Every year there seems to be a plethora of new christmas-themed games from the major pokie manufacturers, so it’s no surprise to see Booming Games getting in on the action. That said, it’s actually the middle of January now and the festive season has truly been and gone by this point!
Santas Kiss isn’t quite as pretty as other Booming Games pokies I have tried recently and whilst the animation is very smooth and runs at a high frame rate, the graphics themselves look very rough and could certainly have used a little extra work, or perhaps a better artist!
On the other hand, this is a ten line game – a category I often enjoy – and the paytable looks to be fairly generous upon first glance, so perhaps this is a game that proves presentation isn’t everything when it comes to pokies.
About The Developer
Booming Games first appeared in 2014 but has been working hard to increase their profile of late, particularly in the emerging Bitcoin casino market where they are making a name for themselves as one of the major players.
The company has produced more than fifty games so far including many with 3D and Anime style graphics, both of which are popular in the rapidly growing Asian marketplace.
Putting so much focus on what are effectively niche areas of the market is an an interesting business plan from this Isle of Man based developer, and it will be fascinating to see if it pays off for them over the next year.
The company is clearly betting that those niches will grow significantly in the near future and I think they might be right, particularly when it comes to Bitcoin-based casinos.
How To Play
When first loading Santas Kiss the game is presented with an overlay which shows you where all of the various buttons and controls are located. This is a nice touch, particularly for newcomers to Booming Games machines, as all of the buttons use icons to designate their function rather than textual labels.
The reels are arranged in a standard five-by-three layout, and there are ten fixed pay lines active each time you play a spin. Unusually for a ten line game you must bet at least 0.30 currency units per spin as the minimum bet per line is set at 0.03.
That’s probably fine for the majority of players, but I’m unsure why the developer would choose to disallow low rollers from playing their preferred small bets if they wish to.
The user interface is a tad unusual as it feels as if it was designed primarily for mouse-based control, yet swiping left or right on the screen takes you to the paytable or rules respectively just like a touchscreen game. It feels as if Booming Games haven’t quite worked out the best way to create a unified interface just yet.
Special Features
The main feature is a typical free spins based bonus round which is triggered by hitting three or more scatters anywhere on the reels.
During free spins all wins are doubled, which is really great considering the payouts are already reasonably generous during the base game. Even better, it is possible to retrigger additional free spins indefinitely, and retriggers seemed to occur a little more frequently than in other games.
A small additional feature is the “interacting symbols” mode. The rules make it sound like there are multiple ways to trigger this, but I only saw it happen when the male and female character symbols landed adjacent to one another. When this occurs, the characters will kiss and award a small bonus of a few times your stake.
Payouts
Games that use fewer pay lines often shine in the payouts department, and that certainly feels true with Santa’s Kiss.
The top wild symbol pays out 500x your stake for a full line of five-of-a-kind, or twice as much during the free spins bonus round. That’s a really tasty prize for a simple line win and makes it very exciting when wilds begin to arrange themselves on a pay line as the reels stop.
The scatter symbols are also very generous, with 5x, 50x and 200x your stake paid out for three, four or five respectively. In fact, all the way down the paytable it seems that the wins on offer are larger than what I have become used to recently.
The maximum win from a single spin is difficult to calculate but a full line of wilds during free spins would net you 1,000x your stake, so with the likely addition of a few other winning lines I’d say that 1,250x or so should be possible. That’s not super high variance, but actually feels just right to me for this game.
Summary
I feel as if 2016 was a great year for christmas-themed pokies, and this one seems to be another definite winner. I’d be more than happy to play this game all year round, and feel it is a great alternative to the same old nine/ten line games I play every weekend.
There’s nothing particularly unique or innovative about the game but the excellent paytable makes it fun and exciting to play, and that’s really all you need from an online pokie machine.
Play The Best Free Pokies Online
