A Winters Tale Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

A Winter’s Tale Review

Blue Guru Games, founded in 2021, is new to the world of iGaming, and A Winter’s Tale slot is its first foray into the niche of winter festive games. It’s not a typical Christmas slot though, utilizing elements of Norse folklore and mythology, plus the features present in this title work in a somewhat different and unique way.

Celebrating the traditional holiday of Yuletide, A Winter’s Tale slot has a wonderful heartwarming atmosphere. The 5x4 reel setup with 20 win lines is set in a backdrop of some Nordic village covered in snow, with a cozy house sitting on the right. To the left of the grid, you can spot the little Tomte, helper of the Scandinavian Santa Claus, dragging a sleigh full of Christmas presents. A pretty charming scenery indeed.

As we head over to the stats, we see it is where A Winter’s Tale sags. Medium-high volatile, the game comes with RTP ranges, where 95.15% is the highest value, and the other options are 94%, 92%, and 90%, all far below average. The max win is also disappointing, being capped at 1,556.4x the bet.

You need to land at least 3 matching symbols adjacently on the reels starting from the leftmost to score a payout. Luckily, winning combos should occur quite often, approx in 1 out of 3 spins according to a 31.8% hit rate. Classic A-J royals make up the lower symbols, paying 2x - 5x the stake for five instances on a line. The premiums include baubles, Christmas trees, and goats, worth 10x - 30x the bet for combinations of five. The little Tomte dudes are Wilds, which substitute for any other regular symbols in winning combos.

A Winter’s Tale Slot Features

Scatter symbols are the most desired in A Winter’s Tale slot, being the key to activating all in-game features, including respins, free spins, and a bonus game. When a Scatter lands on the reels, it gets collected and added to the bonus meter. It also triggers a Respin, and the collection process continues until no more Scatter symbols appear.

If at least 5 are collected, the Gift Unwrapping bonus game is awarded. As the name implies, you get to unwrap presents here, and the number of prizes is equal to the number of Scatter symbols collected, up to 12. Each gift can randomly award cash prizes, multipliers that are applied to these cash wins, or free spins.

If 1, 2, or 3 gifts reveal a free games prize, players receive 5, 7, or 9 Free Spins respectively. During the bonus, all Wild symbols turn sticky, locking in a position after they land for the remainder of the feature. However, retriggers are not possible.

If you want to skip the less exciting part, you can opt in to trigger the Gift Unwrapping bonus game immediately via the Buy Feature. For the cost of 50x the stake, Respins with at least 5 prizes are awarded.

Review Summary

While A Winter’s Tale may seem extremely charming on the outside, it’s not all rosy on the inside. Well, the features are quite entertaining, but the math leaves much to be desired. Anyway, if the figures don’t bother you, a pleasing gaming experience is guaranteed.

Pros

• Lovely visuals
• Bonus game with random prizes
• Sticky Wild Free Spins

Cons

• Dreadful RTP ranges
• Poor max win