Make Off Like a Bandit in Heist Guys

In the dead of night, three heisters are cruising down the street, preparing to hit the biggest bank in the area. If they get away with it, they’ll be set for life. However, failure probably means a lifetime in the slammer instead. The Heist Guys only have one shot to pull this off, and they’re counting on you to lead them to success in this ELK Studios slot.

Should you try your luck with this crew or wait for a better opportunity to come your way? There’s just one way to find out, and that’s to read our review of this game!

Heist Guys Visuals & Sounds

While the Heist Guys slot isn’t the most colourful game we’ve ever seen, that’s not a point against it. The dark night casts tall buildings and palm trees in darkness, putting even more emphasis on the colourful convertible beneath the reels. When certain features are triggered, the heisters jump into the car and start driving it down the road, creating a cool visual effect. We also appreciate how background elements are occasionally lit up in red and blue, showing how the cops are actively pursuing our crew.

ELK Studios uses the symbol designs to give each member of the crew a bit of personality. Their choice of mask, demeanour, and what tool they use gives you an idea of who they are. Available icons include stun guns, remote detonators, dynamite, the three heisters, and golden bars. The letter W is a Super Wild, while the letter B between two ivory pillars is the Scatter.

A chill track plays in the background as you’re spinning the reels. If you imagine cruising down the highway with your buddies, it fits perfectly. However, upgrading the Heist Guys icons or triggering the Heist Bonus plays a more action-oriented track that fits something high stakes, like a break-in at the bank.

Heist Guys Gameplay & Features

The game uses a 6×6 playing area with cluster wins replacing paylines. Scoring a winning combination requires five or more matching symbols in horizontally or vertically adjacent positions anywhere on the screen.

Cascading Reels

Every time a win happens, the participating icons disappear from the reels. The remaining symbols drop to fill the empty spots, while new icons appear from the top. This can result in multiple winning combinations happening at the cost of a single spin, which gets a big thumbs up from us.

Super Wild

In an effort to make its game look more exciting, ELK Studios added a bit of flair to every bonus feature. So, instead of having boring old Wilds, we have Super Wilds! What this means in practice is that there’s only one Wild, and it doesn’t disappear from the reels. Instead, it moves to a new random position each time the reels cascade. If it contributes to a winning combination, its multiplier increases by one.

Kickers

If a Super Wild participates in a win with one of the three heist guys, it upgrades them to the most valuable Kicker symbol type. The upgrade occurs after the win happens and remains in effect for the remainder of the round. If all three heisters get upgraded, it triggers a Super Drop. All non-winning icons except for Super Wilds, bonus, and kicker symbols are removed, giving you a better chance to land a big win.

Big Symbols

All icons can appear as Super or Mega symbols. The former is a 2×2 icon comprised of four symbols, while the latter is a 3×3 icon that consists of nine symbols.

Heist Bonus

This is by far one of the most unique bonus features we’ve had the pleasure of playing recently. It starts when you get three or more Scatters to appear on the reels simultaneously. However, instead of awarding free spins, the heisters pull up in front of the bank and carry out a robbery.

ELK Studios designed the inside of a bank on a grid-based system. When the robbers come inside the bank, each rolls a die, which can award them up to 6 steps. These steps are spent moving through the grid, going deeper into the bank. The red robber moves first, then the green, and finally the blue one.

The heisters will eventually reach a loot room that contains a safe. When that happens, they will kick the door open, take whatever’s in the safe, and keep moving. Simpler safes can contain low-value coins, keycards, dynamites, or zappers. As you venture deeper into the bank, the value of the safes increases, as do the rewards they can pay out.

The bank is protected by security guards, who patrol along the same grid the robbers move. If a robber and guard cross paths, they will imprison the currently active heister. They will be placed in one of the loot rooms, and other heisters will prioritize rescuing them. This can result in them changing their path, which is interesting to see! If you pick up the zapper, the robbers will remove the guard rather than getting caught.

If you reach the back of the bank, you’ll have a chance to crack the vault open. If you picked up a keycard along the way, you’ll have guaranteed access to the vault. Otherwise, one of the heisters will try to hack their way in, though there is no guarantee it’ll work. Along with three guaranteed safes, the vault also holds the super-secure safe that you must open to get the jackpot. However, you can only get inside the super-secure safe if you pick up dynamite on your way to the vault.

X-iter

Like in most other ELK Studios games, you can spend money to get an advantage or outright purchase bonus features. Available options and their costs include:

• Bonus Hunt costs 3x and increases your chance to trigger the Heist Bonus by more than 4x
• Bangin costs 10x and guarantees at least two big symbols and a Super Wild with a 5x multiplier
• Ridin costs 25x and grants one drop with all heist guys upgraded to kicker symbols and a Super Wild with a 10x multiplier
• Bonus costs 100x and guarantees access to the Heist Bonus
• Super Bonus costs 500x and activates the Heist Bonus with the zapper, keycard, and dynamite in your inventory

Heist Guys RTP and Payouts

The Heist Guys slot has an RTP of 94% and a 10,000x jackpot. With that kind of top prize, we expected this release to be more volatile. However, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that ELK Studios gave the game a medium-high variance.