Generous Santa Slot Machine
Ahh, it’s that time of year again. Carols are playing in every store, the smell of delicious holiday food is in the air, Starbucks is selling its Pumpkin Spice Latte, and Christmas is seemingly upon us. The folks at CTXM/GamesOS Software must have felt some holiday cheer when they created this Christmas-themed video slots game, as it does a fabulous job of tying in with the season.
The design of this game is actually very appealing, as it looks as though it was designed to look like a Christmas card with a slight Dr. Seuss influence. CTXM/GamesOS usually produces great video slots games, but the design of this one looks unique from all the rest of its offerings. So the question is, is the gameplay as good as the presentation?
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
We think we covered a fair amount of this subject in the intro, but we’ll say it again, this game looks damn good. Even those who have zero interest in gambling will still want to try this out just based on the design alone. Generous Santa almost has a hand-drawn look to it rather than the bright and garish vector graphics often utilised by other video slots titles.
The backdrop takes place in an idyllic little town in what is presumably the (fictitious) North Pole. Various icons and symbols relevant to Christmas appear in the reels, including angels, elves, stockings and so forth. An obvious loop of “Jingle Bells” plays in the game’s background, but thankfully there is an option to turn it off. Sadly, many will want to do this as it certainly gets grating fast. Winning a spin plays cute animations from the reels, which is a nice touch.
Making A List And Checking It Twice
The graphical design looks great, but the actual function of the game is set up much like a typical video slots game. On the bottom you can change the size of coins you can bet (it ranges from 0.2 to 2) and you can choose to activate up to 20 pay lines. You have the option of betting the max amount and you can also choose an auto-spin that goes five or ten times in a row. Simpy click the “spin” button when you are ready to play. The maximum bet is only $40 though, which is rather low for a game of this type.
You can switch to full screen or windowed mode by clicking the button in the bottom-right corner, while options to turn off sound effects and music are in the bottom-right. When it comes to controls you won’t find anything out of the norm within Generous Santa, but that certainly works in the game’s favour.
Plenty To Unwrap
It’s a good thing that this game doesn’t dole out prizes based on who’s been naughty or nice, given that you’re gambling and all. There is neither a progressive jackpot nor a score multiplier in place, but the game has quite an interesting feature for netting big payouts, measured by the clock on the bottom-right.
While the game lacks a bonus game in the traditional sense, you can accumulate further winnings by getting wilds. Collecting a wild symbol gives you a present, which stays on the tree to the left. You can collect up to seven at a time. Collecting the cuckoo scatter symbols makes the clock tick up one more minute, and when you collect 60 in total you are awarded all of the presents on the tree, which give you free spins.
The free spins also throw in an extra wild symbol, increasing the chances that you will win something. This acts as a good incentive to spin the reels enough to make it to that 60-cuckoo mark.
You can also win a base 5,000 coin jackpot if you line up five Generous Santa symbols in an active pay line, which can go up to 10,000 if you bet with $2 coins. Given that the maximum bet is a rather low $40, this serves as the game’s only method of securing a really large payout.
All You Want For Christmas
This game is probably one of the best looking in CTXM/GamesOS Software’s portfolio of video slots titles. That being said, the gameplay itself is a bit sparse. The large jackpot gives high-rollers the potential for big winnings, but the lack of a bonus game, low betting cap, and relatively low maximum number of potential free spins are somewhat disappointing. That said, this game is definitely worth taking a look at, if nothing else for its rich visual design.
