Take Santas Shop Slot Review
Under a fat winter moon, snow piles on gingerbread eaves and a candy cane leans against the picket fence of a village that seems wound up and left to tick. Take Santas Shop, from Betsoft, looks like every cosy Christmas slot ever made, but it doesn’t play like one. Its money arrives on a schedule: nine spins of quiet, then one spin that does all the paying. That stubborn commitment to a ten-spin rhythm is the whole game, and it’s rarer in the festive aisle than the tinsel would suggest. It sits alongside Stay Frosty, Take The Kingdom and Sleighin It in the studio’s festive-adjacent rack.
The game runs on a 5×4 grid with 75 fixed paylines and an RTP of 96.08%. Wins pay left to right, with only the highest combination per line counting and coinciding wins on different lines added together. Payouts update dynamically to match whatever bet you’ve selected, so the paytable always reads true to your stake.
What makes it tick is a countdown nobody else runs quite this way. Every tenth spin has the potential to pay differently from the nine before it, and the whole game is arranged around that beat.
The Ornament Bomb Countdown
Every spin in the base game is one tick of a ten-round clock. An ornament sits on screen holding a gold number that falls by one each time you press spin. When it reaches zero, everything the round has built up goes off at once.
Here’s how the pieces fit together. Whenever a Holiday Robber symbol lands, it converts into an Ornament Bomb and stays exactly where it appeared. A robber won’t appear on a position that already holds a bomb, so the board fills up gradually rather than all at once.
When the countdown hits zero, every bomb on the reels detonates at the same moment and becomes a WILD. Wins are calculated only after the whole board has gone up. That’s the point of the exercise: the tenth spin can pay in ways the first nine never could.
Wilds substitute for all symbols except Santa’s Sleigh and the Holiday Robber. Five wilds on a payline pay the same as five Snow Globes, the top symbol in the game. After the detonation spin, the counter resets to ten and all wilds are cleared, so each cycle starts from scratch.
That reset is the mechanic’s real character. Leaving mid-cycle means the bombs you’ve banked count for nothing, so the game quietly rewards staying put through the quiet spins. Autoplay handles the pacing if you’d rather not press spin ten times per cycle.
Two comfort features round out the base game. Turboplay strips out most of the animation for a much faster session, and the bet controls sit directly beneath the reels, with a wide range of bet levels feeding those 75 fixed lines.
What the Symbols Pay
Pays below are multiples of the total bet, with the Snow Globe leading the table and the royals bringing up the rear. The Snow Globe is also the only symbol that pays for a two-symbol match.
- Snow Globe: 0.05x for two, 0.2x for three, 0.6x for four, 3x for five
- Gingerbread Man: three pays 0.15x, four 0.3x, five 1x
- Stocking: 0.15x, 0.25x and 0.9x for three, four and five
- Bells, Horse, Candy Cane, A: 0.1x for three, 0.2x for four, 0.6x for five
- K, Q, J, 10, 9: 0.05x, 0.1x and 0.3x from three to five
Those are modest numbers by any standard, and they explain why the game leans so hard on its wild mechanic. Line wins alone won’t carry a session. The detonation spin, where a cluster of bombs becomes a cluster of wilds across 75 paylines, is where the money is designed to arrive.
Worth keeping in mind: no maximum win figure exists for this game anywhere in its own material. What a full board of wilds on the tenth spin can produce is a question the paytable answers only line by line.
Free Spins with Santa’s Sleigh
The sleigh is a bonus symbol that only appears on the middle three reels. Get one on each of reels two, three and four and 15 free spins are awarded. Every near-miss is a matter of one symbol short rather than a scattering across all five.
The round plays very differently from the base game. The Ornament Bomb Countdown pauses entirely, and free spins don’t advance it. Nothing you build here carries back to the cycle waiting in the base game.
Instead, the round runs with either 5, 7 or 10 wilds scattered anywhere on the reels, awarded at random when it begins. On every spin those wilds pick up and move to new positions, so the board reshuffles itself constantly. There’s no retrigger during the feature, so the 15 spins you start with are the 15 you get.
Buy Feature Bonus
If waiting for the sleigh isn’t your style, the Buy Feature button skips the queue and buys straight into the free spins round, with one twist: you choose how many wilds each spin carries. Every purchase awards the same 15 free spins; the wild count is what you’re paying for.
- Five wilds per spin: 16.20x the bet
- Seven wilds: 30.00x
- The epic ten-wild version: 57.00x
The pricing steps up steeply. Doubling your wild count from five to seven costs nearly double again, and the jump from seven to ten nearly doubles it once more. That tells you where the round’s value sits. Ten roaming wilds on a 5×4 board cover a lot of ground.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.2/10
Playing this is mostly a waiting game, and the waiting is the reason to sit down: nine spins where a robber landing feels like progress, then one spin where the whole village goes up at once. That fixed ten-spin rhythm is the game’s best idea, and it gives the base game a shape most Christmas slots never bother with.
The free spins round is the flashier half, with wilds migrating across the board on every one of its 15 spins. The weakness is what anything actually pays when it lands: 3x for the top five-of-a-kind means even a strong detonation is stitched together from small line wins, and 57x the bet for the ten-wild buy is a lot to stake on that ceiling.
This is one for patient players who like knowing exactly when the payoff is due, and for anyone who wants a Christmas slot with an actual engine under the wrapping. It won’t suit players chasing headline single hits. For those happy to let the snow settle and the bombs stack, it’s a cosy little heist.
Take Santas Shop FAQs
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What is the RTP of Take Santas Shop?
Take Santas Shop runs at an RTP of 96.08%. -
How many paylines does Take Santas Shop have?
The game is played with 75 fixed paylines, with wins paying left to right and only the highest win per line counting. -
How do you trigger free spins in Take Santas Shop?
Three Santa’s Sleigh symbols landing together on the middle reels start the 15-spin round. It plays with 5, 7 or 10 wilds that move to new positions on every spin, and the Ornament Bomb Countdown is paused throughout. -
How do Ornament Bombs work in Take Santas Shop?
Each time a Holiday Robber symbol lands, it converts into an Ornament Bomb and stays in position. A countdown runs from 10 to 0 across spins, and when it hits zero every bomb detonates at once and turns wild. The counter then resets to 10 and all wilds clear on the following spin. -
Can free spins be retriggered in Take Santas Shop?
No, free spins cannot be retriggered during the round, so the 15 spins you start with are all you get. Free spins also don’t advance the Ornament Bomb Counter. -
Can you buy the bonus on Take Santas Shop?
Yes, the Buy Feature buys straight into the free spins round and lets you choose the wild count: 16.20x the bet for 5 wilds, 30.00x for 7 wilds and 57.00x for 10 wilds, each awarding 15 free spins. -
What does the wild substitute for in Take Santas Shop?
Wilds substitute for all symbols except Santa’s Sleigh and the Holiday Robber. Five wilds on a payline pay the same as five Snow Globes, the game’s top symbol. -
When is Take Santas Shop released?
Take Santas Shop’s release date is 19 November 2020. -
Who makes Take Santas Shop?
Take Santas Shop is made by Betsoft.
