Santa’s Wild Ride Slots

Santa's-Wild-RideSanta’s Wild Ride takes a different approach to the Santa Clause topic than you might be used to. Instead of giving you a jolly Santa which rides in a sleigh, you get a jolly Santa which rides a motorcycle, drinks beer and eats all the Christmas cookies that you would expect him to enjoy. It’s a modern take on Santa, but one which is highly enjoyable thanks to the quality of the design, plus it has all the right features as well, including some new ones.

The modern version of Santa’s story, it offers 243 ways to win on 5 reels, so it does away with the paylines. Free spins with optional wild features, a free gift bonus, scatter symbols and a wild with a random multiplier, these are all great features that are offered in Santa’s Wild Ride. With a large number of ways to win generally comes a low top payout, and it’s the case here as well, as you can win up to $200.

Features of Santa’s Wild Ride

The design isn’t the only thing that’s modern about this slot. You have ways to win which replace paylines, you have wild symbols with random multipliers, scatter symbols and free spins which allow you to choose one of the three types of features (stacked wilds, expanding wilds or trailing wilds).

You’re getting 243 ways to win from Santa’s Wild Ride. These allow you to create a combo by having matching symbols (and wilds) on reels which go from left to right. They don’t have to be in fixed positions in order to be part of some payline, they just need to be on the right reels.

As it happens in many other games, the Logo of the game is used to represent one of the important symbols, in this case the wild. You’re going to get paid whenever the Logo forms a combination, and it’s going to be easy enough to do since ways to win are employed. While working as a wild, you can of course expect it to take the place of any other symbol you need, if that gets you a new combo. Since it’s a slot with ways to win, the wild has to appear on the reel where you’re missing a matching symbol, in order for it to participate in that new combo. When it is used as a wild, it also applies a random multiplier to the win, which varies between 2x and 4x.

The Motorcycle Keys are shown in the scatter symbol, the one that doesn’t have to appear in a certain place in order to give you a reward. You’re going to get a prize of up to 50x the triggering bet when 3 to 5 of these symbols are present, no matter where they show up on the reels.

Free Games Feature

The free spins are very interesting, mostly because you get to choose one of three features to accompany you as you use them. You get 25 spins for free, whenever you have between 3 and 5 scattered Bike Keys present.

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Next, you are asked to pick one of the three wild features, to take advantage of during the free spins. The Stacked Wild is first, with these symbols appearing on all the reels and improving your odds of forming combinations. The Expanding Wild option is next, and it will of course take over an entire reel when it is triggered. The last one is called Trailing Wilds, where the wild slides down the reels, creating a trail of such symbols in its wake.

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Free Gift Bonus

The final feature of Santa’s Wild Ride, it gets triggered whenever you have the gift symbols on the 2nd and the 4th reels.

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Betting options and jackpots

You wager between 30 and 150 coins in the game, the betting options using 30 lines for the purpose of wagering. Each line gets up to 5 coins, with denominations going from $0.01 to $0.05. The line wager goes only up to $0.25, so the total bet is limited as well, to just $7.50.

A 5 wild combo rewards you with a 800x jackpot, which means 4,000 coins, or $200. It’s not a lot of money, but this is a cheap slot which offers 243 ways to win, so you will make money often enough with its help.

Design and symbols

I loved the design of Santa’s Wild Ride, despite it not being a true classic Christmas experience. It has bikers, winter scenery, Santa’s cookies, but with milk being replaced by a mug of beer. It’s definitely not your typical Santa Clause, but that’s not such a bad thing in this case. I’m sure plenty of adults are looking for a different Christmas slot to play, other than the usual reindeer and elf based games.

Santa's-Wild-Ride-paytable

Symbols: Logo (800x, wild), Bike Keys (50x bet, scatter), Santa (200x), Santa’s Girl (175x), Santa Helper (150x), Bike (125x), North Pole Sign (100x), Funnel Cake (80x), Sandwich (80x), Beer (80x), Cupcakes (80x) and Cookies (80x).

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Is It Worth Playing?

It’s not your typical Santa themed slot, but that’s a plus in its case, since it offers you cool graphics and a lot of excellent features. The prizes are not as great, but expect to get paid rather often.

The Santa’s Wild Ride slot machine is offered through the Microgaming platform, so if you want to play it for real or just to practice, look out for casinos that use it.