Iron Bank

Iron Bank: Slot Overview

Game of Thrones fans will be slightly disappointed to learn Iron Bank doesn’t revolve around those cold, emotionless bankers from Braavos. In other words, don't expect to be chasing down bad debtors across Westeros or doing shady deals with shady monarchs. Instead, Iron Bank is the love child of developer Relax Gaming and Casinogrounds, a casino streaming community. In the words of Casinoground’s CEO Tobias Svensen, Iron Bank is ‘a slot based on our own experience, preferences and ideas.’

Commenting on the creative process, casino streamer Kim Hultman, better know under his streamer name Letsgiveitaspin, told Bigwinboard.com:

"It's been very rewarding and educational to be a part of creating Iron Bank. Instead of already having a concept like there was with the Dead or Alive 2 project, we, together with Relax got to create our own concept from scratch. We took a lot of inspiration from both streamers, the player community and existing games we praise and enjoy. On top of that we've added some fun elements like the "ZaKappa" and "Printing" which are frequently used in the slot community. We are eager to see what players will think of the game!"

When the game loads, players find a 6-reel, 4-row grid located in the middle of a Cuban downtown, Havana presumably, right outside the said Iron Bank. Here we meet the Jaguar, a criminal mastermind, bent on clearing out the bank for all it’s worth. The game has a nice almost hazy appearance to it, evoking the communist island heat, with a look that brought to mind Relax Gaming’s bull filled slot La Fiesta. Both have an irreverent cartoon quality and a stack of features.

Iron Bank is available on any device, offering stakes of 10 p/c to $/€20 per spin. As you’d imagine from this sort of collaboration, coming from a group of hardcore gamers, the volatility is high, rated 5/5 on Relax’s dice meter. Wins are pretty frequent though, falling on a better than 1 in 4 basis, or 28.49% to be exact. RTP is good too, starting at 96.2% on the default mode, rising to a healthy 97% when activating the bonus buy. When combined with the 4,096 ways to win, the base game ticks along quite nicely while waiting for the trio of bonus games to trigger.

As to symbols, they start with 10-A royals and are followed by cigars, rum bottles, gold bananas, plant pots, and raging bull bank managers. Hitting six of a kind premium wins rewards payouts of 2 - 50 times the bet. Our fellow bank robber, the Jaguar, shows up as the wild in two forms - a standard 1x1 wild, plus an expanding full reel wild. In both, he replaces any regular pay symbol to help form a combination.

Iron Bank: Slot Features

Iron Bank is not short on features, packing in a couple of base game extras, free spins, and one of the most desirable bonus symbols you’ll come across. Starting with the base game features, at the start of any spin, 1-3 scatter symbols may randomly be added to the reels before they stop, significantly increasing the chance of triggering free spins.

Random mystery symbols may also be added at the start of any spin. When the reels come to a stop, all mystery symbols transform to reveal the same pay symbol. Also in the base game, there's a chance to land fully stacked wilds on reels 2-5, covering all positions. These come with multipliers of x2-x10 and multiply each other when more than one contributes to a win.

Land 3 or more bank vault door scatter symbols to trigger the free spins feature. Managing to get 4, 5, or 6 bonus symbols in view award an additional 20x, 200x, or 2,000x the stake on top, respectively. When triggered, players are presented with three free spins games to choose.

Option one is Mystery Symbols which comes with 8 free spins, rated highly volatile (4/5). A symbol is chosen at the start of the game to become the sticky mystery symbol. Whenever these symbols land on the marked reels 2-6, they transform into mystery symbols and lock into position. On each spin, they reveal the same symbol. If a whole reel is covered in sticky mystery symbols, 1 free spin is awarded.

Option two is Expanding Wilds, providing 10 very highly volatile (5/5) free spins. In this one, when wilds land in the highlighted area which is made up of the two central reels, they expand to cover the whole reel, plus a respin is awarded. Any win on a respin increases the wild’s multiplier by +1 while awarding another respi with the wilds still locked in position. If expanding wilds sit on both middle reels, their multipliers are multiplied. When no new wins occur, respins end and wilds are cleared for the next free spin.

The third option is the highly volatile (4/5) Multiplier Collect game, awarding 12 free spins. Here, coconut crates land on reels 2-5 increasing a multiplier displayed on the reel above them. When 2 crates are collected the respective multiplier increases by +1 and one bar on their meter is lit. Lighting all three bars awards 3 extra spins. When a wild lands, any multiplier present on that reel is applied to it. More than one wild multiplier in a win has their values multiplied.

It wouldn’t be a slot made by streamers without a feature buy. Where this is available, players can pay 100 times the bet to trigger the bonus and choose which of the three games they’d like a crack at. This skips the main game, but you do miss out on scoring potentially big wins from the bonus symbol.

Iron Bank: Slot Verdict

Relax Gaming bill Iron Bank as a ‘game for players, by players’ which they all say, though in this case, that statement is more accurate than it often is. The high volatility, big rewards, combined with three different purchasable bonus games, make it ripe for streaming. You can see a possible influence in that regard. The look is a fairly good one, the slick mix of dreamy exoticism and cartoon frivolity is just the right foil for the lethal math model lurking beneath.

Iron Bank comes overloaded with features, so perhaps not one for the old-school hardcores who prefer less convolution. Others will appreciate the busy gameplay and fast-paced action in combination with a chance to score potentially life-changing wins.

Iron Bank isn't a particularly sophisticated slot and certainly not about innovation. It's more of a mix tape made by a group of slots enthusiasts containing bits and pieces from other slots they likely prefer playing. For example, there are elements of Pink Elephant here (the core layout + the random scatter symbol trigger) and a bit of Lil' Devil going on in the Expanding Wilds bonus.

Speaking of the Expanding Wilds bonus, the way consecutive wins keep rewarding respins while jacking up multipliers that multiply each other proved a potent mix. Results were decent during testing, though dwarfed by the advertised max potential of 49,998.8 times the bet. We’ve seen Money Train 2 smash its 50,000x win cap, so any doubts about Iron Bank doing the same are softened.

Relax Gaming and Casinogrounds have pulled in all the right elements to ensure Iron Bank pops up on plenty of highlight reels in the future. It won’t suit everyone of course, but Iron Bank’s projected demographic should be well entertained.

Don't Miss

If you're a fan of the gameplay and visual art in Iron Bank, be sure to also try Relax Gaming's and Casinoground's second collaboration titled Beast Mode. It comes with three different free spins features and a free spins gamble option.