Santa Express Slot Review 2024
Stakelogic are delivering your hand-written letters to Santa this year, making their way to the North Pole on the Santa Express!
Dear Santa, we’ve been ever so good this year so please could we have a slot filled with exciting Wild Features and a Free Spins round that results in extra special big wins. If it’s not too much to ask, could we also have symbols that pay double and even more wins with Multipliers please?
Stakelogic are back with their very own Christmas-themed slot and just time for the big day! With so many exciting Christmas slots out there, will Santa Express be able to push its way to the top? Let’s play on and find out!
Santa Express Base Game and Features
Santa Express is a 5 reel slot with 20 fixed paylines. Winning combinations are formed when 3 or more of the same symbols land from left to right, starting from the left-most reel.
The minimum bet available here is £/€0.20 (£/€0.40 Super Stake) per spin and the maximum bet available is £/€100 (£/€200 Super Stake) per spin, with plenty of other options in between the two. Santa Express has a theoretical RTP of 96.27% and a max win cap of 20,000x.
In terms of symbols, the highest paying regular symbol here is the Reindeer, followed by the Elf, Hot Chocolate, Gingerbread Man and Bauble. Low-paying symbols are standard Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten.
Santa Express features Cascading Reels. Each time a winning combination forms, all winning symbols will be removed from the reels and new symbols will drop down from above, filling all empty postions. When this happens, the Collapsing Wild Symbols feature will activate.
Collapsing Wild Symbols Feature
Wild and Multiplier Wilds substitute for all other symbols except Scatters. Multiplier Wilds appear as a result of the Collapsing Wild Symbols feature, with a maximum available Multiplier of x10.
Each time a winning combination occurs, the Cascading Reels feature will kick in (as mentioned above). Once this happens, an empty position will be chosen at random for a Wild symbol to land.
Once the Wild symbol is in position, the reels will Cascade. With each consecutive win, the Wild symbol will remain on the reels and an increasing Multiplier will activate, starting from x1 up to a maximum of x10.
Super Stake
Before you begin spinning, you will be given the option to activate the Super Stake bet. Choosing to activate this feature will Double your current bet, but with that comes a certain advantage.
Activating the Super Stake bet will double your chances of triggering the Free Spins round. Your current bet will double but the paytable will remain the same.
Santa Express Free Spins
Landing 3, 4 or 5 Scatters across the reels in any position triggers the Free Spins round, awarding a payout of 2x, 10x and 20x your current bet resperctively.
Once active, 8, 10, 12 or 15 Free Spins will be awarded at random, along with a random Multiplier value of x2, x3, x5 or x10 and 1 random HIgh or Low-paying symbol that will pay double the paytable amount.
During Free Spins, the Collapsing Wild Symbols feature is also in play. Landing 3, 4, 5 or more Scatters during this round will award the following.
- 3 Scatters – Awards 2x your current bet and an additional +5 Free Spins.
- 4 Scatters – Awards 10x your current bet and an additional +8 Free Spins.
- 5+ Scatters – Awards 20x your current bet and an additional +10 Free Spins.
Santa Express Bonus Buy
Those outside the UK will benefit from a Bonus Buy option. Stakelogic has granted players access to 3 Bonus Buy options as follows.
- Normal – Awards between 8 and 15 Free Spins for a total cost of 100x your current bet.
- Deluxe – Awards 15 Free Spins for a total cost of 250x your current bet.
- Random – Awards a 50/50 chance of landing either the Normal or Deluxe options for a total cost of 175x your current bet.
Santa Express: Our Verdict
Santa Express is a pure Christmas game through and through with all of the cheer that you could ask for. It takes you to a jolly winter wonderland with the most picturesque and idealistic graphics, and there’s much more beneath the wrappers too.
The features are as plentiful as the presents with collapsing wild symbols and multipliers to keep you entertained until Free Spins, and once you get to Free Spins you’ll arrive at a feature with ample excitement because of the multipliers and symbols that pay double the amount.
The only thing we’re not hugely merry about is the Super Stake Feature…
It does various things in different games, but the most common use of the feature seems to be to double the chance of Free Spins. The use of it is fine, but it’s the cost that niggles at us a bit. Other providers give similar features at a fraction of the cost, so we’d hope that the Super Stake Feature ups the chances a lot more than they do.
Nethertheless, Santa Express stands out as an all-round great Christmas game with decent features and great potential with 20,000x winning capabilities