A Tale of Elves Slot Machine – Free Play & Review

Microgaming’s offer at the end of 2020 is a slot machine called A Tale of Elves. Christmas-themed, as you’d expect, it’s a game with pretty graphics and a series of elves acting as main characters. Santa’s little helpers are the stars here, both as symbols and as masters of the various types of free spins available inside.

The setting is the village of the elves, though you mostly see fir trees and street signs next to the reels. Symbols give us images of four cookie-style Royals (J to A) which already have a bite taken out of them, along with pictures of the four elves (yellow, green, orange and blue), and a wild which shows up as a Wreath.

Developer

It’s Microgaming that we’re talking about here, so there are literally hundreds of other slot machines in their collection, for you to choose from. Generally, the quality is fairly high, though often enough they seem designed mostly with casual players in mind. Still, even leaving aside the less than stellar designs from their collection, there are a lot of good games in it as well.

How To Play It

Relying on 30 coins, the wager is going to require at least $0.30 per spin, and it could go as high as $12 ($0.40 per coin).

As for the way you actually play the game, it’s a slot with 5 reels and 243 ways to win. The system is a very common one these days, and the combinations will form when 3+ matching symbols land on consecutive reels, left to right.

Special Features

One feature that you’re going to find inside, the Wreath Wild is used to create new combinations, either by helping regular symbols as a substitute, or by landing by itself five times on as many reels. In fact, if you want the game’s top prize, worth 16.66x the stake (500 coins), you need the wild to be the one forming combinations.

The game can deliver cash prizes, decided at random, provided that you get the Santa Scatter to land twice in view. Up to 50x the stake is paid this way.

However, if you get at least three Santa symbols, you trigger the free spins feature and you also receive a prize worth 1x to 200x the stake. Which of the four types of free spins gets triggered, is left up to you. The volatility changes in each case, so it’s your call.

• Blue Elf triggers 18 free spins, where the multiplier is set to 2x. This Elf comes stacked, 6 at a time.
• Green Elf has 14 free spins, but with the multiplier at 3x. The stacked Elf of this type has 5 symbols connected.
• Orange Elf delivers 10 free spins, where the wins are multiplied by 4x. Orange Elves are stacked and take 4 positions at a time.
• Yellow Elf has the fewest free spins, only 8, but the highest multiplier, 5x. Its stacked symbols are only 3 positions high.

Maximum Payouts

Top wins of 20,000x the stake should be great motivators, for a lot of players. On the other hand, you don’t get that high without some serious risk, as the high volatility proves. However, the biggest downside I saw, was the 95.07% RTP, while a typical modern slot would be expected to be closer to 96%.

Summary

A Tale of Elves has enough to offer, that it could be an appropriate choice for the holidays, but the below average RTP will likely keep experienced players away, and they’re the ones most likely to want a high volatility game like this one.