The One Armed Bandit (Yggdrasil Gaming): Overview

If you’re a developer making a western-themed slot, it’s worth remembering that players come in with certain expectations, because NetEnt’s Dead or Alive and its follow-up Dead or Alive 2 set the benchmark. Above all, many will be looking for huge win potential. Back when it was still rare, NetEnt’s Dead or Alive offered max wins of up to 10,000x—real, documented potential that players actually reached, not just marketing talk. With Dead or Alive 2, NetEnt understood they had to raise the bar again, and they did so by pushing volatility and potential to extreme levels while still keeping things reasonably balanced. Either way, for anyone wanting an example of how to enter the genre without resorting to a straight copy, Tombstone by small studio Nolimit City is a strong reference point.

Over the years, Yggdrasil Gaming has explored plenty of interesting themes, but they hadn’t truly ventured into the wild frontier until now. It’s not as if the door wasn’t open to them. Their major hit Cazino Zeppelin was clearly influenced by Dead or Alive, yet instead of cowboys and outlaws they opted for a steampunk setting and introduced their own gameplay twist. The end result was a distinctive, attractive slot that became one of the studio’s biggest successes. In general, Yggdrasil has never been a provider known for blatantly copying others.

With The One Armed Bandit, you finally get the American frontier through Yggdrasil’s lens. It’s highly volatile and built on 5 reels, 3 rows and 20 fixed paylines. The game isn’t overloaded with mechanics, but the features it does include feel purposeful. In the base game, landing individual scatter symbols awards respins that can produce 5x multiplier wilds. The main attraction is the free spins round, where the wild multiplier can climb as high as 20x, opening the door to very large payouts. You can spin The One Armed Bandit for as little as 10 cents to 40€ per spin.

Yggdrasil’s art team is usually dependable and ranks among the most capable in the business. Taking place in a quiet wild west settlement, with the reels framed by a wooden gallows, the slot is paired with a notably beautiful, slightly emotional soundtrack that helps set the tone. There are 8 standard symbols in total: 4 low-value card suit icons, plus higher-paying metal spurs, cowboy hats, liquor flasks and pistols. The pistol is the top payer, awarding 80 times your stake for 5 across a full payline. Symbols don’t come stacked on the reels, and there are no standard wilds.

The One Armed Bandit (Yggdrasil Gaming): Features

Any time one or more bandit scatters land in the base game, the Respin feature activates. A silver star appears above each reel where a scatter hits, and you receive one respin for every scatter visible. During the respin, scatter symbols on all reels marked with a silver star are swapped for 5x multiplier wilds. So, if a scatter lands on reels 1 and 3, you’ll be awarded 2 respins with the chance to land 5x multiplier wilds on those two reels. If another scatter then lands on reel 2 during the respin, you’ll gain 1+ respin and also unlock the chance to land 5x multiplier wilds on reels 1, 2, and 3.

If you’re able to collect all 5 silver stars before your respins are used up, the Free Spins bonus is triggered (we found the bonus frequency to be around 150-250 spins). You begin with 10 free spins, and any respins remaining from the Respins feature are converted into extra free spins (up to 14). Once the round starts, you have a 5x starting wild multiplier that can appear on any reel. During free spins, when a bandit bonus symbol lands, it awards 1+ spin and advances you 1 step on the multiplier meter. Landing 2 or 4 of these upgrades the multiplier wild to 10x and 20x respectively. After the maximum 20x wild multiplier is active, any bandit bonus scatter that appears will still grant an extra spin. In the free spins round, it’s possible to hit up to 8000 times your stake on a single payline (it seems you can’t land a wild line, as the payout would be enormous).

The One Armed Bandit (Yggdrasil Gaming): Final Verdict

It’s helpful to be aware that many reviews of The One Armed Bandit published so far appear to have been written by content writers who haven’t actually played the slot. In the race to outrank competitors, they lean on Yggdrasil’s fact sheet and draw conclusions without any hands-on testing. Sometimes it even turns unintentionally funny—such as when someone calls the music “quirky,” apparently assuming a Deliverance-style soundtrack, when it’s nothing like that in reality.

After playing it ourselves, we think The One Armed Bandit is a genuinely attractive release with the ingredients to become a popular slot, and potentially even a classic. The presentation is strong, the gameplay stays interesting, and the potential is excellent. Naturally, it still needs to prove itself once it’s live, but we’re confident we’ll see some big wins on it. Just remember that The One Armed Bandit is highly volatile and will drain most bankrolls, but if you’re not afraid of outlaws, the wild west is waiting.