Deck the Halls Slot Review

The festive theme of Deck The Halls can be guessed right from the title, and on the reels of this Microgaming slot machine you’re going to find the symbols that you expect from it. The game is Christmas themed obviously, with the symbols all being related to this holiday, the Christmas tree decorations, the foods and gifts that are specific to this time of the year. Deck The Halls will have a maximum of 30 lines on 5 reels, will include features like the wild, the regular stacked symbols, scatters or free spins with doubled wins. The game’s top rewards reach a value of $20,000.

The full betting range in Deck the Halls is between $0.01 and $75, depending on the number of lines you activated and on the bet per line. The line bet is composed of 1 to 10 coins, which will have individual values ranging from $0.01 to $0.25. You can wager up to $2.50 per line, or up to $75 for all 30 lines. You do get the option to use fewer lines, if you don’t want to cover them all.

The theme is one that pops up at various developers each year, usually sometime in December, just in time for players to discover them when they look for something to play during the upcoming holidays. There is a certain look that developers aim for when they want to create a traditional Christmas themed game, and I think that Microgaming hit the right spot with this slot. The graphics are based on the green of the Christmas tree and on the red of Santa’s suit, these two colors being predominant inside. The quality is very good, and the style of the various symbols is exactly what you expect to see in such a slot or in a commercial going after the traditional values of the holiday. The symbols start you off with bells, with Santa and a logo, then go on to the Christmas tree, the log fire, the stuffed turkey, gifts and tree decorations which consist of stars, reindeer, globes, lights and cones.

One of the regular symbols, the one showing Santa, will be a stacked symbol both during the regular and the free spins. It’s going to either pay you a lot of money by forming multiple combinations due to its stacked nature, or it will show up and will just be in the way in multiple positions. Being a high paying symbol, I don’t expect to see it on multiple reels at the same time very often, so most of the time its stacked nature will just be an inconvenience. Payouts of up to 1,000x are possible from each combo that Santa forms. Next, I’d suggest you take a look at the game logo, with the Deck the Halls words written on it. You have the wild symbol here, the one that can both substitute for a regular symbol, and will also pay the most if it ends up forming its own combo. The substitution ability comes with a multiplier, which means that you double your prizes if a wild symbol helped you with a win. With just wilds arranged on a line, from left to right, you get paid between 10x and 4,000x, for two to five symbols. A wild will not act as a replacement for a scatter symbol. The two golden bells, which you typically see as decorations in Christmas trees, are going to be the ones used as scatters, meaning that if you get enough of them you get paid, no matter where they landed. You will need at least two to get a payout from the slot, of 2x to 100x the wager, or three or more for the 10 free spins. All the wins that you land during free spins are going to be doubled. An added bonus is that the wild symbol appears stacked here, so the odds of forming combinations increase. A combined multiplier of 4x will result from the presence of a wild in a combination, while in free spins mode.

You can hope for a top prize of 4,000x while in the base game, from the wild, with a value of up to $10,000 possible in that case. During free spins, this goes up to $20,000, due to the multiplier that is offered there. You’re going to be playing a game with an average RTP of 95.38%, which is not that high for a slot these days. It’s not a huge difference, being only one percent away from an RTP that I’d consider respectable, but if you want to maximize your chances of making money from your slots, this game might not be the best choice.

Deck the Halls is a slot machine that is designed to be played only a couple of weeks each year, and then be ignored until the next holiday season comes around. It’s not good enough, payout wise, to be played all the time.