Train Raiders: Hold & Win Slot by Gamebeat

The trigger sits at six. Six red money purses anywhere on the 5x3 grid stops the regular spins and locks into a Hold & Win round, and the round itself has a wrinkle most Hold & Win games skip: the purses don't stay purses. As respins land more of them, the symbols merge upward, purse becomes a roped sack, sack becomes a Wells Fargo strongbox, and the strongbox opens to reveal what's actually paying. Silver coins inside the chest carry fixed bet multipliers or jackpot tags. Golden coins jack up that reel's multiplier. So a column that started as three flat purses can end the round as a single chest sitting on a x4 reel, paying very differently to three small icons would have.

Three scatter purses trigger Free Spins, and this is where the cowboy Old Prospector earns his keep. Wherever a Wild lands during the round, the cell behind it lights into a glowing sticky frame and stays there for the rest of the spins. Any purse that drops into one of those frames sticks too. Pile up enough of them and the round flips into Super Hold & Win, where each reel carries a multiplier that starts at x1 and climbs by one for every sticky purse locked onto that column. Five stickies on reel three means that reel pays at x5 throughout. The math caps at 5000x and you'll see why if you stack columns of purses against a fully-merged chest payout.

Art-wise the reels sit inside the side panel of a green Wild West freight car, RAILWAY EXPRESS and DENVER ROCKY stencilled faintly into the wood, dusty desert sliding past on the horizon. The premium tier is a cartoon orange-bearded bandit chewing a cigar, a purple-hatted cowgirl, golden tooled cowboy boots, and a snub-nose revolver next to spent bullet casings. The Prospector Wild grins out from his frame in a top hat and monocle. Royals A through J handle the low end as woodcut letter glyphs in saloon reds, purples and greens, which is roughly the energy level the whole game runs at, light-hearted heist, not gritty western. No buy bonus is offered, no ante bet, no shortcut into either feature. Six purses on a base spin or three scatters, those are the only two doors in.