Jingle Bells Bonanza

Jingle Bells Bonanza – Overview

Jingle Bells Bonanza was released by NetEnt on the first of December 2023, to celebrate the Holiday season.

Of course it comes with a Christmas theme with some mischievous elves hanging onto Santa’s sled. It has an amazing look.

The game uses 5 reels that are each 3 symbols high and comes with 20 lines. Besides standard low paying card symbols you will also find all sorts of Christmas toys.

Scatter symbols appear on reel 1 and 5 only. There are also wilds, but these come into play due to a feature, explained later.

• Jingle Bells Bonanza comes with a minimum bet of €0,10 and a maximum bet of €20,- per spin
• The return to player is 96,12%
• The maximum payout is 4.186 times your bet

Bells and Frames

Bells are special symbols that can only land on reels 2, 3 and/or 4. When one or more Bell symbols appear, the position they landed on will be highlighted by a frame.

New Bells landing on a spot that already has a frame, will add a multiplier of x2 and after that x3 and so on.

When a scatter symbol appears on reels 1 and/or 5, all framed will become wild symbols with or without any of the collected multipliers.

Cash Drop Feature

Landing both scatters on reels 1 and 5 at the same time will trigger the Cash Drop Feature.

You will now see a new set of reels with only blank spots and cash symbols. The triggering scatter symbols will become cash symbols worth x3 and will lock into place.

You will then receive 3 free respins. Each time a new cash symbol lands, it’s locked and the free respins are reset. Cash symbols can have values between x1 and x100 times bet.

The feature ends when you run out of free respins or fill all reels with Cash symbols. After this all multipliers are added together and multiplied by your total bet.

Cash Drop Progress and Ultimate Cash Drop Bonus

Each Bell symbol that appears during a spin will not only leave a frame, it will also fill a progress bar on top of the reels which has 4 gifts.

Each time you reach a new gift, the next Cash Drop Feature will be upgraded with a special modifier. The progress bar resets after you have triggered a Cash Drop feature.

• Multiplier – Total winnings from the bonus are doubled
• Expand – Two extra rows of symbols are added to the reels
• Spin – An extra respin is awarded, so you have 4 respins instead of 3
• Mystery – Golden Cash symbols can appear during the bonus

When you reach the final present on the progress bar, you instantly enter the Ultimate Cash Drop Feature with all modifiers active.

Golden Cash Symbols will always reveal a prize of between 3x and 20x and trigger one of the following bonuses:

• Four Arrows – Will collect all Cash Symbols that are horizontally and vertically from this symbol
• Plus Sign – Will increase the value of all Cash Symbols on screen
• Single Arrow – Will collect all Cash Symbols from the direction of the arrow

Verdict

A lot of the times providers reskin an older title with a Christmas theme and call it a day. NetEnt chose not to do that with Jingle Bells Bonanza. Which I really liked.

The wild frames keep the base game interesting and seem to happen quite often.

Of course the Cash Drop feature is nothing new. But with the added bonuses and even that special Golden Cash Symbols option, does make it more unique than most of these features. Especially when you have several gifts active.

Overall it’s a good game. It might not be some unique, amazing title, which we know NetEnt can do. But for the Holidays a perfectly fine slot.

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