Play Money Train 5 For Real Prizes
Money Train 5 Review
Relax Gaming sold Money Train 4 on two promises. One was a number, 150,000x, the biggest ceiling the series had ever carried. The other was finality: their own page called it one last chance, the train leaving the station for its final destination. Neither promise did the game much good. The number did not make it exciting, and the finale was not final.
Money Train 5 answers that in the most interesting way available. It cuts the maximum win by a third, down to 100,000x in Ultra Mode and 50,000x in Standard, and spends the difference on structure. There is a station system with four unlock tiers, twelve special symbols instead of a handful, a grid that physically grows a row partway through a round, and tickets that shove the reels sideways. Money Train 4 chased the ceiling. This one chased the gameplay.
Having played it, the correction lands. There is noticeably more happening per spin than in the fourth game; the ticket and upgrade interactions keep firing into each other, and it feels like a worthier successor than 4 ever managed, regardless of what the max win says. That is the headline, and it is not a headline about a number.
Pros
- The gameplay problem is fixed. More interaction per spin than the previous game managed, with tickets, station unlocks and symbol upgrades constantly feeding each other rather than sitting there.
- Buying a bonus is the only product in the game that returns more than simply spinning, at 96.50% against a 96.10% base game. All four buys return exactly the same, so you choose on ceiling and appetite rather than hunting for value.
- The order of operations is published in full, so mid round you can look at the board and work out what a symbol landing in the right place is actually worth.
- Landing a Ticket Master to trigger the bonus starts the train at station 15, which is precisely what the Super Free Spins buy costs. One symbol, 500x of value.
- Progression is legible. Stations 5, 10, 15 and 20 each unlock something specific and named, so you always know what you are climbing toward.
Cons
- The ceiling went backwards. Money Train 4 caps at 150,000x, this caps at 100,000x in Ultra and 50,000x in Standard.
- In Standard Mode the bonus hard stops. Reach 50,000x and the round ends there and then, whatever was still building on the reels.
- Ultra Mode is a toggle rather than a headline, and plenty of players will never notice the 100,000x version exists.
- The base game is filler. Five of the best symbol pays 20x your bet and the wild pays the same, so nothing outside the bonus is worth waiting for.
- Both Bonus Reels modes are market dependent, so depending where you play they may not appear at all.
Gameplay
Five reels, four rows, and 40 fixed paylines, always all active, with stakes from $0.10 to $20 in Standard Mode. The published return is 96.10%, and volatility is about as high as ratings go. The paytable is not where the money is: the top symbol pays 20x your bet for five and the wild matches it, with the card suits down at 3x to 5x.
What the base game exists for is the Nuclear Wild, where crosshairs lock onto up to five reels and plant bombs that detonate into full wild reels when they form part of a win, and an expanded wild reel counts as four positions. Beyond that, you are spinning for three bonus symbols. Everything this game is actually about happens after that, on a train that moves through numbered stations while the reels slide out from under you.
How To Play
- Set your stake between $0.10 and $20. All 40 paylines are always active.
- Land three or more bonus symbols anywhere on the reels to open the bonus round.
- The round starts with three spins, and every new symbol that lands resets the counter back to three.
- Tickets carry a number from +1 to +5. That is how many steps the reels move from right to left, and each reel pushed off the board advances the train a station and pays out its total value.
- Watch the station counter, not the spin counter. Station 5 unlocks persistent symbols, station 10 adds a whole extra row, station 15 unlocks the Bomber and Pyromancer, station 20 activates the Permanent Payer.
- If you are buying, every buy returns 96.50%, so pick on the ceiling and the starting station rather than looking for the best value one. There isn’t one.
- Check whether Ultra Mode is actually available before counting on the 100,000x figure.
Bonus Symbols
- Bonus Symbol. Reveals a value between 1x and 10x your bet. Three of them open the round.
- Collector. Collects every visible value on the reels and adds the lot to its own.
- Payer. Reveals a value and adds it to every other visible symbol.
- Collector Payer. Picks three to five targets, absorbs their values into its own, then pays that updated total back out to each of them. The two jobs in one symbol.
