Santa vs Rudolf

Netent,has just cloned their old slot ‘The Invisible Man’ and turned it into a Christmas slot where Santa and Rudolf clashing eachother on the reels Hm,i wonder why they are fighting about!

Santa vs Rudolph is a 5 reel and 20 payline slot from Netent that was released around Christmas time last year. I was actually looking forward to this game as many of us do play theme slots around festivity time and more importantly, by even seeing the trailer video for this game, I noticed that from technical point of view, it was exactly like the Invisible Man, only Christmas themed. I do like the Invisible Man and I think it has decent payout potential, so I was definitely curious.

One thing I have to start by saying is that, although it's almost like the Invisible Man, due to the fact that the game is completely inspired by Christmas theme, I haven't played it after the festive period. I usually don't really like festive slots, but this one I enjoyed for many reasons. First of all, the design is really vibrant and fun. But secondly and most importantly- it can pay well. Whenever a wild symbol lands (either Santa or Rudolph), you will get respins and the wilds will move across the screen until they've made their way across the reels and in my experience, it's possible to get several of them in a spin and then you can get decent winning combinations. I've had several wins of 30x-50x bet on base game which is a good balance saver. Also, there's a free spins bonus round which is triggered when Santa and Rudolph land on the same row and meet, which visually looks like they're about to get into a fight which is a funny twist. 

I do like the free spins round as it's certainly entertaining. You start with 10 spins and you have two meters on each side of the screen- whenever one of the wilds land, you get the same respins as on base game, but this time you have the opportunity to fill one of the meters with the retrospective wilds for extra feature. I've also had many retriggers on this game when the Rudolph and Santa clash, for extra 5 spins. The Santa meter grants 3 extra spins with wilds added while the Rudolph gives a pick me bonus. I of course prefer the Santa one as I believe it has more potential, but for the most part I've got the Rudolph one, but even then I've walked away with 50x bet wins multiple times.

Overall this is a very nice festive slot and this will be a game I'll be playing around Christmas time. Base game can give decent wins and the bonus round has potential as well, however, with that being said, the game isn't exciting enough and due to the design it's not a game I'd play for most part of the year.

When NetEnt released the game The Invisible man some time back, it became quite popular, but as far as I know, it didn’t become a hit. Now, several years later, there’s a clone of that game just released, playing in the same ways, having the same features, but instead of having the Invisible Man and the Villain as the main characters, there’s Santa and Rudolf instead. Will this game follow in the same footsteps as The Invisible Man? Without thinking deeper or much farther, I would say “yes”.

Firstly, I did not like that Invisible Man game, so I kind of being prejudicial with this cloned game. Why? Simply because the paytable is a very low one, the Santa and Rudolf Wild symbols are both non-paying and do not have a win multiplier, there aren’t any Scatter symbols for additional winning chances, and I also simply don’t like the ‘pick-an-item’ Bonus game. However, whenever Santa collides with Rudolf during the base game play, 10 free spins would be triggered, but are without any win multipliers. Argh! During the free spins play, fill one of the two Meters at the top of the play screen and a corresponding Bonus game would be awarded.

The Rudolf Spins Bonus game awards 3 free spins, each spin getting 5 randomly placed Wild symbols on the reels, and paying both ways, left to right and right to left. The Santa’s Gifts Bonus game awards 3 free spins, each spin getting a ‘pick-an-item’ feature to collect coins or multipliers. Picking a ‘End of Stage’ icon ends that stage and progresses to the next ‘pick-an-item’ stage. At the end of the 3 sets of picks, the coins are then multiplied by the collected Multiplier, which can be 1x, 2x, 3x or 4x. This is the bonus game that I do not like, preferring the usual Rudolf free spins instead.

Not really interested to play this Santa Vs Rudolf game, I gave it two play sessions nonetheless, just to get a better comparison with The Invisible Man’s game. I managed to get only one Free Spins game from each play session, but both paid damn poorly. I couldn’t get any of Santa’s or Rudolf’s Bonus game, but I already knew how they would play, so that didn’t bother me at all. Between the two games, I still think The Invisible Man played and paid slightly better, but I wouldn’t want to play more of any of one of them.