18+ Only. Play Responsibly.
The heist acquired a smaller heist.
I already had seven rows of stolen Christmas on screen.
Gift Coins were stuck everywhere.
Red packages.
Blue packages.
Gold values.
A Bonus Gift Coin had been waiting above them behind a locked strip of the grid, visible but unusable, like somebody had hidden the good present on top of the wardrobe.
Then the nineteenth Gift Coin landed.
The seventh row opened.
The waiting Bonus Gift Coin woke up.
The entire 5×7 disappeared.
A 3×3 appeared in its place.
Three respins.
More Gift Coins.
Christmas had put a robbery inside another robbery and wrapped both.
I was deep enough into the session that this felt completely reasonable.
It had started at €1.00 with a snowy village, warm windows, a mountain in the distance and a pile of Christmas presents so large that nobody in town could possibly have been surprised when thieves arrived.
Brumble and Jingles were already nearby.
Finn Merry had gifts.
Brumble and Jingles wanted gifts.
The reels had twenty paylines and three rows to resolve what was clearly becoming a seasonal property dispute.
The first Mystery Presents arrived before either thief did anything useful.
Three wrapped boxes landed.
They opened together.
Candy canes.
All of them.
Another candy cane already sat on reel one.
€3.
Santa had bulk ordered.
A few spins later, four Mystery Presents appeared.
Open.
Christmas trees.
Every box contained the same tree.
That household had either been extremely good all year or misunderstood what “one tree per living room” meant.
€4.80.
Then another present opened into a Wild.
Different wrapping.
Much better contents.
The Wild helped a line of gift sacks for €6.20.
The base game was behaving like Christmas morning in a family where nobody had labelled anything.
Open this.
More candy cane.
Open that.
Tree.
Another box.
Wild.
Somewhere in the wrapping paper, actual money occasionally survived.
Then Brumble appeared.
There were two Wilds on the reels.
One on reel two.
Another on reel four.
Brumble reached Christmas before Finn Merry could do anything about it.
Both Wilds stretched.
Top to bottom.
Two whole columns became Wild.
The three-row grid suddenly had two vertical walls of stolen Christmas.
Gift sacks connected through them.
Trees did too.
€18.40.
Brumble disappeared.
The Wilds shrank back out of existence with the rest of the spin.
He had broken into Christmas, improved the architecture and left.
Jingles introduced a different problem.
One Wild landed.
Jingles arrived.
x10.
The Wild stayed normal size but now carried a number large enough to make the candy canes around it relevant.
A line reached through.
€9.
Later, two Wilds landed together.
Jingles decorated one with x3 and the other with x20.
The symbols around them did almost nothing.
One weak tree line found the x3.
The x20 sat beside a K and a gift sack, dressed for a much better Christmas than the one it received.
The three reels stopped.
Gone.
That x20 had spent its entire life attached to a Wild and still died poor.
Brumble and Jingles finally arrived together several spins later.
Two Wilds were already waiting.
One on reel two.
One on reel five.
Brumble took care of size.
Both stretched through all three rows.
Jingles took care of danger.
x5 on one.
x20 on the other.
Two enormous Wild columns now stood across the Christmas village wearing multipliers.
The reels had stopped looking like a slot and started looking like somebody had erected two illuminated gift towers in the street.
Candy canes reached the first.
Gift sacks crossed both.
A Christmas tree line survived through the centre.
The multipliers caught different routes.
The counter moved.
€12.
€24.
€41.
Stopped at €46.80.
Brumble and Jingles had stolen Christmas so aggressively that the stolen objects had begun paying for themselves.
That was the high point of the base game.
The village cooled afterward.
Mystery Presents opened into As.
Then Ks.
Then four identical Christmas trees that missed the left reel.
A Gift Coin landed.
GO Collect took it.
Another later.
Gone upward.
Third.
Collected.
No Hold’N Grow.
The meter kept eating shiny presents and refusing to open the storeroom.
The balance started dropping.
€15 down.
Then €28.
One Jingles x5 Wild returned €7.50.
Brumble expanded a Wild on another spin and found almost nothing around it.
Mystery Presents opened three identical gift sacks.
No line.
Another Gift Coin disappeared into GO Collect.
Snow continued falling.
Finn Merry remained somewhere in the middle of this trying to recover stolen gifts from two creatures who had now demonstrated a worrying ability to enlarge Wilds and attach x20 to them.
The presents were losing.
So was I.
Around €50 down, the Mystery Presents produced two Gift Coins on the same spin.
Both went into GO Collect.
Still nothing.
A few spins later another Gift Coin landed alone.
The meter took it.
The screen changed.
Hold’N Grow.
There.
Christmas had finally run out of places to hide the stolen presents.
The feature opened on 5×3.
Gift Coins were already waiting from the trigger, joined by a couple more.
Sticky.
Three respins.
First drop:
another Gift Coin.
x3.
It stayed.
Counter back to three.
Next:
blank.
Then another Coin.
x2.