- Sniper. Doubles the values of three to eight other symbols, and can hit the same target more than once.
- Ticket Master. Takes the total win and adds it to every other visible symbol, and always applies a 1 value ticket. Trigger the bonus with one and the train starts at station 15.
- Arms Dealer. Converts one to four plain bonus symbols into feature symbols, which then perform their own actions.
- Necromancer. Brings back one or two special features that have already been used.
- Absorber. Removes all the ordinary bonus symbols from the reels. Special symbols are safe from it.
- Bomber. Station 15 and up. Multiplies every visible value on the reels by 2x, 3x, 4x or 5x.
- Pyromancer. Station 15 and up. Burns a fixed Hot Zone onto the train. Feature symbols that can be persistent become persistent inside it, and any bonus value that lands or is pushed into the zone doubles.
- Permanent Payer. Station 20 only. It can be boosted by Payers, but not by ones the Necromancer or Arms Dealer created, and only by the first effect of each new Payer that lands.
Seven of them can turn up as persistent versions that fire again on every spin: Collector, Payer, Sniper, Collector Payer, Necromancer, Arms Dealer and Bomber. That only becomes possible once you reach station 5.
Bonus Features
The round itself
Three bonus symbols award three spins, and the triggering symbols reveal their values immediately. Every new symbol landed resets the counter to three, so the round runs as long as the reels keep giving you something. The board starts at five reels and four rows and can grow to five rows by reaching station 10.
Tickets, and why the reels leaving matter
This is the piece that separates the game from its predecessors. Tickets carry values from +1 to +5, and that number is how many steps the whole board shifts from right to left. Every reel that gets pushed off the edge does two things at once: it advances the train by one station, and it adds its total value to your win.
Progress and payment are the same action. You are not collecting values and then separately climbing a ladder; you are climbing the ladder by cashing out the left-hand side of the board. That is a genuinely different rhythm from a standard collect round, and it is why the game feels busier than Money Train 3 or the fourth game without simply having more symbols on screen.
The order everything happens in
Relax publishes the full sequence, which is rarer than it should be and makes the round readable while you are in it. Every special symbol reveals its value before doing anything. Then they act from the top row down, and within each row from left to right. The Permanent Payer goes after all of that. Tickets always go last.
That ordering is the math. A Payer landing above a Collector is worth more than the same two symbols the other way up, because the Payer has already boosted everything by the time the Collector sweeps the board. If you want one thing to watch that will change how you read a spin, it is the vertical position of your feature symbols.
The buy menu
- Free Spins, 100x. Straight entry, starting at station 0.
- Ultra Free Spins, 250x. The same, with the 100,000x ceiling.
- Super Free Spins, 500x. Starts you at station 15, so the Bomber and Pyromancer are live from the first spin.
- Ultra Super Free Spins, 2,000x. Station 15 and the higher ceiling together.
Every one of them runs at 96.50%. So does nothing else in the game: the base round, both Bonus Reels modes, and the Enhanced Spin ante all sit at 96.10%. That makes the arithmetic unusually simple. Buying a bonus is the only thing here that returns more than spinning, and once you have decided to buy, the four products are identical in value and differ only in ceiling and where you board the train. Do not go looking for the clever pick, because there isn’t one.
One thing to know about Standard Mode
If the sum of all your values reaches 50,000x, the bonus ends immediately and pays 50,000x. Not a soft cap that trims an overflow, a full stop. In a round that is compounding well, that is a real ceiling to run into, and it is the clearest argument for Ultra Mode if your casino offers it.
SweepsPlays Verdict
- If Money Train 4 put you off: come back. This is the fix. More going on per spin, and the ticket and upgrade interactions build on each other rather than sitting still.
- If you are here for the ceiling: the fourth game still holds the record at 150,000x. This one trades that away deliberately and gets a better game for it.
- If you buy bonuses: all four cost different amounts and return the same 96.50%. Pick the ceiling you want and ignore the rest.
- New to the series: start with Money Train 2, the one everyone remembers, then come here for the most complete version of the idea. More from the studio on our Relax Gaming page.
