Winter Champions

Winter Champions Review

This game boldly ventures into the sports-themed arena. True to form, the game is populated with a cast of anthropomorphic animal athletes. The semi-transparent 5x4 grid is set against a scenic Alpine backdrop, complete with skiers gliding down slopes and an ice hockey rink buzzing with action. The soundtrack complements the icy atmosphere, while the Lion symbol, decked out in gold laurels and medals, reigns supreme as the highest-paying symbol. He's joined by a polar bear hockey player, a walrus curling pro, and a penguin ski jumper.

Land matching symbols across at least 3 consecutive reels to win, starting from the leftmost reel. The animal character premium symbols award between 1x to 3x your stake, while the royal symbols offer a smaller payout of 0.3x or 0.4x your stake. The trophy Wild symbol steps in to help complete winning combinations by substituting for any pay symbol. You can adjust your bet level from €0.10 to €150 per spin, and Winter Champions slot offers 1,024 ways to win.

Every win triggers the Rolling Respins feature, where a new row of symbols is added to the top of the grid as the reels nudge down one position. This continues as long as you keep landing wins, allowing for indefinite winning streaks per round. The base game is otherwise fairly straightforward, with the main attraction being the 3 Bonus Games. This is where things get interesting, as you get to choose between Ski Jumping, Ice Hockey, or Curling bonuses, each offering a unique experience.

With a decent RTP of 96.1 %, slightly above the industry average, and medium volatility, this Winter Champions game seems geared towards casual players and sports enthusiasts. While the 6,000x max win is certainly appealing, be prepared for stretches of dry spells in the base game. Although the exact hit rate isn’t disclosed, it’s our experience that the gameplay rotates between periods of dead spins punctuated by occasional bursts of winning streaks from the Rolling Respins mechanic.

Winter Champions Features

The Rolling Respins feature is going strong in the base game, and you can choose from 3 winter sport bonus games in Winter Champions. Let’s check it all out!

Rolling Respins

The Rolling Respins mechanic triggers after each win, nudging all the reels one position down to reveal a new row of symbols at the top. This process repeats as long as a new win is created per rolling respin, and the respins are free.

Bonus Choice Menu

The Bonus Choice Meny comes with 3 options, triggered by 3 wilds landing on the same base game spin. You then get to choose between a Ski Jumping, Ice Hockey, or Curling bonus game.

Ski Jumping Bonus

You start with 6 rolling respin chances in your tally, and each non-winning spin subtracts 1 respin chance from the counter. The ski jump trail next to the grid has 29 steps and 6 prize thresholds with cash prizes of 5x, 10x, 25x, 50x, 100x, and 1,000x your stake. Each rolling respin equals one step in the ski jump trail, and each wild symbol boosts the ski jump prizes.

This wild upgrade system can deliver prizes of up to 25x, 50x, 125x, 250x, 500x, and 5,000x your stake at best. When the bonus game ends, you win whatever prize level you have achieved plus your regular line wins. The feature ends when you run out of rolling respin chances, or when you hit the game’s win cap.

Ice Hockey Bonus

Plays out similarly to the Ski Jumping bonus, with 6 rolling respin chances in your tally. Coin puck symbols with values between 1x and 500x your stake can land attached to regular pay symbols, and these are collected if you also land a Collector goal. The collector goal has a multiplier between x2 and x10, boosting all collected puck prizes it collects accordingly before turning into a wild symbol.

Curling Bonus

Once again, you get 6 rolling respins chances, and only coins and blocker tiles appear during this bonus game. The coins have a cash prize value of 1x, and you start with 3 coins that nudge one position down per respin. You lose one respin chance when no new coins land on a respin nudge, and the coins accumulate when they hit the lowest possible position. All coin prizes are boosted by x5 per full reel, and full rows award multiplier boosts of x2, x8, x40, and x150 from bottom to top.

Winter Champions Bonus Buy (not UK)

The Bonus Buy menu offers eligible players a shortcut to the Bonus Game Choice Screen, and the price tag for the triggering spin is 50x your stake.

Pros and Cons of Winter Champions

Our Verdict

While the Rolling Respins feature is somewhat rare to see, it doesn't quite have the strength to carry the base game on its own. It’s a little too close to the familiar cascading reels mechanic, which rarely stands alone as the sole base game feature. Most players are accustomed to something more, like a multiplier system or extra modifiers, to spice things up. This would have made a significant difference, as the base game felt rather tedious during my testing. It was essentially a cycle of dead spins followed by an occasional small-to-decent Rolling Respins sequence, repeating until I finally triggered the bonus game choice menu.

Although the stated volatility is medium, it felt more like high volatility during gameplay. The Rolling Respins top-ups did help to keep things ticking over between bonus rounds, but the overall experience was still more volatile than expected. Visually, the game doesn't quite reach the standards we've come to anticipate. It feels somewhat like a side project, lacking the polish and attention to detail of most of their releases. Of course, not every game can be as groundbreaking as their Money Train series, but sports-themed slots present a unique challenge for any developer.

The challenge lies in the fact that fans of the sport, who are the likely target audience, will inevitably draw comparisons between the real sport and its depiction in the game. In most cases, actually participating in or watching the sport will be more entertaining than playing a slot game based on it. To the developer's credit, they have attempted to make the 3 bonus games engaging by incorporating elements from each of the winter sports.

My personal favorite is the Ice Hockey Bonus, where puck prizes merge into a single prize before being smashed into the multiplier goal. With puck prizes reaching up to 500x and a goal multiplier of up to x10, this bonus is probably your best shot at scoring the 6,000x max win. The Ski Jumping Bonus was less captivating, mainly due to the slow-motion jump sequence, so the Curling bonus would be my second choice. Overall, Winter Champions is a decent effort with some enjoyable moments, but it didn’t leave me wanting a second go.