Big Bad Wolf Christmas Special Demo: Same Wolf, Winter Coat

Snow on the crates, the 2013 rules underneath

A classic "in Christmas clothing" on "a proven math model" is how Quickspin's game page puts it, and the help screens bear that out. Pigs Turn Wild, the Regular Wild, the free spins, Blowing Down the House and Swooping Reels read exactly as in the original, which our Big Bad Wolf review covers in full.

Divided by the stake, the paytables match row for row: five beehive Wilds pay 40x, five of the top pig 12x and five Aces 4x in both games. The sheet splits the RTP the same way too, 66.38% from the base game and 30.96% from the free spins.

The rest is costume. The pigs now wear a knitted hat with a candy cane, a bobble hat beside a gingerbread man and green ear muffs, the toy pig has an elf hat, the wolf a Santa hat, and the brick house hides a fireplace hung with stockings. The client is its own build, version 1.0.4 on the last rules page against 2.7.1 for the original.

A Swoop chain that waits for the free spins, then carries on

Each win clears its symbols, new ones fall in, and the chain runs until a drop pays nothing. The help screens count wins within the chain: the 2nd turns the knitted-hat pig wild, the 4th the gingerbread pig, the 6th the pig in ear muffs, two lamps each on the meter above the reels. Quickspin's web page says "every second Swoop" instead. We counted the way the help screens do.

That spin of our media session kept paying, turned two pigs wild and dropped two Wolf Scatters onto the bottom row with €9.20 in the WIN box.

A third Wolf fell in the next drops and the free spins began in the middle of the chain; when they ended, the base reels resumed it and kept paying into the same round. Our log shows how rare that length is: of 140 paying base spins, 115 stopped after one win, the first pig turned wild on 25 spins, the second on 5, and all three only on spin 208, for 7x.

Three moons for the wood house, six for the fireplace

Land three Wolf Scatters or more and they pay 3x the bet and start 10 free spins, and three more inside the round add another 10. Moons on reel 5 fill a meter: the 3rd blows down the wood house for 2 extra spins, the 6th the brick house for 2 more and x2 on every later win.

Our media round ran to 14 spins, the opening 10 plus both houses. Once the wood house fell, gaps in the reels showed the brick house behind them.

The sixth moon landed with the counter already at zero.

Neither doubled spin paid, and a Congratulations screen closed the bonus at €57.00. The clip runs from the spin's first drop to the end of the resumed chain.

The resumed swoops added €26.60, so media spin 15 paid 83.6x the stake in all.

Two bonuses in 500 spins, and 17 spins above the start

Our log's 500 paid spins all ran on the demo server, at €1.00 each. 28.4% of them returned a win. Half of those wins came to 0.8x or less, and the worst losing streak ran to 21 spins.

• 500paid demo spins at €1.00
• 28.4%of them paid something
• 165.8xbest spin, free spins round included
• 2free spins bonuses triggered

Spin 164's bonus stopped at 12 free spins, with four moons and only the wood house down. Its sixth free spin ran a 12-drop chain worth 48.4x, most of the round's 69.8x.

Then came a 201-spin slide to €4,847.60 on spin 365, followed at once by the biggest base-game win of the log, 13.2x. On spin 378 the second bonus ran to 44 free spins: three retriggers, one inside a 15-drop chain, the wood house on free spin 6 and the brick house on free spin 16. The 28 doubled spins that followed paid €69.60, though 18 of them paid nothing.

That 165.8x round lifted the balance to €5,014.80, its only spell above €5,000.00, which ended on spin 395. We finished on €4,974.60, 94.9% returned. Our run of the original returned 100.8% from three bonuses; with one model behind both games, that gap is luck.

Second of five wolf games, and which one to open in December

Quickspin's wolf line runs Big Bad Wolf (2013), this edition (December 2020), Big Bad Wolf Megaways (September 2021), Big Bad Wolf LIVE (summer of 2023) and Big Bad Wolf: Pigs of Steel (November 2023), so this is number 2 of 5. LIVE is a live-casino title with no demo. At 97.34%, this game and Big Bad Wolf share the highest default RTP of the 60 reviews here, and the lowest top win of the wolf games.

The sequels trade that return for range. Big Bad Wolf Megaways moves to 6 reels, up to 7 rows at volatility 5, reaches 30,540.35x and sells its free spins for 90x.

On the original's 5x3 grid, Big Bad Wolf: Pigs of Steel adds steel pigs, three bonus games and two buys, with RTP models from 96.14% down and a highest win of 18,173x.

Between the two 5x3 originals only the scenery differs. We found no lower model for the Christmas build on the sheet, the game page or the demo server, while the 2013 game also exists at 90.01%. Take the snow version in December and either one the rest of the year. The maths is the same whichever you open.

• Big Bad Wolf: Pigs of Steel review
• Big Bad Wolf review
• Brawler's Brew review

What else people ask about the winter wolf

We answered these from the game's own help, Quickspin's paperwork and our 500-spin log.