Piles of Presents

Theme and Design

Like most Christmas slots, Piles of Presents lays it on thick. And why not? There are some games now that opt for a more humours approach, but not this one. Warm fireplace, stockings hanging, soft-light Christmas tree with baubles and fairy lights, lots of holly and smiling Santas. It’s all there to put you in the festive mood. And of course a chiming tune to keep you company whilst you spin those reels. For symbols, Just For The Win have also gone down the traditional route too with old-skool presents like solider toys and drums.

Meanwhile, atop the reel set sits a gleaming prize wheel that may reveal one of four jackpot prizes if you’re lucky.

RTP and Variance

Piles of Presents has three available RTP settings: 96.17%, 94.16% or 92.06%. Your casino will run the game at one of these settings. To find out which hit the Help link in the top right of the game screen. We verified the RTP at three UK casinos:

• Casumo (independent): 94.16%
• BacanaPlay (Skill on Net): 92.06%
• Dream Vegas (White Hat Gaming): 94.16%
• Spin and Win (Rank Interactive): 94.16%

None of the sites we checked ran the game at its optimum setting.

The variance is very high in Piles of Presents – so this game can be pretty unforgiving for a Christmas slot. There is a lot of potential in the free spins round, particularly with symbol upgrades and multipliers. But be prepared for frustrating times along the way.

Maximum Win

Piles of Presents has a maximum win of 5,000x, available through the Mega Jackpot prize on the Christmas Wheel. This is OK but not great for a high variance game. If you want a Christmas slot with higher maximum win potential then we recommend that you try Wonders of Christmas from NetEnt with a 100,000x top payout.

Symbols and Paytable

Piles of Presents is a straight-forward slot with 5 reels, 3 rows and 20 active paylines. You’ll need to land 3 or more identical symbols across a payline from left to right, starting with the left-most reel, to score a win.

There are 8 basic pay symbols. The low value one are the cards, Jack, Queen, King and Ace valued at from 0.4x for 3 Jacks up to 4x for 5 Aces. Premium symbols are the presents – the drums, train set, solider and teddy bear. These are valued at from 0.8x for 3 drums up to 20x for 5 teddy bears.

You also have a wild which can sub in for all other symbols to complete winlines AND pay out at 1.5x for 3, 7.5x for 4 or 20x for 5.

That’s your basic paytable. You also have scatters and mistletoes that will help unlock the headline features described below.

Features and Gameplay

You can’t help but enjoy the warm, Christmas-y vibes of Piles of Presents. The game trundles along nicely with a few wins helped along by the occasional wild of two whilst you wait for one of the main events to trigger.

It’s the free spins round that brought us the most joy. It’s like a real Christmas morning with lots of modifiers to unwrap revealing all kinds of treats. Just For The Win have done a good job of making this part of the game feel special.

It starts with unlocking the round – land three or more Santas to get 6 free spins. Then you get 3, 4 or 5 picks depending on whether you landed 3, 4 or 5 Santas on the reels. Each pick is s present to unwrap and will reveal one of a series of modifiers.

You might get 3, 4, 5, 6 or 9 free spins; a 1x, 2x or 3x multiplier; a mid-level symbol upgrade to a wild; a low-level symbol upgraded to mid-level; or a low-level symbol upgraded to a wild.

Now, once you’ve unwrapped your gifts, the free spins start. If you’re lucky you’ll have a few upgrades, some nice multiplier action and some extra spins. The round already starts with a 1x multiplier so any extra from the feature pick is just added to this total. And as we found out, you can land more Santa symbols and pick up more features. When 2, 3, 4 or 5 Santas land you go back to the tree with 1, 2, 3 or 4 more picks.

Extra upgrades, more multipliers and more spins just add to your chances of scoring better payouts. And whilst we didn’t experience this ourselves, if you get another pick on the final free spin then it’s guaranteed to be more spins to keep you going.

And after all that, you’ll be given one big payout when you run out of spins or you hit the 5,000x max win cap.

Finally, there is one more gift Santa has up his sleeve for Piles of Presents – a Christmas Wheel with four possible jackpot prizes – 15x, 40x, 250x or 5,000x. This proved an elusive feature to us. To trigger you must collect mistletoe that appears randomly with mid-level symbols on any spin. When collect mistletoe then there is a chance of unlocking the Wheel. But it’s not guaranteed … it feels a bit like a random prize draw for every player who spins on the game.