The One Armed Bandit review

Theme and Storyline

The One Armed Bandit is a far more interesting game than the silliness of its title would suggest. The punning in the title takes us into a world of Wild West bounty hunters and a world where men were real men, women were real women, and the villains all wear black hats.

The symbols are made up of a selection of classic Western props – spurs and six shooters, ten gallons hats and eight ounce hipflasks. The forces of good and evil are present too on the special symbols where the Scatter symbol is a bandit and the Wild a sheriff.

Cinch up your chaps and load your colt repeaters because this game’s put a bounty on the one armed bandit’s head. Give those reels a spin, pardner.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

As with most Yggdrasil Gaming products, the music and graphics are top quality, with a soundtrack that does a pitch perfect impression of a John Wayne movie score and fun cartoon graphics.

The whole milieu is brought to life by a strong showing in the animation department where each symbol gets a unique win animation to go with the usual indicator outlines.

Few slots do as a good a job of capturing the feel of being in a Western.

Gameplay

The One Armed Bandit has five reels of three rows each. It uses a respin feature to keep the player interested with regular small rewards, and offers an exciting free spin bonus with some elegant features.

The overall feeling is of a game that is more engaging than just a click and spin game, but doesn’t ever feel overly complicated.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all symbols except the Scatter symbol. A x5 multiplier is applied to any wins that include a Wild symbol.

Landing one or two Scatter symbols triggers a respin. The Scatter is transformed into a Wild for the respin and that reel gets a small sheriff’s badge marker added at the top. These markers are reset when the respins end.

Landing one Scatter symbol on all five reels during a single spin (i.e. putting a sheriff’s badge on every reel) will trigger the Free Spin Bonus. The Free Spin bonus starts with ten free spins and one free spin is added for every subsequent Scatter symbol that lands anywhere on the reels during the free spins.

During Free Spins the game starts with a x5 multiplier. Every Bonus symbol that lands adds an additional free spins, while every other Bonus symbols that lands will double the multiplier, up to a maximum of x20. This x20 multiplier stacks with any Wild multipliers allowing players to hit wins of x100 the standard payout.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 96.30%, a little over our yardstick for average of roughly 96%.

The range of bets on the site we tested ran from a minimum bet per spin of $/£/€0.10 up to a maximum of $/£/€40.00 per spin.

The volatility of this game is high, which makes it an excellent match for our preferred slot machine strategies, especially with its reasonable RTP. Our slot strategies target the highest possible volatility.

Conclusion

With beautiful graphics, intelligent animation, and a rousing score, there is a lot to recommend The One Armed Bandit at a purely superficial level.

The nice thing about this slot is that it remains good on closer inspection with well paced and elegant gameplay. The high volatility and decent RTP of 96.30% also make this game a good mathematical contender, matching well with our slot machine strategies.

Overall we can give this slot a strong recommendation to anyone who fancies a Western themed experience during their slot time.