Action Bank Free Play in Demo Mode by Barcrest

Action Bank review

Theme and Storyline

Action Bank is built around a strange pairing of bank robbery and tic-tac-toe. The reels have a small number of unrelated symbols (see below for fuller details) including a joker, noughts and crosses, and a lucky seven.

Against this, the entire bonus is based around busting into a massive bank vault. So one is left with a somewhat confused sense of what the designers were going for.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

The graphics are squarely in the "churn out skins for our software" category. The background is a simple brushed steel image, the reels are a standard grid with a few rivets around the edge for flavour.

On the reels, the selection of symbols are simple and set into plain backgrounds.

Animations are just for illustrating the spin and clarifying the win. The soundtrack follows the same cues and offers little of their own character to proceedings. The general impression is of a slot in which every part was designed by different people with a general brief to make things boring.

Gameplay

The base game is a five-reel slot with three rows and twenty winlines.

The main innovation is to slow play down by including a non-winning "Nought" symbol. This acts simply to spread wins out. But despite this feature which could have emphasised high volatility, this remains a medium volatility slot.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all symbols except the Scatter symbol.

Each Nought symbol on a reel has a chance of transforming into a Scatter symbol, with a maximum of one Scatter per reel. If the player gets five Scatters, that is one on each reel, they are awarded a free spin bonus.

The player then has an opportunity to trigger the Big Bank Bonus or to gamble to win more a larger number of Free Spins. The total number of free spins awarded by gambling run from 5 to 30 in increments of 5.

During the Free Spin bonus, doubled symbols are added to the reel. The doubled symbols apply a multiplier of x2 to any wins that involve that symbol. Free spins can be retriggered.

If the player triggers the Big Bank Bonus, they are given a picking game in which they choose from fifteen bank vaults. Six of the doors have sapphires behind them, five have rubies, and four have diamonds. The player is awarded the prize associated with the first gem they collect three of. The sizes of the prizes are in order of rareness.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 95.16%, well below our yardstick for average of roughly 96%. This counts strongly against this slot.

The range of bets on the site we tested ran from a minimum bet per spin of $/£/€0.20 up to a maximum of $/£/€400.00 per spin.

The volatility of this game is medium. So it isn’t a great match for our preferred slot machine strategies. We prefer the highest possible volatility.

Conclusion

The RTP alone precludes a recommendation. The vig is just too high.

However, it is not much of a loss. The slot is not especially interesting to play, nor to look at. The design is inconsistent and tedious, while the gameplay is basic.

Even without the low RTP, this slot is just terrible.