Slot of the Week: Aloha! Christmas

After a big build-up, Christmas is finally upon us and if you’re feeling just a tad overwhelmed by it all, our Slot of the Week, Aloha! Christmas, could be just what you need for a change of scenery without missing out on all the celebrations!

This Hawaiian beach/Christmas mashup slot promises to swap chilly for chilled as you hit the beach and spin the 6×6 reel set for clusters of island life symbols, with random respins and free spins maxing out your potential for big wins!

In Short:

• Aloha! Christmas is a 6×6 cluster pays online slot by NetEnt
• It is available to play at 9 New Jersey online casinos including Golden Nugget, SugarHouse, Unibet Casino and Pala Casino
• Features of this slot include random respins and free spins with up to 7x wins
• The maximum payout of a single cluster in Aloha! Christmas is 250x your bet

The Basics

Aloha! Christmas is a cluster pays style slot with a 6×6 grid layout that was launched back in December 2020 by NetEnt. This iteration of the game is a festive take on the original Aloha! Cluster Pays, which appeared on the scene back in 2016 with a colorful Hawaiian theme. This time around, it’s Christmas, but not as we know it!

Like its predecessor, Aloha! Christmas has abandoned the standard set payline approach entirely, opting instead for clusters of nine or more adjacent symbols to trigger wins, with various multiplier wilds further boosting those payouts. This is the perfect seasonal slot if you’re getting a bit fed up with frosty toes and fancy a trip to a warm, sunny beach instead, if only virtually!

First Impressions

The name Aloha! Christmas hints at the slot’s theme, which is a crunchy amalgamation of tropical Hawaiian beach and Christmas time. The backdrop features beautiful beige sands, turquoise blue seas, palm trees, and well-stocked beach bars on a gorgeously sunny day. Scattered around are festive decorations such as fairy lights, gift boxes, and Santa hats.

To the right of the reels you’ll see the comical wooden Tiki character with a wreath round his neck and a hot on his head. Every so often he’ll whistle a brief tune or let out a contented sigh as one might do while relaxing on the beach. He’ll also let out impressed oohs and aahs each time you win, with bigger wins causing the wooden guy to do the Hula! Score a really big win and the little Tiki dude will quickly don shades to protect against the dazzling rays of your new-found wealth celebration!

A Hawaiian-themed slot wouldn’t be complete without a fitting soundtrack and to emphasize the mashup the score is a mix of traditional Polynesian music with a festive edge that gets decidedly more jingly each time you spin the reels.

Symbols

A variety of colorful symbols occupy the reels of this slot, with the most valuable being the three different Tiki heads in red, green, and blue. These symbols appear as two stacked together in the main game, but during the features you’ll find them as smaller versions that take up just one space on the reels.

The lower-paying symbols consist of a pineapple, a coconut, a scallop shell, and a pink flower.

You’ll also find mystery boxes on the reels. These can bust open to reveal symbols for potential clusters and maybe even a multiplier wild of 2x to 7x for even bigger payouts.

The free spins stamp/postcard symbol featuring a very tanned-looking Santa chilling on the beach is the key to the free spins round in this slot, which we’ll detail in the next section.

During your free spins, you’ll be looking out for the cute Santa hat-topped yellow starfish for reasons we’ll explain shortly!

Aloha! Christmas Features

This slot has two main features that make gameplay even more exciting: the Sticky Win Re-Spins and the Free Spins. Let’s take a closer look at each of them to see how they enhance your experience.

Sticky Win Re-Spins

At any point after a win in the main game, the Sticky Win Re-Spins feature may trigger at random. What happens is the symbols involved in the winning cluster will be held in place and each symbol position on the remaining reels will spin individually. Each one that stops on the same symbol will be held in place and another respin will be triggered. The goal here is to accumulate as many of those matching symbols as you can.

In addition, the total number of symbols you collect will determine the win multiplier at the end, as indicated by the progress meter to the left of the reels. This can result in your win being multiplied by up to seven!

Free Spins

The free spins feature is triggered by finding three or more free spins scatter symbols anywhere on the reels at once. Land four, five, or six symbols and you’ll also get a bet multiplier payout of 10x, 25x, or 50x, respectively.

