Sticky Bandits

We’re going to be honest from the start. Sticky Bandits did not impress us one bit. Quickspin titles always work on a similar plan. They offer you a basic reel, add a few twists on the special features, offer a decent if a bit subpar paytable, and then make up for it with the chance to score high with either multipliers, stacked symbols or something that will let you get back into the game if you start losing. This slot, however, has none of that. The bonus seems great on paper, but the paytable is so horrible you can’t drag anything from it and the description of the title of this being a heist certainly applies. Only you’re the victim of the heist.

It’s similar visually to all other Quickspin releases. This isn’t particularly surprising and the developers usually stick to a clear and recognisable art style that looks nice, even if it isn’t overwhelming. We can’t fault this game when it comes to graphics or the engine beneath it. On all devices we tested, it runs smoothly and without a hitch, like all recent releases by the same developer.

However, the gameplay loop is just broken here. This time around, the dangling carrot was supposed to be these massive Wilds that could cover entire reels and can appear on the second and third, and fourth and fifth reel. Alongside a Scatter that only falls on the first reel, this is also a trigger for a free spin in which you get to keep the Wild that activated it on the playing field for as long as the free spins last. Which should be a fantastic bonus, but it just fails to deliver.

The reason, best we can tell, is that the developers decided to pull a Microgaming and neutered the paytable. The largest single win in the slot is only 6,66x times your stake, a pitifully small sum. And with no multipliers around, this means that even in the dream scenario, you can never hope to get close to some of the big wins you’re able to win in other Quickspin titles, let alone ones made by other developers. This just ruins the entire dynamic of the whole thing and to add insult to injury, the special features aren’t guarantees for a solid win like they were last time. Some reached about 20x to 30x stake, which were the highest we could get them. And twice we had free spins with sticky Wilds and zero wins for seven spins in a row, and at that point, we knew our verdict wasn’t going to be good.

You can find J, Q, K and A on the reels alongside a stick of dynamite, a bag of golden coins, and three gruff looking bandits, no doubt there to aid our larger than life bandit brothers that plan to blow open the train and take its valuables. The symbols are decent, but there’s little impressive about them that’s worth mentioning.

To get the free spins, you need a train Scatter to appear in the first reel, and then one of the large symbols to appear in either the second and third reel, fourth and fifth reel, or get them both to fill up both at once. They don’t have to fill the entire reel, mind you, so you can get some absolutely horrible bonuses like a Scatter in the first position, and a Wild that covers only the bottom of fourth and fifth reel, which was how we managed to get one of our two free spins with zero wins.