>Amongst Pragmatic Play's wide and varied range of interests, one which pops up now and then is the banking industry. To be fair, finance, or more specifically money, banks and bank vaults, feature large in a number of software providers' catalogues. In Pragmatic Play's own cabinet, for example, lies similarly themed games such as Cash Bonanza, Empty the Bank, and Piggy Bank Bills. As such, Reel Banks is in pretty good company, thematically speaking. On the gaming side of things, Reel Banks presents the sort of bonus round which should fire the imagination of players who favour cash symbol accumulations and money pot awards.
Reel Banks' base game is spent in one fancy-looking bank. With its high ceilings, pillars, and colossal doors, it's like walking into the vault at Coutts or above-ground Gringotts. Trappings of wealth are sprinkled about the place, like the boxes of bullion and bills in the background to the coins, bullions, and bills gracing the game grid. Wealth is a common theme in the online slots world, and Pragmatic Play has contributed another cash-heavy entry to the genre. There's nothing particularly original at first sight, but Reel Banks is coated in the sort of that the studio's fans shouldn't find difficult to soak up.
Available on all devices, be aware that Reel Banks comes in three RTP settings, depending on the market. The top RTP model on offer clocks in at 96.04% before dropping back to 95.01% or 94.02%, while volatility is high, getting a rating of 4.5 out of 5 from the studio. To tackle the game, players pick a stake of 25 p/c to €/€100 per spin or click the buy free spins button to go straight to the bonus round. The cost is 80x the bet to do so and has the same RTP as when playing in regular mode.
The game's action takes place on a 5-reel, 4-row grid, with 25 paylines to land regular line wins across. Three to five of kinds are possible, and a five-of-a-kind hit pays 1.6 to 2 times the stake for the low-pay diamonds, hearts, clubs, or spades, rising to 6 to 16 times the bet for five 'sevens', purses, bundles of bills, gold bars, or diamond inspectors. Also landing on all reels are the wild symbols, which can either substitute for any regular pay symbol or make wins of itself worth up to 16x the bet for five-of-a-kind.
>At the heart of Reel Banks is its Money symbols. They play critical roles in the Money Collect feature in the base game and in the Free Spins feature.
Money symbols appear with cash values of 1x to 500x the bet total bet. Completing the feature is the Collect symbol, present only on the rightmost reel. When a Money symbol hits on the grid at the same time as one or more Collect symbols on reels 1-4, the value of all Money symbols in view is awarded.
If Money symbols land on all five reels, the Free Spins feature is triggered, awarding 9 free spins. For this bonus, a container is placed at the top of each reel, called the reel bank. When the round starts, the triggering Money symbols add their values to the respective reel bank above them. If new Money symbols hit, their values are also added to the specific reel bank. In addition, be on the lookout for these special symbols, which possess the following abilities:
Pragmatic Play has a knack for making these Money symbol collect/accumulate style slots, with several under its belt already. Whilst far from being exactly the same, Reel Banks feels like it fits in with the family of slots that includes the likes of Treasure Wild and Black Bull. Reel Banks has an extra level of sophistication than those previously mentioned games, though, at the same time, it kind of felt like a reskin of something - so familiar was the gameplay. Perhaps it is a copy of some sort, but the original managed to hover outside of conscious thought, like the last fragments of a dream after waking, which is felt more than it is recollected.
Reel Bank's action, by comparison, was easier to recall, offering a classic collect mechanic in the base game, awarding Money symbols whenever they land in conjunction with a Collect symbol. Then, ramping things up for the free spins bonus round. As mentioned, there was something familiar about the whole operation, so the blazing lights of extreme novelty weren't exactly present, yet that didn't prevent Reel Banks from being fairly entertaining on the whole. It's debatable whether awarding wins this way is more exciting than it was in Black Bull. Perhaps the same level, just delivered in a different manner. Reel Banks does have higher potential, though, at 5,000x the bet, but lower RTP and a more expensive bonus buy. Swings and roundabouts, really.
All in all, players on the hunt for a money symbol collect kinda game with a relatively sophisticated bonus round might find what they are looking for in Reel Banks. Not a major game changer, but Reel Bank's got the Pragmatic Play brand of glossy flow going on, which should help make the rest of the game that little bit extra palatable for its target audience.
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