Money Train Origins Dream Drop: Slot Overview

Back before massive skulled trains thundered through futuristic cities, or before heavy iron behemoths groaned through steampunk deserts, simple locomotives pulled carriages across the Wild West, transporting passengers and goods through dusty one-horse towns along the way. This is the premise of Money Train Origins Dream Drop as it takes the legendary Money Train franchise back to its roots. Back to a high-stakes world of gunslingers, tumbleweeds, and of course, trains. Whether boarding the Dream Drop progressive jackpot version or non-Dream Drop version, at its heart, Money Train Origins comes equipped with an OP hold 'n win round the series is famous for.

After a cinematic intro introduces the key characters, Money Train Origins Dream Drop rolls an old school wagon into town, and the stage is set. Its 5-reel, 4-row gaming panel is rammed onto the side of a carriage riddled with weapons, while a wooden constructed Old West town set beneath a moody, clouded sky peeks out from behind. The finishing touch is one of those great twangy soundtracks that reminds you why one of the finest things about playing a Western slot is the tunes. The visuals and sounds here are nothing short of spectacular. The game's graphic artists have clearly pulled out all the stops to create a riveting and immersive Wild West environment and every pixel on the screen is meticulously crafted.

When loading up a bet, the options vary from 20 p/c to $/€100, and on the DD version, the higher the bet, the bigger the chance of triggering a jackpot win. The return to player value varies depending on how you tackle the game. On Money Train Origins Dream Drop, it comes in at 94% on account of the jackpots, while the non-DD has a higher value of 96.11% - or 96.5% when buying the bonus round, which costs 80 times the stake. A highly volatile slot (rated 5 out of 5), 40 paylines are provided for landing winning combinations of 3 to 5 of a kind along.

As for symbols, there are 8 regular pays – 4 are lower value diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades worth 3 to 5 times the bet for 5 OAK, while 4 are higher value character symbols worth 8 to 20 times the bet for 5-of-a-kind. A golden revolver is displayed on the wild symbol, which appears on all five reels. Wilds substitute all other pay symbols during win evaluations and have the same value as the highest-paying regular symbol.

Money Train Origins Dream Drop: Slot Features

No extras have been added to the base game, so triggering the Money Cart Bonus Round or Dream Drop Bonus is where the bigger thrills may be had.

Money Cart Bonus Round

This feature is triggered by landing at least 3 scatter symbols anywhere on the grid. Persistent symbols can substitute for bonus symbols when triggering the round. When the round begins, the triggering symbols display a bet multiplier value and award 3 respins. When filling a reel with symbols (not including the Healer), an extra reel is added to the grid – up to 2 at the most. When new symbols hit, they reset the spin count. Symbols that can land include:

• Bonus symbol – reveals a value of 1 to 10 times the bet.
• Collector – collects all values in view and adds them to its own.
• Payer – reveals a value and adds it to all other symbols on the reels.
• Banker – reveals a value and adds it to all symbols on the reels and all that land afterwards.
• Healer – returns 1 to 3 Collectors or Payers back to life, awarding them 2 to 7 lives. The lives represent how many spins the symbols will be active for.
• Persistent Collector – collects all values in view and adds them to its own on that spin and all following spins.
• Persistent Payer – adds its value to all other symbols in view on that spin and all following spins.

Filling all 28 positions with symbols, not including the Healer, awards a prize of 1,000x the bet and ends the feature.

Dream Drop Bonus

Before any normal spin, it's possible DD symbols start landing on the reels. If every position is filled with a DD symbol, the Dream Drop Bonus triggers. Next, players pick symbols on the grid to reveal a Jackpot. When 3 of the same Jackpot is revealed, its corresponding prize is awarded. This could be the Rapid, Midi, Maxi, Major, or Mega, which have seed values of €1, €5, €100, €25,000, or €500,000, respectively.

Money Train Origins Dream Drop: Slot Verdict

Relax Gaming has done something pretty special here. The studio could have bolted Dream Drop onto any one of its Money Train slots and fed it out to an appreciative audience. Instead, the team came up with the neat idea of taking Money Train back to its roots to celebrate its inclusion in the Dream Drop Jackpot network. With Money Train, Relax Gaming has created something of a postmodern series that has jumped a release (Money Cart 1), then later come back to it while moving forward and now back in time over the telling of its tale. In doing so, the Money Train franchise has moved from being a regular series of slots to something approaching a dynasty. What's united all of them and remained constant throughout is the immersive game worlds and the breath-taking Money Cart Bonus Rounds.

Both of these things are present in Money Train Origins, whether playing the Dream Drop version or not. Relax Gaming has layered on the Western-ness and injected a hold 'n win game stacked with special symbols, so anyone who has warmed to past releases should warm to this one as well. Money Train Origins might be less desirable for some since the non-jackpot potential maxes out at 10,000x the bet, which may be a far cry from the 150,000x found in Money Train 4, though this figure fits well with those in the Money Cart trio. However, this doesn't necessarily spoil the game's playability, and some may even prefer what might be a less swingy all-or-nothing nature. The low for a Money Train slot winning potential is less of a concern in Money Train Origins Dream Drop since the focus is on trying to tap the Mega anyway.

Considering how monumental the Money Train range is, it's no surprise to see it included on the Dream Drop network. There are question marks over the non-DD version, however, since it doesn't punch as hard as its heavier-weighted siblings but is still a slick Western slot with an excellent hold 'n win round. As for the Dream Drop, Money Train Origins Dream Drop makes an ideal addition to the line-up, one that welds together the infamous Money Cart Bonus Round to one of the most exciting progressive jackpot networks on the market into one formidable spot.