Empty the Bank: Slot Overview

Tag along with a cheeky Cockney thief as he tries to lift as much loot as he can from one vault after another in Pragmatic Play’s slot Empty the Bank. He’s never short of a comment and gets especially loud once the bonus round kicks in—a hold & win-style feature packed with special symbols. Banks might be insured for this kind of thing (at least in the movies), and the payouts are bigger than we’ve seen from Pragmatic in a while, so bring your safe-cracking tools if you fancy a heist.

Empty the Bank runs on a 5-reel, 4-row layout, offering 20 ways to connect winning combos. Pragmatic places the action in a downtown setting that doesn’t exactly scream London. Either we’re in Canary Wharf, or our Cockney crook has moved somewhere like New York. He’s hardly subtle, either—constantly chatting away, dressed in an unmistakable bank-robber outfit with a mask and a swag bag slung over his shoulder. A swinging 60s-style bank-raid soundtrack rounds it out, giving Empty the Bank a classic Guy Ritchie vibe.

You can start cracking safes on any device, with stakes ranging from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin. Depending on where you play, you may be able to buy the feature, switch on the Ante Bet, or stick with the standard mode. RTP shifts only slightly: 96.44% when buying free spins, or 96.48% for the other two options. Either way, the theoretical return isn’t a worry—assuming you’re on the default setting. Lower RTP editions also exist, so keep an eye out. Anyone chasing highly volatile gameplay should be satisfied too, as Pragmatic Play rates the volatility at 5 out of 5.

Every symbol except one pays when three or more land left to right on adjacent reels starting from the leftmost reel. The exception is the crown, which only needs two or more. A five-crown hit pays 20x the bet, while the other premium symbols—coins, banknotes, gold bars, and sacks of jewels—pay 4-10x. Lower down the paytable are metallic J-A card icons. The robber’s face appears as the wild symbol and can land on all five reels. Wilds substitute for any other symbol in the game, except the bonus tile.

Empty the Bank: Slot Features

Empty the Bank’s hold & win round delivers the main upside, and the only other add-on is the optional Ante Bet. If enabled, the Ante Bet boosts your stake by 25%, causing extra bonus symbols to show up on the reels and improving the odds of landing the feature.

The respin feature is triggered when 3 bank vault scatters land together on reels 1, 3, and 5 in the base game. The action then shifts to a new scene and uses a totally different grid set. It begins on a 4×5 configuration, with locked positions around the edges. The grid can expand up to 7×7 in size. You start with 3 money symbols and 3 respins, and the respin counter resets whenever a new symbol lands on the board. Money symbols take a random value of 1 to 10 times the total bet. The remaining symbols have dedicated effects, including:

• Walkie talkie – takes a value of 1-2x the bet and adds it to all money symbols on the current spin plus every subsequent respin.
• Computer – awards 1x the bet and doubles the value of all money symbols on the screen.
• Burglar – collects the value of all money symbols and other burglar symbols on the screen, freeing up space for new symbols to land.
• Alarm – increases the number of possible respins to 4 instead of 3, and awards 1x the bet.
• Drill – unlocks spaces on reel 1, and awards 1x the bet.
• Hammer – unlocks spaces on reel 7, and awards 1x the bet.
• Ladder – unlocks row 6 then 7 on the first and second time it hits, plus you win 1x the bet.
• Safe door – hit one for 1x the bet, hit three to win the game’s max win.

The feature finishes when you run out of respins or when the board is completely filled. Lastly, if you’d rather not wait for the respin round to appear naturally, paying 80 times your bet will trigger it immediately.

Empty the Bank: Slot Verdict

To borrow a sports cliché, Empty the Bank feels like two different games in one. The base game is fairly quiet, with most of the excitement and value pushed into the respins feature. During testing, what helped keep things from feeling dull were the burglar’s playful antics and how often the respins round showed up.

And the Jason Statham(ish) voiceover? He does recycle a lot of the same lines, and the steady stream of “moolahs” and “cash ’n carrys” can start to grate. Still, it’s clearly tongue-in-cheek and suits the upbeat vibe of a thief happily clearing out vaults on a bright, moonlit night. He also gets plenty of airtime—at least in this review—because the bonus round seemed to trigger with striking regularity, though it’s possible we simply ran hot.

Big moments were rare, but Empty the Bank isn’t lacking in potential: wins up to 10,000x the bet are paid when three safe doors land during the bonus round—10k is the win cap, for clarity. Without the jackpot-style max win condition, building truly huge totals can be difficult. Money symbols begin at only 10x, for example, and the special symbols don’t feel as powerful as the persistent modifiers you’ll find in some other titles.

Outside of the top prize, results generally weren’t especially punchy. Not on the level of games like Money Train 2 or Fire in the Hole, though Empty the Bank seems aimed at a different audience. Pragmatic Plays core player base is broader, so this one isn’t as extreme as some. Instead, it’s lighter, more playful, and leans into character and atmosphere—something to enjoy casually rather than treat like a serious grind.