Action Bank from Scientific Games Interactive is based on one of the simplest slot concepts of them all. If you ever played a Bar-X game at the seaside or visited a high street arcade offering low jackpots, then this video slot may bring feelings of nostalgia rushing back. Whatever your reaction to this game, it’s much more fun than a €5.00 jackpot machine, with 20 paylines rather than one or three for a typical Bar-X. That said, the RTP is lower than average for an online slot at 95.16%, and the maximum win is capped at €250,000 regardless of how high you are betting.
The game contains very few symbols and even fewer features – there is a typical free spins style bonus with a gamble feature allowing you to win even more free spins. Hit a retrigger during the free spins, and there is a shot at an even bigger bonus called the Big Bank Bonus, where you might just bust into the vault and leave the game with a massive haul of cash.
How are your safe cracking skills? Are they up to scratch, or do you need more time to perfect them? Just to make sure, why not give our free demo slot of Action Bank a try to get a bit more practice, it’s available to play below.
| Provider | SG Gaming |
| Reels | 5 |
| Rows | 3 |
| Paylines | 20 |
| Bonus Rounds | 1 |
| Bet Range | 0.20 - 400 |
| Volatility | Low |
| Max Win | 5,000x |
| Bonus Buy | No |
| RTP | 95.16% |
| Our Rating | 7.6 |
Action Bank Slot Casino Bonuses
Action Bank Slot Free Play
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Action Bank Slot Theme, Stakes, Pays & Symbols
The classic style of a Bar-X game features just three symbols – circles, crosses, and bars. The circles would pay nothing, the crosses awarded small wins, whilst the bars would be where the money was at. This setup worked well for early slot machines that used physical reel strips because large numbers of different combinations were possible using relatively short strips. With restrictions like that removed, developer Scientific Games have been free to use their imaginations and add many new ideas to the classic formula. The result is a game that looks like the natural evolution of the concept that it is – nothing is too over the top, and it’s easy to see this game appealing to a wide cross-section of players as a result. The lack of any music could even be seen as a feature here. If the old-school style slots are of interest to you, check out Blueprint Gaming’s title Bar x Safecracker Megaways too.
Moving over to the paytable, the crosses will award you 5x, 10x and 50x for three, four, or five of a kind, respectively. The bars increase this to 10x, 20x and 100x, whilst the added Lucky 7 symbol has the highest payoff at 20x, 100x, and 500x. Finally, a joker has been added to the reels, who acts as the wild, though this symbol doesn’t double your payouts or anything like that – a missed opportunity, perhaps. There are scatters, too – an innovation by Bar-X standards, but you need all five of them to trigger the games bonus round.
Choosing how much you want to bet is a simple matter of setting the amount you wish to bet per payline. This can be pennies if you wish – a minimum bet of €0.20 – or you can go crazy and bet a maximum of €20.00 per payline at the other end of the spectrum. This makes for a mind-boggling maximum bet of €400.00 per spin, but even if you have the bankroll, don’t be tempted; if you managed to hit the jackpot at that kind of wager, then had your win capped by the hard limit of €250,000 built into the game, what would you do next? I don’t imagine the device you are playing on will be in one piece for much longer!
Base Game & Modifiers
Action Bank might be played over a 5×3 reel set with 20 fixed paylines in place, but it is still a Bar-X game at heart, so you might have expected most of the action to be contained within the reel base game. That would be the case were the Lucky 7 symbol stacked on the reels, as the Bar and Cross symbols are, but sadly they are not. The same is true of the wilds, so there is no possibility of getting a screen full of Lucky 7’s or anything crazy like that.
Action Bank has been an extremely successful game for SG, but a sequel has since been released that does up the ante considerably in terms of the maximum possible win. So head over to that game if you find this one a little tame.
Action Bank Slot Bonus Features
There is just one main bonus round in Action Bank, and you’ll need all five scatter symbols to land to trigger it. Thankfully this combination is much easier to hit than other games where three scatters are enough to trigger the bonus round! When you do hit all five scatters, you will first have to choose one to decide how many free spins you will receive. The five symbols have 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 free spins hidden underneath them, but if you are unsatisfied with your pick, you will be given the option of gambling your free spins before the bonus round begins. The gamble feature can result in you ending up with no free spins at one end of the scale or a maximum of 30 at the other.
Free Spins
Once the free spins feature begins, everything is the same as the base game except that if you manage to hit all five scatters now, the gamble feature will also give you the added ability to win the “Big Bank Bonus”. This separate screen will award hidden gems, either a diamond, a ruby, or a sapphire. You need to pick three matching gems to walk away with the loot, and the diamond will automatically award you the maximum 500x from this single spin. The trouble is, there are fewer diamonds than rubies – and even fewer rubies than sapphires.
On the plus side, if you make it as far as the big bank bonus screen, you are 100% going to be winning one of these prizes. On the other hand, on all three occasions I got this far, I came out with the bottom prize of the sapphire. One day, slot developers will be required to publish the odds of events like this occurring; remember, it wasn’t so long ago they didn’t even have to tell us the RTP! Until then, I think it is safe to assume that the ratio is likely something like 60/30/10 – possibly even worse.
Action Bank Slot Review Final Thoughts
I’ve never been a fan of Bar-X machines, so I was surprised just how much I enjoyed playing Action Bank. Scientific Games has done a great job of bringing an old idea bang up to date – it’s just a shame the maximum win is so low. However, that problem has been fixed with the sequel to this game, so there is now an Action Bank game for players who like both low and high-volatility slots. For me personally, this is the inferior of the two, but that may not be true for you – why not give our free demo slot a try and decide for yourself?
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