Xmas Drop — Game Details

The Santa is the easy half and the Gift is the game

An expanding wild is the most ordinary tool a slot has, and Hacksaw Gaming's Christmas release does not pretend otherwise. Its one real variation is to hold the multiplier back. A Wild Santa stretches down its reel as a wild, and it earns a value from 2× to 200× only if that stretch passes through a Wild Gift. My reading of the maths is that Xmas Drop is a two-stage gate, and most of what sits on top of it, the persistent reels and two of the three FeatureSpins modes, supplies the first stage. The Gift crossing that turns a Santa into money stays a matter of chance. Where the game gives that crossing time to happen, it is good. Where it only adds Santas, or gives the crossing ten spins and no memory, it is ordinary.

I start with the geometry, because it decides a Santa's worth before any multiplier exists. On a five-row reel, a Santa landing on the top row covers all five cells and has four cells below it where a Gift can sit. One landing on the fourth row covers two cells and has a single candidate below it. One landing on the bottom row has no room to expand, stays a single wild and crosses nothing. The same symbol carries very different prospects depending on where it drops, and a Santa with no Gift in its path pays as a plain wild in the base game and in both bonus rounds alike.

Adding the multipliers keeps 12,500× a real target

When several multiplied Santas join one win, their values are added before the total applies. Because only one Santa can occupy a reel, a single win can include at most five of them, and I calculate the highest combined Santa multiplier as 5 × 200× = 1,000×. Had the values multiplied instead, two 200× Santas alone would have made a 40,000× factor, and the cap would have been a formality rather than a target.

Set against the 12,500× maximum win, that ceiling tells me what the cap actually asks for. Under five Santas at 200× each, a win worth 12.5× the stake before the multiplier reaches it. Under a single 200× Santa, the underlying win has to be worth 62.5× the stake. Under a single 2× Santa, it would need 6,250×. One high Gift on one reel needs a large underlying win to get there. Several Santas crossing high Gifts on the same win bring the cap closer than one does, and that becomes more plausible the more Santas a spin carries, and nothing above 12,500× is paid however far the multiplied lines would have gone.

Night Before Xmas is a warm-up for the better round

Three FS scatters in the base game open Night Before Xmas with 10 free spins. The round raises the chance of landing both Santas and Gifts, so it is the round built to help the second stage as well as the first. It lets none of that stay. Each spin needs a fresh Santa, landing with room below, to fall through a fresh Gift, and a retrigger of three FS symbols adds only 4 spins to try again.

Its best rule is the exit. Four FS symbols upgrade the round to Santa Claus Is Coming To Town after the current spin, and if fewer than 10 spins remain the counter is set to 10. An upgrade therefore never leaves fewer than 10 spins on the counter. In a round that has not been retriggered, a four-scatter hit on the last free spin hands over the same 10 spins as one on the first. I read that as the round's real value: a second route into the persistent version, with raised Gift odds on the spins before it.

Ten spins is too short for persistent reels to finish the job

I read Santa Claus Is Coming To Town as the place where the design pays. A Wild Santa landing on a reel activates it, and that reel supplies a Wild Santa on every remaining free spin. The clock sets the value of each activation. From a base-game trigger with no retriggers, a reel activated on the first spin supplies 9 more Santas, one activated on the eighth supplies 2, and one activated on the last supplies none. If all five reels activated on the opening spin, the round would hand out 45 guaranteed Santas, and each 4-spin retrigger adds up to 20 more across five active reels.

I take that arithmetic both ways. Early activations turn the round into up to five reels of repeated attempts at a Gift crossing, and five active reels is the one state in the game where all five reels are guaranteed a Santa on every spin, which is what the 1,000× combined ceiling needs. Late activations are worth little, and a 10-spin start leaves little time to collect early ones. The guarantee is also a Santa and not a multiplier. An activated reel still needs its Santa to land with room below and meet a Gift before it contributes more than a wild.

The Wild Santas FeatureSpins buy the easy half

Where the operator and jurisdiction allow the feature menu, it offers three FeatureSpins modes and a Bonus Buy. BonusHunt FeatureSpins raises the chance of triggering either bonus by 5×. Two Wild Santas and Three Wild Santas FeatureSpins guarantee at least two or three Santas on every paid spin. Bonus Buy opens either named bonus directly.

I judge these options by what they buy, because a price can make any of them good or bad value. What no price changes is which stage of the mechanic each option pays for. The two Santa modes buy stage one on every paid spin, and at least three Santas is the density a Santa Claus Is Coming To Town round reaches with three reels active, paid for one spin at a time and forgotten after it. Their guarantee covers Santas and not Gifts, so a paid spin can carry three Santas and have every one of them act as a plain wild. BonusHunt and Bonus Buy put the money into the rounds instead. Between the two bonuses, Santa Claus Is Coming To Town is the one whose rules reward what the game is built around. A bought Night Before Xmas buys raised Gift odds with nothing carried from one spin to the next.

A competent game held back by a short frame and a low floor

I put more weight on the return settings than the theme invites. The four builds are 96.22%, 94.27%, 92.32% and 88.02%. The first three step down by 1.95 points each, and the fourth drops a further 4.30. In house-edge terms that is 3.78% at the top against 11.98% at the bottom, more than three times the built-in cost for the same grid, the same Santas and the same Gifts. The rules screen is the place to check which build is running, and the 88.02% version is the one to avoid.

Xmas Drop suits a player who wants big results to come from a legible event, a Santa falling through a Gift, and who is content with medium volatility of 3 out of 5 and short bonus rounds. A player who judges a bonus by how long it lasts will find two 10-spin rounds with 4-spin retriggers thin, and one who wants a bought Santa to arrive with its multiplier attached will find the Santa modes sell only half the event. I find one good idea in the game and one round that makes the idea pay. The frame around that round is too short, and the lowest build is too expensive, for it to rise above competent.