator worth their while has a few of them in their game offering. These titles frequently feature certain mechanics that fit the theme especially well, such as mystery symbols, repeat pays, and others that symbolically represent the act of giving and sharing.

To showcase the way they work and entertain, we are taking a look at Christmassy slot titles by Indigo Magic from Bragg Studios, a game studio that developed four engaging slots dedicated to good ol’ Nick and his popular holiday theme.

This punny double-entendre title spreads blessed joy throughout the year and rewards players with generous slot action thanks to one-symbol payouts, stacked wilds and festive jackpot wins.

A normal game session starts with the player selecting the number of paylines they want to play on: five or ten. Regardless of their choice, all player’s wins in the free games phase will be evaluated on double that number: ten or twenty.

The game’s major feature is the free games feature. Start it by landing a wild win (wilds on reel three may appear stacked to help you achieve this): the winning value is recorded and you are awarded five free games. Every time you land a scatter in this phase, the winning value is paid as a repeat-pay win. What’s more: land another wild win to retrigger the feature, add its value to the current repeat-pay value, and benefit this way from increased one-symbol wins.

The game’s additional minor feature is the gift bonus prize, a stand-in for jackpots, if you want, and it only works during the free games phase. You need to land a gift bonus scatter on reel one and another on reel five to receive the sum of values on both scatters. It works as a sort of mystery gift as there is no special build-up to get it, you can win it randomly in one single spin.

Is Santa still not dropping down the chimney? You can give him a helping hand by using the buy bonus option: for 70x your current bet, you will receive a spin with a random wild win that will start the free games phase.

Forget the pickaxe and bring a shovel, as the mining carts from the game title are overflowing with the world's most precious and noble metal. Here’s a title to soothe your gold fever and strike the richest gold vein in the West.

In this title, unlike in Treat Yo’Elf, where it is the wilds that pave the way to the best wins, features are triggered with scatters. The game doesn’t offer jackpots or buy bonus options, but you can choose to play it on 20 or 40 paylines.

First thing, landing one or more scatters fills up the ore carts above the grid and sometimes makes them overflow with gold. The gold then spills onto the grid, resulting in random wilds and multiplier wilds.

However, the main thing about them is the chance that they will randomly trigger the main feature of the game, which is the gold respins. You get three retriggerable respins to try to fill up the grid with gold nuggets and other special symbols for an additional 1000x bet prize.

In this phase, you can land pay nuggets that add their value to all other nuggets you landed, collect nuggets that collect all values from previously landed nuggets, and special Pop N’ Split symbols. These are an original mechanic developed by the Indigo Magic studio that quadruples a random instant cash value. Whenever one of these lands, an animation shows a 2x2 grid with four positions that spin individually to draw four random values. The highest value drawn is then copied onto other values, after which they are all summed up and ready to be collected.

This joyful and festive slot title prominently features Santa Claus and Rudolph the Reindeer and sets the mood for happy holiday celebrations. The main attraction of the game is a feed above the reels showing bonus symbols that will land in the next few spins. Players can strategize with their bets this way and enjoy a sense of power and control over the gameplay, which adds another layer of fun to the game.

In line with the festive theme, the main feature is called the gift box feature. It may occur randomly on any spin in the base game or in free rounds, but normally it is triggered by landing a Rudolph symbol on each outer reel and a Santa’s Sleigh on any inner reel. When that happens, the player is awarded the bonus symbol shown above the reel with the sleigh. Gift box bonus symbols can carry mystery boxes that randomly transform to any other bonus symbol, up to 100 free games (!), instant cash prizes, and one of the three different jackpots. This means that players can hit the jackpot without even entering the free games phase.

Free games too offer tempting chances to get good presents from Santa. No matter how many free games are triggered, players are guaranteed to receive one random bonus symbol from the feed above, while the feed itself now delivers only mystery boxes, cash boxes, and jackpots. To add joy to pleasure, Rudolf the Reindeer may randomly add four to nine wilds to the spin results on inner reels before they stop spinning, and help you this way create bigger and better combos.

Visually an obvious outlier and representing a departure from the usual festive styles and aesthetics, this gothic fairy tale set against the Christmas backdrop takes the idea of the holiday’s inclusiveness even further. The main premise of this Tim Burton-esque title is that creepy creatures and fiendish ghouls celebrate it too, albeit in their own peculiar way. What’s more, the game employs themed symbols and mechanics that fit the holiday very nicely and deliver a terrific and thrilling slot experience.

The main mechanic of this 5x4 game lies in the hot zone, the two middle positions on reel three. The goal is to land a certain symbol there to start the corresponding feature. If you land a wild ghoul girl (designated as Lady Santa) in the zone, she starts randomly upgrading symbols to the next higher tier. Low-paying symbols get upgraded to mid-paying ones, for example, while high-paying ones are turned into wilds or multiplier wilds.

For free games, you need to land the snow globe scatter with the sassy skull in the hot zone. Then you’re presented with a choice of three sets of free games: you can choose between eight, ten, or twelve free games with varying volatilities: a higher free games value means lower wilds, while fewer free games generate higher multiplier values.

Symbol upgrades, however, don’t end with the wild ghoul girl. The free games feature has a collection meter that gets filled with skulls every time an upgrade to wilds or multiplier wilds occurs. When the meter is full, random symbols receive additional upgrades, and if no upgrades are possible, you win extra free games.

As if this was not enough, players can count on two strong side bet options that turn the two main features into true win-making powerhouses. The first option (25% extra on your bet) doubles the chances of landing the wild ghoul girl, while the second option (50% extra on your bet) doubles the chances of winning the free games feature.

As mentioned earlier, Christmas slots tend to have features that fit the festivity best: mystery symbols with random prizes, unexpected feature starts, jackpots you can win in the base game, etc. Their artwork is consistently faithful to the source material and doesn’t digress much from the already established Christmas clichés, be it in the color palette or the choice of symbols’ motives. Despite that, there are alternative takes on this holiday as well, as we can see in the last example above. The greatest diversity, however, is in the broad range of features and mechanics that can be used in combination with this theme to their maximum effect. They may revolve around wilds, scatters, mystery symbols, instant jackpots, repeating payouts, or other game events that can stand in for the main spirit of Christmas, which is giving and sharing with the ones we cherish most. Merry spins, everyone