Upon triggering the feature you’ll get to choose between the Tiki Bar for 10 free spins with 2x, 3x, and 4x multipliers and the Tiki Bar Max for 6 free spins with 4x, 5x, and 7x multipliers.

During your free spins, any starfish symbols that appear will be collected. For every two of them that you find, you’ll get another two free spins and one set of low-paying symbols will be omitted from the reels for a better shot at bigger wins!

Aloha! Christmas Payouts

So what can you expect to win playing Aloha! Christmas? The payouts of this slot depend on how many symbols you’ve landed in a cluster, the value of those symbols, and how much your bet per spin amount is.

Here’s a breakdown of the payouts of each of the game’s symbols:

	Red Tiki	Green Tiki	Blue Tiki	Pineapple/Coconut/Scallop/Flower
22+x	250x bet	90x bet	70x bet	30x bet
21x	210x bet	75x bet	55x bet	25x bet
20x	180x bet	60x bet	47.5x bet	20x bet
19x	150x bet	50x bet	40x bet	17.5x bet
18x	120x bet	40x bet	32.5x bet	15x bet
17x	90x bet	30x bet	26x bet	12.5x bet
16x	65x bet	25x bet	21x bet	10x bet
15x	50x bet	20x bet	16x bet	7x bet
14x	35x bet	15x bet	12x bet	5x bet
13x	20x bet	11x bet	9x bet	3x bet
12x	10x bet	7x bet	6x bet	2x bet
11x	7.5x bet	4.5x bet	4x bet	1.5x bet
10x	5x bet	3x bet	2.5x bet	1x bet
9x	3x bet	2x bet	1.5x bet	0.5x bet

As you can see, the most you can win from a cluster is 250x your bet. With the bet values going right up to $200, that’s a maximum base game payout of $50,000!

Remember that those payouts can climb even higher thanks to the respins and free spins features.

Aloha! Christmas RTP and Volatility

How do these payouts compare to those of other slots? The best way to make such a comparison is using the industry standard measurements of Return to Player (RTP) and Volatility (or Variance).

The RTP of a game is defined as the percentage of played funds that is paid out to players over time. Think of it as the reverse of the house edge, which is the cut the casino keeps. The RTP of Aloha! Christmas is stated by NetEnt as 96%, which is bang on the industry average. That means this slot is a pretty attractive game to play in terms of payouts over time.

Volatility is the balance of small, frequent wins versus larger, less frequent wins and where on the scale the payouts of a slot fall. Low volatility slots will offer payouts that tend to be pretty stable on the scale, whereas the payouts of high volatility slots will vary wildly in both size and frequency. Aloha! Christmas has a volatility rating of low to medium, meaning the payouts tend to be on the lower, more frequent side, but you’ll still get the occasional large win. That makes this slot appealing to play for those who want a longer, more enjoyable experience.

Hula Your Way To Festive Wins!

Aloha! Christmas is a very bright, colorful, and vibrant slot whose combination of Hawaiian beach life and Christmas festivities actually works without coming off as tacky. It’s a nice change of pace for those who are a bit sick of the Christmas bling and want to celebrate the season without drowning in it. And with the chance of winning up to $50,000 in the base game, that’s a whole lot of celebrating you could end up doing!

The randomly triggered Sticky Win Re-Spins feature will have you on the edge of your seat after every win, and with good reason as it could markedly increase your final payout without costing you extra. The Free Spins feature brings its own interesting twist in the reduction of the lower-paying symbols just for collecting starfish, again boosting your winnings and the chances of those being of greater value.

Keep an eye and an ear on that comical Tiki guy to the right of the reels as his amusing animations and audible outbursts vary with your wins and feature triggers.

You’ll find Aloha! Christmas at several New Jersey online casinos including Golden Nugget, SugarHouse, Unibet Casino and Pala Casino.

Ready to Hula for some Christmas cheer? Read our in-depth reviews of the top New Jersey online casinos via the links above, then sign up at the one that best meets your needs. Claim the site’s welcome bonus then open Aloha! Christmas and play for those festive beachside wins!