Holiday Spirits

Holiday Spirits Slot Review

A decorated tree fills one edge of a Victorian parlour, a fire glows behind the reels, and a clock face with Roman numerals watches over everything. Holiday Spirits is a three-reel slot where losing a spin is the interesting part: almost everything it has to offer arrives through a near miss, which makes it the rare festive game built on disappointment rather than excess.

Play’n GO built it that way. The grid is 3×3, the RTP runs at 96.29%, volatility sits mid to low, and the most a single spin can return is 1,600x the bet. That’s a modest ceiling next to seasonal stablemates like Wrappin’ Christmas Gold and Christmas Gold Heist. It was never chasing four-digit thrills, though. It’s chasing Ebenezer Scrooge, and it has caught him.

The Base Game and Its Symbols

Wins pay left to right across selected lines, beginning with the left-most reel, and only the highest combination counts on each line. Winnings from multiple lines in one round are added together, and anything won in a feature round is added on top of the payline wins. All winning combinations are paid out at the end of the round. There’s no conventional scatter anywhere in the paytable; the game’s interest comes entirely from its multipliers and stacked symbols.

The wild is a top-hatted man, and he substitutes for every symbol in the game. He’s also the best payer on the reels by some distance. Every symbol can land as a stack, and that matters more than it first appears.

Two matching stacks on a non-winning spin are the door into the game’s feature rounds. All paytable values below are multiples of the total bet, not the line bet.

• Wild (top-hatted man) – three pays 16x the total bet
• Ghost (pink/blue figure) – three pays 4x
• Hooded spirit (purple) – three pays 3x
• Green monster – three pays 2x
• Woman (orange/gold) – three pays 1.4x
• Holly – three pays 1x
• Stocking – three pays 0.8x
• Candy cane – three pays 0.6x
• Snow globe – three pays 0.4x

That’s a flat ladder. The gap between the wild and everything else is enormous, and with a three-reel grid there’s no long combination coming to close it.

The features do that work instead, which makes them the whole game rather than a bonus on the side. A clock multiplier applies to wins at whatever value it’s showing, and Ebenezer’s Gift can double that again while it runs. The maths of the game lives there, not in the symbol values themselves.

Ebenezer’s Clock and Ebenezer’s Gift

Ebenezer’s Clock can trigger on any spin, awarding a multiplier of x2, x3, x4, x5 or x10. The clock face above the reels is where the multiplier lives while it’s active. A multiplier on a three-of-a-kind wild win is where the paytable’s low numbers start to look reasonable.

Ebenezer’s Gift can appear while the clock is active, or during any of the Win Spins rounds. When it does, it doubles the active multiplier. A x5 becomes x10; a x10 becomes x20.

The gift doesn’t have a trigger a player can work towards – it arrives on its own schedule. When it lands alongside the right combination, it’s the difference between a decent win and a memorable one. Because it can also fire inside the feature rounds, no multiplier you’re holding is ever final.

Double Stacks and the Win Spins of Christmas

Double Stacks is the mechanic that ties everything together. On a non-winning spin where two stacks of the same symbol sit on any two reels and a multiplier is active, a Win Spin of Christmas Past, Present or Future begins – and it comes with a guaranteed win.

Which of the three rounds you get depends entirely on the size of the multiplier when the trigger lands. The stacked reels hold in place throughout, so every re-spin is played with the same stacks that opened the round.

Because the wild stacks like every other symbol, two wild stacks are the strongest trigger the game offers, and the spirit symbols stack just as readily as the baubles and candy canes. Any pair of matching stacks will do the job, which keeps the trigger alive on most spins rather than only the decorated ones.

Win Spins of Christmas Future

The entry point is the x2 multiplier alongside Double Stacks. The stacked reels stick in place and a re-spin follows; every non-winning re-spin increments the multiplier through x3, x4, x5 and x10, and a win is guaranteed once x10 is reached. You re-spin until you win, so the round always pays.

Win Spins of Christmas Present

This one arrives when the trigger fires at x3, x4 or x5. It’s the simplest of the three: one re-spin, sticky stacked reels, a guaranteed win, and the multiplier holds at whatever value opened the round. No drama, no ladder – just the payout.

Win Spins of Christmas Past

Triggering at the full x10 multiplier sends you here, and this round runs backwards. Each non-winning re-spin steps the multiplier down through x5, x4, x3 and x2, with a win guaranteed by the time it reaches x2. It’s the mirror of Christmas Future: you start at the top, and the longer it takes, the less it pays.

The guarantee is the clever part. Future rewards patience, Past punishes it, and Present splits the difference – and since the entry multiplier decides which one you’re in, the clock that felt like a random bonus in the base game turns out to be choosing your round for you. Ebenezer’s Gift can still double the multiplier inside any of them.

Every round is played at the same bet as the spin that triggered it, and the bet can’t be changed while a round is running. If a round is interrupted, the game stores its state and picks up from the same point when it’s reopened, so a half-finished Win Spin isn’t lost to a dropped connection.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.8/10

Sitting down to this is like settling into that burgundy armchair by the fire: small, warm, and quietly working on you. The reason to choose it is the near miss – watching two stacks sit there on a losing spin, waiting to see which round the clock picks for you, is more tense than any three-reel game has a right to be.

Its best trick is that no feature ever ends empty-handed. Every Win Spin guarantees a payout, so the whole game runs on anticipation rather than drought, and Christmas Future in particular builds to something worth waiting for. The wins are the weak point: the wild’s 16x is the best the paytable offers before multipliers, and the 1,600x ceiling is modest, so even the good rounds tend to finish politely rather than dramatically.

This suits a December evening and a steady bankroll – anyone after steady small features in a beautiful setting will be at home. Players hunting a big win will want a busier game. The ghosts here are good company, they just don’t hand out fortunes.

Holiday Spirits FAQs

• What is the RTP of Holiday Spirits?

  Holiday Spirits runs at an RTP of 96.29%.
• What does Ebenezer’s Clock do in Holiday Spirits?

  Ebenezer’s Clock can trigger on any spin and awards a multiplier of x2, x3, x4, x5 or x10, which applies to wins while it’s active. It can also lead into the Win Spins rounds.
• How do you trigger the Win Spins of Christmas in Holiday Spirits?

  You need a non-winning spin with an active multiplier and two stacks of the same symbol on any two reels. That combination triggers a Win Spin of Christmas Past, Present or Future with a guaranteed win.
• What is the difference between the three Win Spins rounds?

  The entry multiplier decides which round you get. Triggering at x2 sends you to Christmas Future, where non-winning re-spins raise the multiplier towards a guaranteed x10 win. Triggering at x3, x4 or x5 gives you Christmas Present: one guaranteed win at the same multiplier. Triggering at x10 gives you Christmas Past, where non-winning re-spins lower the multiplier step by step until a win lands at x2.
• Can Ebenezer’s Gift trigger during a Win Spins round?

  Yes. Ebenezer’s Gift can appear during any of the three Win Spins rounds as well as in the base game while the clock is active, and it doubles whatever multiplier is currently running.
• Is Holiday Spirits high volatility?

  No. Holiday Spirits is a mid to low volatility game, with smaller, steadier payouts rather than rare large hits.
• What is the maximum win on Holiday Spirits?

  The maximum win is 1,600x your bet.
• Who makes Holiday Spirits?

  Holiday Spirits is made by Play’n GO. The game’s release date is 5 November 2020.