Christmas Carol Megaways Slot Review

07/12/2021 | Categories: Pragmatic Play Slots | Published by: Joe | Last updated: 05/01/2024

The jolliest time on the calendar is rolling around, and slot providers are ready to release their batch of Christmas-themed spinners onto the Web. Each year, their offer in early winter gets wealthier and more impressive. Thus, there are many holiday titles to choose from for reel-spinning fun. Yet, we decided to focus on Christmas Carol Megaways from Pragmatic Play, released on November 15th, 2020. Now, you may be thinking, why are we looking at a game from last year instead of a new one? Well, currently, this literature-inspired romp is most connecting with players as everyone starts to get into the holiday spirit. Pragmatic’s Christmas Carol Megaways is trending around the top thirty right now. We assume that it will likely keep such a position until we enter the New Year. It has achieved this feat twice now, so maybe its destiny is to remain an X-mas classic.

Theme & Design

Charles Dickens is one of the most famous writers of all time and a rare example of an author that enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and after it. A Christmas Carol is one of his best-known works, a novella published in 1843, illustrated by John Leech. It tells the story of a bitter miser who continuously makes excuses for his uncaring nature until he gets visited by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. It is a tale that has been the subject of many film and TV adaptations. Its title character, Ebenezer Scrooge, has gotten played by actors like George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart, Bill Murray, Jim Carrey, and many others.

Visually, Pragmatic Play does not do anything new here. It sticks to a Victorian-era feel, with a character design that looks super similar to the one commonly featured in Betsoft products. As is par the course for this Malta-based developer, Christmas Carol is vibrant with colors, and it boasts its usual painterly graphics. The reels here spin in the middle of a London street, inside a stone frame with ice all over it. Light posts and the falling snow illuminate the empty backdrop in the night as magical Christmas-like music plays. All in all, there is nothing wrong with the presentation here. Again, it may be just us, but we got a heavy Betsoft vibe from this slot.

The button configuration is the regular Pragmatic one we always yap about at length. The spin button and bet-adjuster are on the right side of the screen, and everything else is on the left, presented in a transparent panel.

Specs & Gameplay

As its name suggests, this game utilizes BigTime Gaming’s Megaways engine. Wins here get awarded when three or more identical symbols land on adjacent reels, left to right. Christmas Carol uses a max grid layout of 6×8, meaning its first and last reel can carry up to seven symbols, and its middle ones up to eight. The number of possible ways to win here is 200,704. The game also utilizes the tumble/avalanche/cascading mechanic. So, winning symbols disappear, and new ones get to fall in their place.

The default RTP of Christmas Carol is 95.59%. Yet, it can go up to 96.58% and down to 94.69%, depending on your chosen operator. The variance is high, and the bet sizes range from $0.2 to $100. The most you can hope to win in this game is a reward worth x20,000, which is excellent.

The low-paying symbols of this slot are A-10 royals, and hitting six-of-a-kind from this batch will yield a prize that is either x1 or 1.5. The high-paying tokens of this game are its five characters. These are the three ghosts, Bob Crachett, Ebenezer Scrooge’s underpaid clerk, and Tiny Tim, Crachett’s sick son. Six identical tokens from this batch produce wins from x1.5 to x50, with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come being the most valuable symbol from this group.

Scrooge is the Wild, substituting all other symbols except for the golden compass, which is the Christmas Carol Scatter.

Bonus Features

As is usually the case with most Pragmatic slots, they are not looking to reinvent the wheel. Thus, there isn’t a wealth of bonus features in this game. Landing four or more Scatters on a spin provides players entry into the Free Spins round, where each tumble win gets multiplied by the current win multiplier. You do not instantly dive into this round, as before it starts, you get presented with four choices that feature varying spins and variance. These have a different number of free spins and a specific starting multiplier. The most complimentary reel rotations you can get in this mode are twenty-three with six landed Scatters. Landing three Scatters inside this round activates five more free spins. There is no limit to the number of times players can retrigger this mode. Note that during this feature, special reels are in play.

A Christmas Carol also offers an Ante Bet. When active, the chances to enter the Free Spins bonus round double.