Mega Heist: Slot Overview

A big part of the appeal of online slots is slipping into a different role for a while and imagining yourself doing things you’d never do in real life. Sure, they’re not quite on the same fantasy level as full-on video games, but with strong visuals and a bit of imagination, today’s video slots can still feel like a quick escape. Mega Heist from game provider Relax Gaming is a good example. Here, players can picture themselves as seasoned criminals: first plotting a prison break, then moving on to rob a gas station, a club, and a bank across a 3 level bonus game.

The base game of Mega Heist kicks off behind bars, showing the penitentiary from a top-down perspective. Barred doors sit on the left, the game logo is up top, and barbed-wire fencing runs along the east and south edges. Even though the theme is crime, the overall style is light and cartoony. In that sense, Mega Heist felt somewhat in line with earlier Relax Gaming titles like Snake Arena. And once the little characters start marching across the grid during the bonus, it can even bring to mind the 2020 release Marching Legions.

Relax Gaming is well known for producing highly volatile slots, and Mega Heist follows that pattern. The studio rates volatility at 5 out of 5, and the default RTP is 96.19% with standard spin-by-spin play or 96.5% when using the feature buy. Stakes range from 10 p/c to $/€50 per spin, and gameplay runs on a 5-reel, 4-row layout with 178 connecting ways to win.

To land wins with this setup, matching symbols must begin on the left side of the grid and connect across adjacent reels. Symbols also need to sit on the same row, or within 1 row above or below the symbol to the left. Mega Heist includes 11 paying symbols. The first 4 are low-value diamonds, clubs, spades and hearts; the next 3 are mid-tier symbols: a bar of soap (cheeky), dice, and handcuffs; and the top tier features 3 crook symbols plus a policeman. In payout terms, 5 matching low symbols return 2x the bet, 5 matching mids pay 3x the bet, and 5 premium symbols award 6-20 times the bet. The sunglassed ‘W’ symbol acts as a wild, substituting for all paying symbols on the reels.

Mega Heist: Slot Features

You’re not exactly raking it in while stuck in prison, so the real chance of grabbing more loot comes from moving beyond the slammer and into the three bonus locations. This is how it plays out.

Escape Bonus

Hitting 2 bonus symbols in the base game sparks a prison riot, and up to 4 robbers attempt to escape. The robbers march from left to right across a grid, Plants vs Zombies style, each carrying either a bet multiplier or a bonus symbol. Any robber that reaches the Safe Zone on the right delivers their reward. Policemen may appear to nab robbers, losing their prize, and the feature finishes once there are no robbers left in the Robber’s zone. If at least one robber holding a bonus symbol makes it into the Safe Zone, the Mega Heist bonus is activated. When that happens, up to 3 additional bonus symbols may also be granted.

Mega Heist Bonus

As another route in, landing 3, 4, or 5 bonus symbols in the base game awards 10, 15, or 30 robbers for the Mega Heist bonus mission. This bonus is split into 3 levels, and each stage comes with higher winning potential – level 1, the gas station is 150x, level 2, the club is 1,500x; and level 3, the bank is 15,000x the bet.

Robbers travel left to right carrying bet multipliers and may also pick up power-up symbols, locking in rewards when they reach the far-right Safe Zone reel. Once a robber reaches the Safe Zone, they are added back into the robber pool and can head out again into the Robber’s zone. Holding a multiplier decreases the bank counter. When the bank counter reaches 0, the mission advances to the next level. Police can catch robbers, and if there are no robbers left either in the robber pool or in the Robber’s zone, the bonus game ends.

Collecting a multiplier power-up also reduces the bank counter. Not all power-up symbols appear at every level, but this is what they can do:

• Multipliers increase robber’s prize by x2, x3, x5, or x10.
• 1, 2, 3, or 5 robbers are added to the pool.
• The robber becomes disguised so police cannot catch them.
• Police do not appear in this round.
• The motorbike takes up to 2 robbers to the Safe zone.
• The bus takes up to 8 robbers to the safe zone.

Buy Feature

If you choose to buy the feature for 150x the bet, the Mega Heist bonus game starts with 10, 15, or 30 robbers.

Mega Heist: Slot Verdict

Mega Heist is one of those gambling titles that, in its own way, sits somewhere between a classic online slot and a video game. Kind of—at least to a degree. If you’re not purchasing the Mega Heist bonus, most of your time is spent in fairly standard slot fashion, spinning and hoping the symbols line up into wins via the connected ways mechanic. Connected ways can feel more dynamic than fixed paylines, though it’s also a touch more fiddly and not quite as easy to read at a glance as a straightforward ways-to-win setup. That said, the pay mechanic isn’t really the main attraction here, because Mega Heist is ultimately about breaking out and getting as many robbers as possible marching through the Robber zone into the Safe zone to cash in prizes.

The bonus rounds are also where Mega Heist can feel a bit like Marching Legions. Yes, the marching theme is an obvious overlap, but it can also trigger some of the same feelings as that earlier game. You’ll likely find yourself mentally urging the little robber troublemakers to hurry across the Robber Zone, dodge the cops, and not only bank their rewards but ideally push the mission to the next level too—sometimes with help from a sizeable set of power-ups. As you’d expect, a feature like this can be fun, irritating, tense, satisfying, and everything in between. Reaching the gas station stage wasn’t especially difficult, but getting all the way to the bank level wasn’t exactly a breeze either. And the bank is the destination you really want, since that’s where wins up to 15,000x the bet can happen.

For completeness, Mega Heist’s maximum potential is actually 16,491 times the bet, though that’s splitting hairs. Overall, Relax Gaming has once again come up with a distinctive concept that lets players take a shot at something different and, with luck, walk away with a decent haul. The deciding factor is whether the marching-robber bonus concept appeals to you. If it looks like your kind of thing, Mega Heist should be a fun oddity. If it doesn’t, you may be better off with a more traditional alternative.