Swindle All the Way

Ah, Christmas. It’s the perfect time of year, full of holiday cheer. The snow slowly falls, everyone’s enjoying the holidays out of town. So, naturally, RTG decides to celebrate the holiday by unleashing a pair of escaped convicts into the neighbourhood. We’ll have to save the talk about what constitutes as acceptable holiday cheer with the developers over at RTG for another time, but for now, our focus remains on the game. It offers a 5×3 playing field with 25 paylines that you can activate or deactivate at your own leisure, and if you decide to aid our holiday house robbers with their activities, you’ll find a very interesting free spins mechanic that will really get you in the Christmas spirit if it plays out perfectly. So don your red Santa hat, watch out for the neighbour’s dog, and get ready to Swindle All The Way!

We can’t really say that the game wins any points on the graphics that it puts on offer. While the idea is certainly unique, and there’s a bit of comedy watching these pair of convicts clink their tools together like wine glasses when they appear on the reels, it doesn’t help that the visuals feel dated for the year it was released. RTG isn’t a particularly small company either, so we can’t help but feel they could have done a bit more to keep the graphics more suitable for modern tastes.

The gameplay loop itself is satisfying, however. It pans out to a decent medium volatility title in which you play regular spins until the free spins mechanic kicks things into overdrive. It mixes a familiar mechanic of gathering three or more Scatters to activate the special feature, and adds a point and click bonus game on top of that, which determines how many free spins and multipliers you will have once the bonus becomes active. It’s not an amazing or unique when it comes to ideas, but it is a nice blend of familiar things that plays really well together. That, alongside the promise of two progressive jackpots, keeps players invested in hopes of a sizeable win.

You can bet as little as $0.01 per spin, or up to $125 for the high rollers who are looking for a new slot to keep them interested. And while RTG covers a wide variety of bases, their most popular games always seem to be progressive jackpot titles, so it’s no surprise this release also boasts not one, but two jackpots, a minor and major, that appear on the top right of the screen. Our opinion on two progressive jackpots has always been negative, as it makes one jackpot feel worse off, and robs you of the satisfaction of winning it because you didn’t get the good one.

Swindle All The Way uses its symbols to sell its story, and to make sure you don’t feel too bad about what you’re doing. Sure, it’s a pair of escaped convicts who are breaking into houses and taking their valuables, but the people involved are the type of rich that have it embroidered on their Christmas socks. Beyond that, you have milk and cookies left out for Santa, a bag full of loot, and a rather aggressive dog that no doubt wants a piece of the robbers for daring to trespass.

When you get three or more Scatters, you are taken to a bonus section. In it, you track the robbers as they sneak through the house. The reels turn into windows, and you can have one pick on each of the three windows to find a robber, or two if you activated this special feature with four or five Scatters. Getting more Scatters means you can find more robbers, which impacts how many free spins and how high your multiplier will be, with a maximum of 60 free spins and a 33x multiplier increase if you find all ten robbers and get five Scatters.