Introduction to Santa Hopper
Santa Hopper is a casino slot from Push Gaming with a cheerful Christmas theme and gameplay borrowed from one of the studio's earlier releases. If the title alone didn't lead you in the right direction, we'll help you out a bit by mentioning Dragon Hopper, a game from the beginning of 2025, offering a festive Asian atmosphere. Here, instead of paper lanterns and dragons, we'll play around with various seasonal decorations and watch Santa jump around the grid to distribute Wilds and award multipliers. Forming clusters of sticky Instant Prize symbols will be our main task during free spins, where helpful Bubbles can randomly pop up on the screen and boost any positions they overlay. Let's keep an eye out for those colourful presents, as one of them may hide the max win of 10,231x the bet.
If you’d like to try out the game’s features before putting your own money to work, there’s a demo at the top of this page, allowing for risk-free gameplay.
Theme, Gameplay & Payouts
Santa Hopper is a video slot from Push Gaming with 7 reels, 7 rows, and a cluster-pays win system requiring at least 5 symbols connected vertically and/or horizontally. Within the bet selection panel, you can pick your stake from a range of options, starting from a Min.bet of 0.1 up to a Max.bet of 100, which can grow to 250 with the use of PushBet mode. The game comes with a default RTP of 96.35%, although two lower variants of 94.35% and 85.37% are also available to operators, so make sure to verify your version before playing. Due to the game's medium-high volatility, more sizable wins can occur less frequently. It's possible to win up to 10,231x the bet in any single game round.
The main scene in Santa Hopper lets us admire a cartoony winter landscape from a top-down perspective. Are we cruising through the skies on board Santa's sleigh, looking for houses occupied by good children? Might be, but it's not explicitly said. All we can tell is that we're high up, looking at some cottages and tents sitting in the snow below, as the twinkling Christmas-themed electronic soundtrack flows through the air. Between the two icy shores, above the turquoise water floats the symmetrical grid, on which we'll be forming winning clusters. If you're ready to begin the festive adventure, you can join in from any modern device, like a desktop, a smartphone, or a tablet.
The paytable splits the symbol hierarchy into two groups. Among the low-value ones, you'll see three baubles in various shapes and shades of blue, turquoise and purple, awarding 2x the bet for matching 17 or more in a cluster. The high-value group contains images of a tree, a candy, a bell, and a Christmas stocking, with payouts ranging from 10x to 50x the bet for sets of 17+ matching instances. Reels will also hold special symbols, like Wilds represented by Santa and Golden Presents, Chimneys, Instant Prizes, and Bonus Symbols in the form of a bag of presents.
Special Features & Slot Mechanics
What is the max win in the slot Santa Hopper?
You can win up to 10,231x the bet.
What features are available in the slot Santa Hopper?
The features are Cascading, Santa Feature, Instant Prize Symbols, Jingle Drop Feature, Free Spins, and Feature Buy.
Cascading
Every time you hit a winning cluster, it initiates a cascading sequence where the evaluated symbols disappear from the grid, making room for new ones to drop in. This potentially can lead to further hits, and the process continues as long as new combinations are being formed.
Santa Feature
The Santa Feature needs two special symbols to appear simultaneously: Santa Wild and Chimney. The Santa Wild may carry a win multiplier of x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, or x10, and it will jump onto each Chimney, leaving a copy of itself in the form of a Golden Present with the currently active multiplier. Each jump increases the multiplier value by +1. Once the process is complete, all wins are evaluated, all Golden Presents participating in winning clusters disappear, and a cascade is triggered. More Chimneys landing on the subsequent drops may extend the feature further, and any combinations that include more than one multiplier will benefit from their collective, additive boost.
Instant Prize Symbols
Bronze, silver, and gold coins can land anywhere on the grid. Each one carries an instant win value that represents the multiplier of the active bet: x1, x2, x5, x10, x25, x50, x100, x250, x500, or x1,000. Whenever Instant Prize symbols form a cluster of 5 or more, their combined value is paid out.
Jingle Drop Feature
The feature can trigger on any non-winning spin or cascade. Either 1 or 2 colossal Mystic Symbols in sizes of 2x2, 3x3, or 4x4 will overlay random positions on the grid and then transform into 1 set of matching 1x1 regular paying symbols. They can also reveal Instant Prize, Bonus, Santa symbols, or Chimneys.
Free Spins
When you land 3, 4, or 5 Scatter symbols in a single round, you'll be rewarded with 6, 9, or 12 free spins, respectively! Plus, all Santa, Golden Present, and Instant Prize symbols that you see in the base game will also show up in the bonus round. If you don't have a Santa symbol on the grid, no worries! A Santa with a x2 multiplier will be added to the grid at random before the round begins. During each round, any empty positions will spin and reveal one of four outcomes:
Chimney = this will activate the Santa Feature just like in the base game.
Instant Prize = this one sticks around on the grid after landing until the bonus round wraps up.
Extra Spin = awards an extra 1, 2, or even 3 spins.
Blank = non-active outcome.
Before kicking off the bonus round, you’ll see a Bubble Symbol added to the grid. It could be a single bubble or a stack of up to 5. Each bubble carries a value of 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, or 500. After each spin, watch as the bubble moves around up the board, and depending on the symbol it lands on, award a special action.
Golden Present = adds the bubble's value to the symbol's multiplier.
Chimney = the bubble's value is left on the Chimney symbol and then collected by the Santa that jumps onto it.
Instant Prize = increases the prize's value by the bubble's value.
Feature Buy
In Santa Hopper, you can make use of several options to boost your base game spins or trigger features and bonuses for a fixed buy-in that scales with your active stake.
1.4x = increased chance of landing Scatter symbols.
2x = guaranteed Santa symbol with a random multiplier.
2.5x = guaranteed Santa symbol with a random multiplier and an increased chance of landing Scatter symbols.
20x = Jingle Drop feature trigger.
75x = Jingle Drop feature trigger with guaranteed Instant Prize symbols revealed.
100x = Free Spins trigger with a random number of Scatters.
350x = Free Spins trigger with a random number of Scatters and a random number of Chimneys landing in the first 3 free spins.
Final Thoughts on Santa Hopper
It looks like Push Gaming is going all in this Christmas season, given the number of releases planned to go live just before the festive period. Just a week before approaching Santa Hopper, we've reviewed Santa's Vault, and it looks like there's another Christmas-sounding title planned to be revealed soon - 10 Santa's Reindeers. All those games have one thing in common - they're either clones or minimally adjusted reworks of existing titles. As mentioned in the intro, Santa Hopper's gameplay is modelled after Dragon Hopper, so you can expect a pretty much identical experience if you played that one. Land Golden Presents to make Santa hop around the screen and leave Wilds in activated positions, and combine as many Instant Prizes into clusters during free spins. That's the essence. The creators didn't bother to add any new features to the setup, so all the stats, including the max win of slightly over 10,000x the bet, are almost the same. The only difference is the presence of a rich selection of PushBet and Feature Buy options.
Regarding visuals, it's uncommon for Push Gaming to deliver a rushed and unfinished slop, even if it's a straight-up clone. The studio always makes an effort to deliver an eye-catching theme brimming with vibrant colours and cosy atmosphere, especially when it's a seasonal release like the one in question. On the whole, the content may feel relatively common, but it's pleasant and attractive nonetheless, while the additional effects embellish the experience with extra dynamism during wins and feature triggers.
Santa Hopper is a festive rework, offering identical gameplay as its predecessor, in a merry Christmas atmosphere.
