Aloha! Christmas

Travel to sunny Hawaii for the festive reel season on the slot from NetEnt. Aloha! Christmas Edition is a remake and upgrade of the 2016 original Cluster Pays game. The smiling Tiki welcomes you back with a larger reel set, multiplier wilds, mystery symbols, random Sticky Win Respins and two Tiki Bar Free Spins modes that can lead to wins of up to 2,500 times your bet.

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Slot Details

Aloha! Christmas Edition is a 6×6 slot with Cluster Pays. Wins are awarded for clusters of nine or more matching symbols landing horizontally and/or vertically connected. You can go on a festive holiday on desktop, tablet or mobile from 0.10 to 200 credits per spin. The game has medium volatility with an RTP of 96.00%.

Opening the game will take you back to the Hawaiian beach, although at a slightly different location as the volcano from the original cannot be seen in the background. Instead, we have beach bars decorated for the festive season and packed presents to emphasize the Xmas theme. The Tiki on the side of the game window is making a return, wearing a Santa hat and his usual giant smile. Soothing South-Pacific tunes provide the main audio.

The pay symbols start at the low end with Hawaiian lei flowers, clamshells, coconuts and pineapples, awarding across the board 30x your stake for clusters of 22 or more symbols. They are followed by Tiki masks in blue, green and red colours appearing as single or stacked symbols. Hit 22+ clusters to win 70x to 250x your bet. A postage stamp-style icon with a ukulele-playing Santa on the beach is the scatter while a red icon with a question mark acts as the mystery symbol.

Aloha! Christmas Slot Features

Initially, I thought NetEnt would simply slap a few festive decorations onto the original UI to present Aloha! as their Christmas game. Surprisingly, there is a lot more under the hood than it looks from the outside. They not only added a second free spin mode but also multiplier wilds that will let Aloha! Christmas Edition stand on its own. Let’s take a closer look at how that has impacted the gameplay.

They kept the Mystery Symbols, which can appear in the main game and free spins. They will unveil a common pay symbol except scatters should there be a chance that they become part of a winning combo. A new twist is a chance that one of the mystery symbols can randomly turn into a Multiplier Wild. Possible values are x2, x3, x4, x5 or x7. However, they will multiply only those wins they are part of.

Also returning are the random Sticky Win Respins which can trigger at any time in the base game when you score a win on a spin. All symbols in the combo and all others in view matching the triggering symbol will be locked in place before the reels respin to potentially land more winning symbols. The process is repeated as long as new symbols appear or the entire screen is filled. Wins are evaluated only after the feature has concluded. However, there is again a new twist. Based on the number of symbols in the winning cluster, a Multiplier is applied to the win from the respins – x1 for up to 18, x2 for 19 to 24, x3 for 25 to 30, x5 for 31 to 34 and x7 for 35 to 36 symbols.

Hitting three or more scatters anywhere on the reels will trigger the Tiki Bar Free Spins feature. A coin win of 10x, 25x and 50x your total bet will be awarded for four, five or six scatters respectively. The game will bring up a new screen with two modes for your bonus feature.

• Medium Volatility – Tiki Bar Free Spins: 10 spins are awarded with the mystery multiplier values at x2, x3 or x4.
• High Volatility – Tiki Bar Free Spins MAX: 6 spins are awarded with the mystery multiplier values at x4, x5 or x7.

Starfish symbols are added to the reels for the duration of the bonus round. For every three collected symbols, the game will add +2 free spins and remove one type of low-value symbol from the reels. The starfish symbols will not appear any further once all four low symbols are removed. The free spins cannot be retriggered, thus, the bonus feature will end once you run out of spins.

Final Verdict

Well, this was a pleasant surprise as the changes NetEnt made to the Christmas edition of Aloha actually make it quite an enjoyable slot compared to the original, which did not really gain traction with casino players. The choice of free spins is the main improvement as it allows players to select their preferred feature and volatility. The win potential in a single spin has also increased, now topping out at 1,750 times your bet instead of 1,000x. Merry Xmas!

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