Winter Champions: Slot Overview

Are people naturally more inclined toward sunshine than snow? It’s a question that comes to mind when you consider why the Summer Olympic Games tend to draw bigger crowds than the winter edition. Maybe it’s partly down to geography and where most viewers live. Maybe it’s because the Summer Olympics show a bit more skin than the Winter Games ever could. Or perhaps plenty of us would rather stay inside and stay warm than hike around on a frozen mountainside. We could keep pondering, but instead let’s pull on a beanie, slip on some gloves, and head into Relax Gaming’s sports slot Winter Champions for a chilly adventure.

Sports slots with generic human athletes can sometimes feel a little corny. Winter Champions avoids that vibe by swapping people for animal competitors. This crew has gathered on a mountainside to take part in various winter events, including ski jumping, curling, and ice hockey. The backdrop is buried under deep snow, with skiers racing down the slopes, while a slick villain-style pad perches on a rocky outcrop. Maybe it’s a clubhouse, maybe it’s a hotel/restaurant. Take your pick and run with it.

That same snowy coating covers Winter Champions’ 5-reel, 4-row grid. It runs on 1,024 ways to win, forming winning combinations of 3 to 5 OAK from the leftmost reel. Stakes range from 10 c to $/€150 per spin, and it’s also possible to buy access to the bonus round straight from the base game. The volatility is rated Medium high, and the top RTP is listed at 96.1%.

For low pays, Winter Champions uses icy 10-A card ranks, which return 0.3x to 0.4x for 5 OAK. Above those come the higher-paying animal symbols: a penguin, a walrus, a polar bear, and a tiger, paying 1 to 3 times the bet for a 5-of-a-kind. The wild is a trophy W, and it can substitute for any standard paying symbol. Only one wild can land per row.

Winter Champions: Slot Features

Hidden up its padded sleeves, Winter Champions packs in Rolling Respins, a Ski Jumping Bonus, an Ice Hockey Bonus, a Curling Bonus, plus a bonus buy option.

Rolling Respins

Whenever a winning combination hits, the game shifts into Rolling Respins mode. At that point, all reels roll down one row, adding a fresh row of symbols at the top, which can lead to additional wins. The process keeps going for as long as a win still appears after each roll.

Bonus Game

The bonus games activate when 3 wild symbols are visible on the reels at the same time. Once triggered, players can choose between Ski Jumping, Ice Hockey, or Curling.

Ski Jumping Bonus

This bonus begins with 6 Rolling Respin chances. If no winning combinations appear, 1 Respin chance is deducted, and the reels continue to roll down by 1 row. With each cascade, players move one step closer to the max prize on a ladder shown beside the reels. The ladder contains 29 steps starting at 0. There are 6 prize thresholds available – 5x, 10x, 25x, 50x, 100x, and 1,000x. When a wild symbol lands, the ladder prizes increase by up to 5 times, up to 25x, 50x, 125x, 250x, 500x, and 5,000x. When the bonus ends, players receive an additional reward equal to the highest threshold reached on the ladder. The round finishes when Rolling Respins run out, the top threshold is reached, or the win cap is hit.

Ice Hockey Bonus

This bonus also opens with 6 Rolling Respin chances. If there are no winning combinations, 1 Rolling Respin chance is deducted, and the reels keep rolling down by 1 row. Here, coin symbols shaped like pucks can appear attached to pay symbols, carrying values of 1x to 500x. In addition, collector goal symbols may land, displaying a multiplier from x2 to x10. When a collector goal lands, it collects all visible coins, awarding their total multiplied by its shown multiplier. After collecting, the collector transforms into a wild. The feature ends when Rolling Respins are used up or the win cap is reached.

Curling Bonus

The Curling Bonus kicks off with 6 Rolling Respin chances and uses only 2 symbols – coins and blockers. All coins land with a 1x value. The bonus starts with 3 coins and continues cascading by 1 row. Once coins reach the bottom, they start piling up. If a coin doesn’t land on a respin, 1 Rolling Respin chance is deducted. The bonus ends when Rolling Respins run out or the win cap is achieved. When the feature finishes, any column or row that is filled with coins applies a corresponding multiplier to the values of all coins in that column or row. Each column multiplier is x5, while the row multipliers are x2, x8, x40, and x150, from the bottom row to the top row. Once all row and column multipliers have been applied, the total coin value is paid out.

Buy Bonus

By paying 50 times the bet, you can enter the bonus round phase immediately. From there, players select one of the three bonus games.

Winter Champions: Slot Verdict

Winter Champions felt a little sluggish at the start, though it picked up nicely as the session went on. To be fair, most of that momentum came from the three bonus rounds, as is often the case with slots, but it stood out more than usual here. The base game is helped along by the Rolling Respins mechanic, which brings to mind the PowerNudge-style effect Pragmatic Play used in its futuristic Egyptian slot Rise of Giza PowerNudge. It’s a smart setup: hit a win, the reels drop down by one row, and you may get paid again depending on what’s left in view, with further rolls continuing as long as wins keep landing. That same core mechanic also appears in every bonus, paired with three distinct rule sets.

One of the more enjoyable parts of testing Winter Champions was comparing the three bonus games—figuring out which was the most fun, which was the least engaging, and which delivered the biggest haul. It felt a little like trying Net Gains or Beast Mode and sampling the different selectable free spins modes, though on a less intense scale. Each bonus in Winter Champions plays differently, offering its own route to potentially decent results. The maximum win is capped at 6,000x the bet, which isn’t tiny, though it does sit on the lower side for a Relax Gaming title in some respects. It’s not the kind of release that’s likely to become a timeless classic, but Winter Champions is a perfectly fine option for passing the time, with several ways for players to take a shot and see what might—or might not—end up sliding their way.