Back in the day, out west, gold nuggets were a rather coveted item indeed. Some had the patience, dedication, and work ethic to load up their trusty donkey, trek out into the boonies and dig holes or pan water until they found some. Hopefully find some, that is, cos there were no guarantees of striking pay dirt. Others, without the patience, or scruples, would rather let someone else do the physical work and then heist it off them. So it is in developer Pragmatic Play's online slot Heist for the Golden Nuggets. In this game, players don't have to heist anyone, which is nice; they just have to hope they hit paydirt of their own with the assistance of Money symbols, free spins with a Special Money symbol, and a bonus buy.
If you were a bad hombre or mujer back in the day, you'd think the saloon might not be the best place to nick someone's nuggets. But that's where players find themselves for Heist for the Golden Nuggets', initially. Perhaps, this is where the baddies are hatching their plot? Either way, an empty Wild West saloon room is the setting for the base game. Hit free spins, though, and play shifts to a bank vault jam-packed with shiny shiny gold nuggets oozing out of drawers, not to mention stacked bundles of banknotes. A bank robber's wet dream, in other words. While decent visually, Pragmatic Play hasn't done anything particularly special to help distinguish Heist for the Golden Nuggets from dozens of other Western-themed slots. It doesn't hurt your eyes either, though.
Heist for the Golden Nuggets is a 5x3 online slot with 20 paylines for winning combinations to land along. It is highly volatile and available in a variety of RTP configurations. The highest is 96% when playing normally, or slightly lower at 95.97% when buying free spins. Buying free spins comes with a price tag of 75 times the bet, and base bet options vary from 20 p/c to $/€100 per paid spin.
Landing at least 3 matching symbols along a payline from the left side of the grid on consecutive reels triggers a payout. The value for doing so is 1 to 2 times the bet when the J to A card ranks land, or 2.5 to 20 times the bet for hitting 5 of the 5 premium character symbols. Wilds in Heist for the Golden Nuggets are pretty nifty when they land in numbers. Wilds are able to replace any regular pay symbol, and when 2, 3, 4, or 5 wilds are used in the same winning combo, they multiply the win by x2, x4, x8, or x16, respectively.
Another critical symbol in Heist for the Golden Nuggets is the Money symbol. On each spin, Money symbols possess values of 0.5x to 250x the total bet. In the base game, when Money symbols hit, the random value is unlit. At the end of random base game spins, Money symbol values can light up and their total value is awarded.
Should at least 3 Money symbols land on reels 1, 3, and 5, then 5 free spins are triggered. Before free spins begin, the value of all triggering Money symbols is collected in a meter known as the Nugget Value. The value of all other nuggets that land during the feature is added to the meter.
Also, at the start of the free spins round, a random high pay symbol is chosen to be the Free Spins Special Money symbol. During the round, when the Free Spins Special Money symbol hits, each instance of it in view takes the value of the Nugget Value meter and awards it. Hitting at least 3 Money symbols on reels 1, 3, and 5 during the round triggers an extra 5 free spins.
Due to slots like Wild West Gold Megaways, Cowboy Coins, and Wild Wild Duels, Pragmatic Play is really staking a claim on the Wild West sector of the gambling market. Or trying to, at least, because so far, they haven't really been hugely memorable games in the grand scheme of things, despite some achieving measures of success. Heist for the Golden Nuggets feels like it's going to another one that's well presented, gives a nice taste of the Ol' West, with one or two interesting features to test run, but doesn't feel like it's going to stick around overly long.
There's not a lot here that hasn't been used in a modified form before in games like Treasure Wild or Black Bull. Sure, Heist for the Golden Nuggets isn't exactly like those two, but it's fairly close-ish, with a goal being to build the Nugget Value meter as high as possible while augmenting it by hitting as many Free Spins Special Money symbols as the game dishes up. Kinda fun for a while, yet how long the thrill will last before fading out like a glowing ember on the fire in the middle of a grassy patch not too far from Bandera, the so-called 'Cowboy Capital of the World' and wisping its way into the heavens as smoke is anyone's guess.
Heist for the Golden Nuggets' bonus round is easy to get a handle on, though, and it's easy to visualise slot-bound gunslingers having a bit of a laugh collecting nuggets and hitting Free Spins Special Money symbols along the way. As for its largest nugget, the game taps out when hitting its win cap of 5,000x the bet. And so, Heist for the Golden Nuggets might not come first in a quick draw competition or be deserving of the meanest reputation around, but it's made to a decent standard, so it should quicken the pulses of fans of both Westerns and Pragmatic Play's work, for a while at least.
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