A Tale of Elves: Slot Overview

One of the perks of Christmas for game makers is just how flexible the theme is. Some studios only add a light festive touch, like NetEnt did in Aloha! Christmas Edition, while others aim somewhere in the middle. Microgaming, though, went all in, delivering a slot so packed with holiday spirit that if it burst, you’d be buried in mince pies and mistletoe. To make it feel even more traditional, Microgaming filled its 2020 Christmas release with some warmly familiar, classic-style gameplay.

The base game of A Tale of Elves is set in a snowy forest deep in winter, right before the big day. The 5-reel, 243 ways play area sits among trees and twinkling Christmas lights. When free spins are triggered, the scene moves to the elves’ workshop, where the little workers are busy building toys for all the good boys and girls—proper old-school stuff like wooden trains, the kind you see elves hammering together in films, even if modern kids aren’t quite as impressed.

Available on any device, A Tale of Elves comes with a fairly restrained betting spread, starting at 30 p/c per spin, rising to $/€12 at the top end. On the surface it looks friendly enough; underneath, it’s driven by a ruthless math model that Microgaming labels very highly volatile. It may appear casual, but it can easily churn through long stretches of dead spins or suddenly go cold without warning. The upside is strong too—there’s a Santa’s Sack worth of potential waiting for the lucky few. The main disappointment is the RTP. It’s not a full-on reindeer kick to the teeth, but 95.07% feels needlessly low with no jackpot on offer, though it’s also in line with where the industry has been heading under tighter regulation. Still, Microgaming remains one of the more transparent providers and hasn’t rolled out flexible RTP like many rivals have.

At the bottom of the paytable are J-A royals, all fluffy white like little snowmen, followed by the four elves from the story. They wear blue, green, orange, and yellow outfits, and 5 of a kind pays 5x to 8.33x the stake. Five wreath wilds pay twice the top premium, and only the scatter beats them as the highest-value symbol. Wilds can land anywhere and substitute for regular symbols to complete winning combinations.

A Tale of Elves: Slot Features

A Tale of Elves doesn’t look especially giving at first glance, since it only stuffs two features into your stocking. They’re still worthwhile, though—free spins in particular—while the scatter prizes are a bit less exciting. Even so, they help keep the base game from feeling too repetitive.

Jolly old Santa acts as the scatter and can land anywhere on the reels—getting 2 of him in view triggers the Random Cash Prize feature. Once activated, the game selects a random cash prize of up to 50x the bet for your trouble. This feature shows up fairly often, appearing about once every 19 spins on average.

The real highlight is free spins. To activate them, you need at least 3 Santas on screen. When that happens, 3, 4, or 5 Santas award an upfront payout of 1x, 20x, or 200x the stake, plus entry to the free spins feature. Players then choose from four options, each mixing different spin counts, win multipliers, stacked symbols, and overall volatility:

• Blue Elf Spins offers 18 free spins with an x2 win multiplier where the Blue Elf appears stacked 6 symbols high.
• Green Elf Spins offers 14 free spins with an x3 win multiplier where the Green Elf appears stacked 5 symbols high.
• Orange Elf Spins offers 10 free spins with an x4 win multiplier where the Orange Elf appears stacked 4 symbols high.
• Yellow Elf Spins offers 8 free spins with an x5 win multiplier where the Yellow Elf appears stacked 3 symbols high.

The Random Cash Prize can also trigger during free spins, meaning you can still collect those occasional one-off wins along the way. Free spins can also be retriggered if 3 or more scatters land, adding the same option that was chosen at the start. As expected, the bonus takes longer to arrive, with a theoretical trigger rate of once every 209 spins.

A Tale of Elves: Slot Verdict

At first glance, it’s tempting to dismiss A Tale of Elves without much thought. It’s so heavily themed that it can feel like an obvious Christmas cash-in, yet there’s more to it than you might assume. That said, it’s not a game that’s pushing boundaries or threatening to explode with groundbreaking ideas.

Instead, it delivers the kind of classic Microgaming experience that made the studio hugely popular back in the day, and it’s likely to hit the right notes for plenty of long-time players. In that sense, A Tale of Elves feels like a festive present for the generation that was there for the launch of iconic titles like Jurassic Park, Immortal Romance, Bust The Bank, Fish Party, Game of Thrones, and all those other excellent 243 ways slots that still play well today.

On volatility, A Tale of Two Elves absolutely earns its label, swinging unpredictably from one extreme to the other. One moment it’s draining balances like a parched reindeer, the next it’s chaining premium symbols with stacked wilds and multipliers for some serious-looking outcomes. The four free spins choices widen its appeal by letting players influence volatility to a degree. It’s also the same setup used in Game of Thrones, which went down well. Retriggers add another layer of promise, with potential reaching 20,166 times the stake. To actually hit that ceiling, you’d need to land a full screen of wilds/yellow helpers twice in the bonus (8.33x243x5=10,120x) – not impossible, but not something you should expect anytime soon either.

If you’re after a straightforward Christmas slot that fully embraces the season, A Tale of Elves is well worth checking out. As something to sink into on a freezing winter night—snow falling outside, wind roaring, and you warm by a crackling fire—you could certainly do worse.