Aloha! Christmas

The Christmas themed online slot games just keep on rolling in, and why not? Most of us live for the festive season, and a few casino games embracing the Christmas cheer is never a bad thing. The latest one to become available to all players at the best casino site in Canada is Aloha! Christmas, developed by the mega studio NetEnt. Instead of glazing the screen with the traditional snowmen and Northern Hemisphere look and feel, this one takes us to the tropics for a Hawaiian Christmas. It also delivers free spins, re-spins and wilds that add multipliers to your wins. Let’s don some hula shirts and take to the reels.

One of the first things you’ll notice about Aloha! Christmas is that there’s no snow. However, more importantly, you’ll also notice that there’s a Cluster Pays mechanic. This means that symbols don’t line up on a traditional payline but rather create winning combinations by falling in clusters. This isn’t the first slot to use Cluster Pays. However, it is the first Christmas themed release to use the mechanic this year. Titles such as Merry Christmas Megaways and Christmas Cash Spins used paylines, but we won’t deny that clusters always do their job in shaking things up. Aloha! Christmas is actually a follow-up to NetEnt’s Aloha! Cluster Pays, and not much is different but for the Christmas objects that have been inserted into various areas.

You’ll see that the grid is a 6x6, which is customary when hosting Cluster Pays. Another aspect of Aloha! Christmas is that it has a medium volatility, which isn’t something you see in many Canadian slots online. One of the benefits of this is that you can bank on landing wins on a more frequent basis to online slots with higher volatility. The only drawback is that the wins aren't as high in value. The highest you'll be able to wager is CA$200.00, which is relatively high, while conservative iGamers can start the wagering as low as 00.20c. The obvious underwhelming aspect of Aloha! Christmas is that the max win amount is only 1,750x your bet, which could be the lowest we’ve seen in some time.

When it comes to Cluster Pays, the symbols usually all look fairly similar. This makes it a little challenging to tell the value of wins on occasion. In saying that, the symbols consist of a flower, a sea shell, a coconut and a pineapple as the lower paying icons, while the ones with higher values are three different tribal masks. The red mask is the highest paying regular symbol in the game when it forms a cluster.

There are two symbols that you'll see falling that are not considered regular. The first is the mystery symbol, being the question mark, while the other is the Free Spins icon.

Let’s first discuss the mystery symbol. When a cluster of these fall they will all turn into the same symbol for a winning cluster. You might find that a multiplier wild icon forms part of that cluster, which means a multiplier of 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x or 7x can be applied to your winning cluster.

Some added value in Aloha! Christmas is when any of the masks or the scatter icon can fall as an expanded icon to present a higher chance of winning. There’s also re-spins that trigger at random after winning clusters.

The headline feature here, however, is the Free Spins game. Landing 3 scatters trigger the spins, and you'll need to choose between 10 Tiki Bar spins or 6 Tiki Bar Max spins. The six spins come with bigger win sizes but obviously fewer spins.

As you can tell, Aloha! Christmas has quite a number of bonus features and bits of added value. It might not carry a Megaways mechanic or something as flashy, but the chances to take in wins through bonus play is very festive indeed. We must say that the low maximum win isn't quite as lively and is a low point when playing. However, this game is definitely making a case for the heat to be turned up this Christmas.