Only Coins Express Slot Review

A train-themed coin game where nothing on the reels pays a penny. No paylines, no royals, no fruit: just gold chips worth 1x to 9x the bet landing on nine cells under a locomotive, with a bonus round that holds every payout in the game.

It is the sequel to Only Coins, and Gamzix has made no attempt to disguise that. Same coins, same Collect sweep, same walking multiplier frame, same four jackpots, same 2,000x ceiling at 96.02%. One thing did change, and it is the thing that matters: the original ran five reels across, this one runs three. The middle row now needs three coins instead of five, and the respin round plays out on nine positions rather than fifteen. That is a bigger edit than it sounds.

Night at the railway. The board sits under a golden steam locomotive that noses in from the top of the frame, cowcatcher first, with stacks of coins lined along the rail above the reels like freight waiting to be loaded. Behind it an iron suspension bridge stands in silhouette, cables dropping toward a low city skyline, the whole thing soaked in one shade of deep purple-blue. The grid is a heavy silver frame with bolt heads set either side of the middle row, and every empty cell carries a faint blue chip outline stamped into it, so even a dead board reads as coins-in-waiting. The coins themselves are casino chips: gold, star notches around the rim, purple numerals in the centre. Jackpot coins wear coloured rings, and a MAJOR chip dropping into the middle row in purple trim is about as much drama as the base game produces. Four plaques stack down the left in red, purple, green and blue, buy button glowing underneath. Clean work, and completely static. The train never moves, which for a game called Express is a bit of a missed trick (the small spark trail that flings each coin onto the grid is a nice touch, though).

The rhythm is quick and shallow. Three coins is a soft ask, so bonuses arrive often enough that the base game never becomes the endurance test the older layout could be, and that is most of what the medium volatility rating is telling you. The flip side shows up straight away: nine cells fill fast, a few chips at a couple of x each, twenty seconds, back to spinning.

The full board is where the tension actually sits. On a fifteen-position layout the Grand is a rumour; here it is a shape you can watch forming, and by the sixth or seventh locked cell the round has something at stake - which the game understands perfectly well, because a respin counter that resets on every new coin exists to keep that hope alive one cell longer than it has earned. Between rounds there is nothing whatsoever. No small wins, no near misses that pay, just a balance dropping in a clean straight line, and you'll probably notice that more than any individual bonus.

Taken on its own, this is a tidy little coin game. The bonus is well built, the Collect and frame interaction gives a small board a top end worth sitting through the dead spins for, and shrinking the grid quietly fixed the original's worst habit by putting the feature within closer reach. Anyone coming from 3x3 Hold The Spin will recognise the furniture before the first spin lands.

Taken as a sequel, it is thin. A locomotive, a bridge and a new soundtrack sit on top of mechanics nobody touched, and a smaller board is not the same thing as a new idea. Gamzix is several games deep into this format now and the edits get smaller each time. What is here works. It works precisely the way it did in April.