Payday Express

Payday Express: Slot Overview

Go fer yer guns, yella-belly. Sorry, that was weird, but it was hard to avoid busting out a Western cliché or two after playing Payday Express, an online slot from provider Fantasma Games. For the second time in its history, the Swedish slot maker has donned Stetson and stirrups and headed to the frontier for some cowboy-themed action. Payday Express is the result, and it's a relatively straightforward game built around a Payday Wild feature, free spins with a sticky symbol respin feature, as well as a bonus buy option.

Payday Express has a different vibe to Fantasma Game's last trip out West and actually kinda looked like something competitor iSoftBet might have made. Bounty Belles, perhaps? Not sure; Payday Express just ignited iSoftBet memories for some reason. Shunning the usual middle of a dusty town outside a saloon location a lot of providers go for when making a Western, Payday Express, by contrast, finds itself further out of town, its game grid plonked on a train track in the middle of pretty much nowhere. Cacti flank the reels, as do sticks of dynamite and towering rocky terrain. Behind the grid, not sure what's going on there. A golden light glows mysteriously behind the game grid the way Marcellus Wallace's briefcase did when opened in the film Pulp Fiction. What was in that, by the way? There was a theory that the case contained Wallace's soul, but who knows?

In Payday Express, the lights could be attributed to a train thundering along the tracks towards the gaming grid, yet it's more likely to be the sun rising or setting. The grid itself is made up of 5 reels and 3 rows of symbols with 10 paylines used for the purpose of win evaluations. Further numbers include a so-so 94.46% RTP, which is a little disappointing, though volatility should please gamblers who prefer it high. Bet selection ranges from 20 p/c to $/€30, and players may choose to buy the free spins round for the cost of 70 times the bet. Buying free spins comes with an RTP of 94.55%.

Payday Express awards regular line wins for landing matching symbols left to right from the first reel onwards. The game might only have 10 paylines, but symbol values are chunky at the upper end of the table. For example, premiums are made up of 4 character symbols, awarding 25 to 500 times the bet for 5 OAK, whereas a 5 low pay symbol win of the 10-A card royals is worth 4 to 10 times the stake. The wild symbols land on any reel, and they are able to substitute for any regular paying symbols during win evaluations. Get lucky enough to hit a 5 wild winning line, and the reward for doing so is a payout of 2,000x the bet.

Payday Express: Slot Features

Twirling on its index fingers like spinning pistols are Payday Express' extras – the Payday Wild feature and free spins.

Payday Wild Feature

Landing 3 or more wild symbols on the reels triggers the Payday Wild feature. Each wild symbol spawns and places a new wild symbol on the grid in random positions.

Free Spins

Trains are displayed on Payday Express' scatter symbols, and hitting 3 of them in the base game awards 15 free spins. In free spins, any line win triggers the Respins feature. All winning symbols and wild symbols are locked in their positions while the reels respin. Any new line win or wild symbol that lands on a respin locks in place and retriggers the Respin feature. When no new line win or Wild symbol occurs, the Respin feature ends. The Payday feature does not trigger until the end of the Respins feature. Free spins cannot be retriggered.

Payday Express: Slot Verdict

This, as they say, ain't Fantasma Games' first Western rodeo. That would be Bounty Showdown, which offered a very different experience to the one found in Payday Express. Payday Express is a lighter game in several ways. The theme treatment, for one, while not overtly humorous, has a jollier feel, exacerbated by its driving tunes. Where Westerns like Dead or Alive 2 or Deadwood went the moody route, Payday Express is closer in some ways to Yosemite Sam. He's got attitude, yet he's also sort of comical too, which takes the edge off. Payday Express is no slapstick comedy show, but as far as Western slots go, it sits on the opposite end of the scale from games like Tombstone RIP and El Paso Gunfight xNudge, or True Grit Redemption which are all funnily enough from Nolimit City.

The gameplay, too, leans to the lighter side of the spectrum, though this does not mean the features here are limply ineffective. It's funny, like waiting for a bus that's late, then 2 or 3 of them turn up at the same time, sometimes you come across a feature you haven't seen in a while, and two games will come along with it in quick succession. What we're talking about is the sticky respin feature used here, and in a slot we reviewed like a day before Payday Express. For those partial to sticky respin action and who want the name, the previous game was Thunderkick's Grand Melee. What's nice for collectors is both studios have approached the sticky respin mechanic in different ways. Grand Melee's use of it was arguably the more imaginative, but Payday Express' has merit, too. What helps this one stand out is when the Payday Wild feature triggers alongside it. Not only do those extra wild symbols create the chance for linking pay symbols, but they might, just might, spawn in ultra-conducive spots to create the mythical 2,000x the bet wild symbol win. Very unlikely to happen much, but it's out there, stalking the prairie like a fabled white buffalo.

Payday Express is a simpler game than they often are from Fantasma Games and may suit players looking for a relatively low to middle-weight, uncomplicated Western to tangle with. Despite a fairly respectable max win figure of 6,254 times the bet to chase, there are questions over how much of an adverse effect the uncomplicated gaming and weak return value will have on Payday Express' long-term desirability.