Fat Santa

Item: Fat Santa
Rating: 3
Author: Iryna

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1	Reels	5
2.	Paylines	50
3.	Progressive	No
4.	Maximum coins	50
5.	Jackpot	500
6.	Maximum jackpot in coins	500
7.	Multiplier	No

8.	Scatter symbol	No
9.	Free Spins	Yes
10.	Betting range	from $0.25 up to $25
11.	Coin Bet Range	from $0.01 up to $1
12.	Coins per line	1
13.	Bonus Game	Yes
14.	Wild symbol	Yes
15.	Payout percent	96.45

Push Gaming has kept a special Christmas surprise up their sleeves. They call it Fat Santa and it has a distinct difference to the original. On top of the random feature in the base game and the free spins round…

...they have included a “Feature Buy” option for the very first time in one of their games.

For 80x the bet, you can now trigger instantly the free spins bonus round.

No doubt, that will please the impatient in the slot playing community.

However, it also pushes the Fat Santa online slot into high variance territory.

Theme

Fat Santa is Push Gaming's release and it builds on the success of Fat Rabbit. The lush green landscape has been replaced with a snowy backdrop, and instead of carrots, you will be looking out for pies.

Those of you who have played Fat Rabbit know what it's all about.

This is a medium to high variance game that is all about the bonus, which by the way can be frustratingly hard to trigger.

However, when the rabbit finally catches the carrot, or in this case, when Santa gets his hands on the pie, you can look forward to an intense feature-packed with massive potential.

Betting Options

Fat Santa is a 5-reel, 5-row non-progressive slot with 50 pay lines. You can bet between 0.25 to 25 which is considerably lower than the 100 max bet on Fat Rabbit.

Other than that…

...both games share the same setup regarding the value of the symbols, pay lines, reel set as well as the 96.45% RTP.

You will be pleased to know that the game is available on any device, including desktop computers, thanks to the HTML5 format.

A quick look at the paytable reveals that it's identical to Fat Rabbit aside from the actual characters obviously.

The low-value symbols are cheery Xmas baubles, in 2 shades of green, orange and red. The premium symbols consist of a Xmas present box, a snowman, a weird-looking reindeer creature and a little elf who is the highest paying symbol at 20x for five on a payline.

There are two Wilds in the game.

First is the Fat Santa Wild, which also pays out 20x for five in a row, as well as replacing all other symbols

AND

Fat Santa grows in size in the free spins round as he consumes pies.

Second is the Wild Pie symbol which substitutes for all others bar the Fat Santa wild. The pie also key in the features explained below.

Special Features

As the symbols appear fully stacked on the reels there is potential for some decent wins in the main game, especially with the help of the Sleigh feature that randomly comes into play now and then.

When activated…

...Santa will shoot across the screen with his flying reindeers while throwing wilds at the reels. It rarely results in any notable wins so don't expect too much from it.

While the option to buy bonus features has been around long before Big Time Gaming started making use of it, it was them who brought it into the mainstream and unequivocally set the trend.

As we have seen in Yggdrasil's game Dark Vortex, for example, others have recently started to do the same thing.

Fat Santa will be Push Gaming's first online slot with a Buy-A-Bonus option and like so…

...you will be taken directly to the free spins feature for the cost of 80x the stake.

OF COURSE

you can also trigger the free spins game the conventional way by landing a Santa symbol along with one or more Wild Christmas Pie symbols.

Starting off with 5 free spins…

...the objective is for Santa to find and eat as many pies as possible. For every group of 5 pie wilds collected, the Santa wild symbol will increase in size.

Starting off as a 1x1 symbol, Santa can grow as large as 5x5 to cover the whole reel set. Furthermore, each increase in size brings with it additional free spins.

Our Take

Seeing how challenging it can be to trigger the bonus in Fat Rabbit, adding a Buy-A-Bonus option does make some sense now that it has become more accepted and normalized.

Initially, we thought Fat Santa was much more volatile than its sibling Fat Rabbit because of the considerably lower max bet but turns out it's less volatile.

The same goes for the max win potential it seems. Either way, this game is all about the bonus where there is potential for massive wins should you activate the 5x5 Santa Wild in particular.

by Iryna Seredynska