The Naughty List

A Closer Look at the Santa

The first thing The Naughty List shows you is Santa's study with the list unrolled across the desk. Everything else on the screen of Naughty List — reels, buttons, paytable — is arranged around that scene. At the centre of the picture: Santa with a pen poised over the list of offenders. That motif is both the highest-paying symbol in The Naughty List and the face on the tile.

The rest of the high symbols in The Naughty List are the scroll, a lump of coal, a present and a wax seal; card ranks handle the low end, as they do across most of the RTG catalogue. The palette is parchment, Christmas red and dark wood, which is what makes the game readable at a glance in a lobby full of neighbours.

The audio is carnival-bright and stays out of the way until a bonus starts, at which point it changes register entirely. The mobile build of The Naughty List reflows rather than crops: you lose some of the scene at the edges and keep every symbol of Naughty List readable.

In a shelf of a hundred and forty tiles that legibility is the whole job: you should be able to tell The Naughty List from its neighbours without reading the caption.

The Maths Behind the Santa

Strip the art away and The Naughty List is 5 reels, 3 rows and 20 paylines. Wins are read left to right from the first reel, and only the highest combination on each line counts, so a second Santa further along the same line adds nothing. Santa is the top symbol, the scroll sits under it, and the card ranks below those are what most The Naughty List spins return.

Wild duty falls to Santa Wild: substitutes for everything except the scatter. Top end on The Naughty List is 2,500× the line bet, and nothing on the base grid gets close to it — the number assumes List Bonus lines up.

Everything else on the grid is ordinary; List Bonus is not: names are struck off one at a time, each paying as it goes. That is why the base grid on The Naughty List feels quieter than the numbers suggest: the variance is deliberately parked in the feature.

Choosing a Stake for The Naughty List

A spin on The Naughty List costs the line bet multiplied by 20 lines. Halving the line bet halves the Naughty List spin and every number in its paytable at the same time — the two move together. Note that 2,500× the line bet is a multiplier, not a rand figure. It holds at every stake, which is what makes The Naughty List comparable with the games either side of it in the lobby.

This one runs medium volatility — it balances regular small returns against occasional larger ones, which is the middle of the RTG range. Be careful with any RTP figure you find for The Naughty List elsewhere. RTG sets the return per operator, not per game, so The Naughty List runs differently from one casino to the next. The only figure worth trusting for The Naughty List is the one printed in its own paytable.

One practical note on staking The Naughty List: changing the bet between spins changes nothing but the price, and no state carries across — each The Naughty List spin is settled on its own. The Naughty List lets autoplay run until List Bonus lands, which is the sensible configuration — there is nothing on its base grid worth watching spin by spin.

Where The Naughty List Pays Its Best

The Naughty List carries three features, and they are where the game earns its place in the lobby rather than on the base grid.

List Bonus — names are struck off one at a time, each paying as it goes. List Bonus does not fire often on The Naughty List, and the game is built on the assumption that you are waiting for it.

Free Games (up to twenty spins with wins doubled, counted against the same line bet you staked). Watch for the Free Games trigger rather than the reels — on The Naughty List it is easier to miss than you would expect.

Santa Wild (substitutes for everything except the scatter, on the 5-reel grid described above). In a medium-volatility game like The Naughty List that matters more than it sounds: Santa Wild is the round the quoted ceiling is calculated from.

Taken together the set is what separates The Naughty List from the rest of its shelf. The base grid is common enough across the catalogue; List Bonus is not, and it is the reason the game has its own page here.

Session Advice for the Santa'S Study

Size the stake on The Naughty List so the balance covers a few hundred spins — that is roughly the window in which the game shows you what it does. Set the limit before the first spin of The Naughty List rather than after a bad run — the deposit and self-exclusion tools are in the account area and take effect immediately.

For wagering purposes The Naughty List counts as a slot, which means it contributes at the full rate, and the conditions are set out on the bonus page. Before staking The Naughty List, run it in practice mode until List Bonus has landed at least once — that wait tells you more about The Naughty List than the paytable does.

One thing not to do with The Naughty List is chase List Bonus by raising the stake after a dry run: its trigger frequency does not change with bet size, only the cost of waiting does. Our responsible gaming page has the limits, the self-exclusion options and the contacts for independent help — none of it requires talking to support about The Naughty List or anything else first.

Who The Naughty List Suits

The player The Naughty List is for is the one who wants a game that pays often enough to stay interesting without flattening out. If it lands well, Naughty or Nice? is the next one to try — same corner of the catalogue, different rhythm.

There is no cost to trying Naughty or Nice? first. The Naughty List is the better opening move when you want a game that keeps showing you something. Full specifications for The Naughty List — the 5 reels, 3 rows and 20 paylines, volatility, the top end (2,500× the line bet), the feature list and the release year — are in the table at the top of this page.

Naughty or Nice?