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Le Bandit Review
Meet Smokey Le Bandit, a crowbar-clutching raccoon who scuttles around the backstreets of Paris looking for his next victim to fleece. Get lucky and he might share some of those stolen coins with you, especially once he straps on the leprechaun disguise.
Three years on, that raccoon has a lot to answer for. The coins, four-leaf clovers and pot of gold collectors introduced here still run through a large part of the Hacksaw catalogue. Le Pharaoh kept the Golden Squares and the identical coin values while swapping cascades for sticky re-drops, and Le Viking carried the same coins and clovers into a hold and win round with a magic cauldron doing the collecting. Le Bandit is where all of it started, which makes it worth judging on its own terms rather than as a nostalgia pick.
The frame is cluster pays across a 6×5 grid with Super Cascades, where a win clears every copy of that symbol off the reels and leaves Golden Squares behind. A Rainbow turns those squares into coins. Everything else is about how much you can pile onto the board before it cashes out.
Pros
- A hit lands roughly every 3.2 spins, which keeps the reels busy while you wait for the Rainbow that actually starts the coin action.
- Gold Coins carry 25x, 50x, 100x, 250x or 500x, and a Pot of Gold sweeping a loaded grid is how the 10,000x becomes reachable at all.
- 96.34% on the top setting is generous by Hacksaw standards, and the four buys sit close to it, from 96.28% up to 96.4%.
- All three bonus rounds retrigger on identical terms, and landing 4 scatters mid-round upgrades you to All That Glitters Is Gold with 4 extra spins on top.
- Treasure at the End of the Rainbow guarantees a Rainbow on every spin and removes Bronze Coins from the pool, so the best round also has the highest floor.
Cons
- Everything hinges on the Rainbow. Without one on the grid the Golden Squares just sit there, and a cold run can last a long time with nothing revealed.
- Base clusters are thin. Five connecting symbols return between 0.1x and 1x your stake, so the reels alone will never fund a session.
- Treasure at the End of the Rainbow is not on the buy menu at any price and needs 5 scatters at once, so the strongest round is down to luck.
- The 10,000x ceiling carries a stated probability of 1 in 14,000,000 spins, which makes it a marketing number rather than a target.
- Four RTP settings run from 96.34% down to 88.36%, and which one your casino loads is not your decision.
Gameplay
Medium volatility on a 6×5 grid, with wins formed by 5 or more matching symbols connecting anywhere and a hit arriving roughly every 3.2 spins. Those hits are small: the royals pay 0.1x for five and 15x for a 13-symbol cluster, and even the top hat only reaches 100x at 13 or more. The money is in the reveals.
Every win leaves Golden Squares behind, and a Rainbow on the grid converts them into Bronze Coins worth 0.2x to 4x, Silver at 5x to 20x, or Gold at 25x to 500x, with four-leaf clovers and pots of gold appearing among them. Clovers multiply adjacent coins and pots by 2x up to 10x. Pots of gold then collect every coin value on the board plus any other pot, working top to bottom and left to right, after which the squares reactivate, and the whole sequence runs again. The 10,000x cap needs that loop to keep feeding itself.
How To Play
- Set your stake anywhere from $0.10 to $100 a spin, though feature buys can exceed that ceiling.
- Land 5 or more matching symbols connected anywhere on the grid to win.
- Every copy of the winning symbol clears from the reels and new symbols drop in, cascading for as long as fresh wins keep forming.
- Each cleared position leaves a Golden Square behind. These do nothing until a Rainbow lands.
- When a Rainbow appears, the Golden Squares turn into coins, clovers and pots of gold, and the reveal sequence begins.
- Land 3, 4 or 5 FS scatters on one spin to trigger the three bonus rounds.
- Use the buy menu for the ante spins or the two purchasable bonuses, where your casino offers them.
Bonus Symbols
- Golden Squares: left behind wherever a winning symbol was cleared. They hold their position but stay dormant until a Rainbow activates them.
- Rainbow: activates every Golden Square on the grid once all winning combinations have paid. Nothing in the coin game happens without one.
- Coins: cash prizes paid as a multiple of your stake. Bronze pays 0.2x, 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 3x or 4x. Silver pays 5x, 10x, 15x or 20x. Gold pays 25x, 50x, 100x, 250x or 500x.
- Four-Leaf Clover: multiplies all coins and pot of gold symbols on adjacent squares by 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x or 10x. Clovers resolve before any pot of gold does.
- Pot of Gold: collects the values of every coin on the grid and every other pot of gold, storing the combined total. They activate top to bottom, left to right. Once the last one has collected, the Golden Squares activate again and the process repeats.
- FS Scatter: 3, 4 or 5 landing together trigger Luck of the Bandit, All That Glitters Is Gold, or Treasure at the End of the Rainbow.
- Wild: substitutes for every regular paying symbol.
Bonus Features
- Luck of the Bandit (3 FS): 8 free spins, with Golden Squares holding their place between spins until a Rainbow activates them.
- All That Glitters Is Gold (4 FS): 12 free spins, with Golden Squares staying highlighted for the whole round even after they have been activated once.
- Treasure at the End of the Rainbow (5 FS): 12 free spins with a Rainbow guaranteed on every single spin, and Bronze Coins removed from the round entirely.
- Retriggers and upgrades: landing 2 extra scatters mid-round adds 2 free spins and 3 adds 4. Landing 4 scatters during Luck of the Bandit upgrades you to All That Glitters Is Gold and hands you 4 more spins.
Ante Spins
- BonusHunt FeatureSpins (3x stake): each spin becomes 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus. Returns 96.28%.
- Rainbow FeatureSpins (50x stake): guarantees a Rainbow symbol every spin. Returns 96.36%. Both options stay switched on until you disable them.
Feature Buys
- Luck of the Bandit: 100x the stake, returning 96.3%.
- All That Glitters Is Gold: 250x the stake, returning 96.4% and the best return in the game.
- Treasure at the End of the Rainbow: cannot be bought. Five scatters is the only way in.
SweepsPlays Verdict
- The question in 2026 isn’t whether to play a coins and collectors slot; it’s whether to play the original or one of its children. On return, Le Bandit still wins: 96.34% beats most of what came after, and BonusHunt at 3x is the cheapest way into any of them.
- Where it loses is headroom. A 10,000x ceiling looks modest now that Le Cowboy runs the same basic idea up to 25,000x.
- Take the original for the better return, the busier grid, and the cheaper entry. Take a descendant if the max win is the only reason you sat down.
Hacksaw has since revisited the theme on a much smaller board; if the Hold & Win format appeals more than cluster pays, Le Bandit Hold & Win trades the 10,000x ceiling for two lock-and-collect bonus rounds and a fixed 2,500x Grand jackpot.