Stayed.
Enough now.
The grid grew.
Fourth row.
5×4.
Christmas had added shelving.
A locked strip above the reels opened and revealed more room for theft.
New Coins could now fall there.
One did immediately.
x5.
Stayed.
Respins reset.
Another Gift Coin arrived below it.
Then nothing.
Then x1.
The pile grew.
The feature reached enough Coins for another row.
5×5.
The village had begun stacking Christmas vertically.
Five rows of gifts.
Every Coin stuck where it landed.
No wrapping paper removed.
No present delivered.
Nobody had learned the central lesson of Christmas storage.
A Mega or Grand could theoretically be sitting inside one of these Gift Coins, but the actual pile was much humbler.
x1.
x2.
x4.
x3.
One Mini.
That one at least had arrived wearing a proper label.
Ten times the bet.
€10.
It stuck near the top.
Another Coin landed.
Reset.
Another.
Reset again.
The grid climbed to 5×6.
Three rows had become six.
At this point there were more floors of stolen presents than the houses behind the reels appeared to possess.
A Bonus Gift Coin landed.
Not in the open part.
Above it.
Locked seventh row.
There it sat.
Visible through the boundary.
A special present placed one shelf higher than Christmas currently allowed me to reach.
The rest of the feature continued underneath it.
Blank.
Blank.
Gift Coin.
x5.
Reset.
The seventh row remained shut.
Another Coin.
x1.
Stayed.
Another blank.
Then a Gift Coin carrying Minor.
€25.
That joined the sticky pile.
Now the present stack had enough value to feel dangerous and enough height to require a ladder.
Still the Bonus Gift Coin waited above.
The count climbed.
One more regular Coin.
Then nothing.
Then another.
The nineteenth arrived near the bottom.
The locked strip opened.
5×7.
The Bonus Gift Coin that had been sitting there finally became part of Christmas.
It triggered immediately.
The whole seven-row tower vanished.
And the smaller heist opened.
3×3.
Three respins.
Gift Coins already in play.
The first new one landed in the corner.
x4.
Stayed.
Reset.
Next spin brought two more.
x2.
x5.
Reset again.
The little 3×3 began filling.
The large seven-storey Christmas theft had paused so nine smaller boxes could conduct their own private theft.
One blank.
Then another Gift Coin.
x10.
That improved the mood of the tiny room considerably.
Another respin.
Nothing.
One remaining.
Gift Coin.
x3.
Reset.
Six of nine positions were occupied now.
Another landed.
x5.
Seven.
The little box was becoming hard to fit Christmas into.
Two blanks followed.
Last respin.
Nothing.
The nested feature closed.
All its Gift Coins were added together.
The Bonus Gift Coin returned to Hold’N Grow carrying the whole smaller robbery inside it.
€29.
One coin.
Twenty-nine euros.
A present had opened into nine places, filled itself with presents, closed again and returned as a more expensive present.
Christmas wrapping had achieved recursion.
The 5×7 came back.
All the original sticky Coins were still there.
The €29 Bonus Gift Coin joined them.
Twenty Coins.
Three respins.
Another Gift Coin landed.
Twenty-one.
Reset.
The seventh row was packed.
Another arrived near the left.
Twenty-two.
Reset again.
One more.
Twenty-three.
The grid stopped growing.
Above it sat the final locked row.
5×8 needed one more Gift Coin.
One.
Christmas had already built seven floors for stolen presents.
The eighth floor waited above them with all the restraint of an attic nobody had found the key for.
First respin.
Blank.
The twenty-three Coins stayed.
Second.
Blank.
The top row remained locked.
Last respin.
I watched the empty positions.
There were still spaces.
Plenty.
One Gift Coin anywhere.
The reels stopped.
Nothing.
No twenty-fourth present.
The seven-storey heist froze.
Every sticky value added up.
The Minor.
The €29 nested Bonus Gift Coin.
All the x1s, x2s, x3s, x4s and x5s.
Just under €79.
The feature disappeared.
The grid shrank from seven rows back to three.
Snowy village.
Christmas trees.
Candy canes.
Gift sacks.
Finn Merry.
Brumble.
Jingles.
Everything had returned to a size that could fit through a front door.
I checked the balance.
About €5 ahead.
Five euros.
Brumble and Jingles had stolen gifts.
Finn Merry had chased them.
Mystery Presents had contained more presents.
Wilds had stretched into entire columns.
Multipliers had been tied onto them.
GO Collect had swallowed Gift Coins.
The stolen pile had grown from three rows to seven.
A Bonus Gift Coin had opened a smaller 3×3 heist inside the larger one.
Twenty-three sticky presents had filled most of the screen.
All of Christmas had expanded vertically to make room for the evidence.
Profit:
about €5.
The next €1 stayed where it was.
Above the reels, the eighth row no longer existed.
Somewhere in the snow, Christmas still had one present left un-stolen.
I tried to rage-quit Wild Tiger, but it called me back.