Gold Rush Express Review
We wouldn’t say that Area Vegas burst onto the scene with their recent debut, Area Link Phoenix, but the game was an okay start for this newly hatched Games Global partner. Gold Rush Express comes with a more familiar train and gold mining theme, but it’s done in a somewhat unique way with animated trains that makes it stand out. The gameplay revolves around the Rush Express cash prize collection feature, and it comes with a few innovative twists.
A train made of gold sits above the 5x3 grid, and it collects uncollected gold nuggets. This triggers a Jackpot Pick Game at random times, for prizes up to 5,000x your stake. Both nuggets and trains can be collected via the Bell or Gold Train symbols as well, and trains can reveal a jackpot when collected. You get more of the same in the bonus round, and the gold train collector symbol can boost your total prize winnings by up to x10.
Gold Rush Express Slot Features
The premium symbols pay between 2 and 5 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, and the Wild symbol steps in for any pay symbol to help complete and/or improve wins. The wild cannot substitute for scatters, rush express, bell, or gold train symbols, however, and the wild pays 10x your stake should you land 5 wilds on the same payline.
The Rush Express symbols can land on reels 1 to 4 only, and you need a Bell or a Gold Train symbol on reel 5 to collect them. This is known as the Rush Express feature, and the rush express symbols come in the form of cash prize gold nuggets or red, purple, blue, or green train symbols.
The train symbols reveal and award larger cash prizes, and the final train can reveal a win multiplier or the jackpot of the corresponding color. These are the Mini, Minor, Major, or Mega jackpots, and they pay 20x, 50x, 500x, or 5,000x your stake, respectively. The Bell symbol collects all the prizes as is, while the Gold Train symbol applies a random multiplier up to x10 to the sum total of your collected winnings.
The Pick Feature can trigger from a gold nugget rush express symbol if no other feature is triggered, and this happens at random times in the base game. It’s a Jackpot Pick Game, basically, and matching up 3 jackpot symbols awards the corresponding prize. The jackpots are the same as already mentioned above.
The Bonus Round triggers from 3 scatter symbols in view, and these come in the form of dynamite sticks. This gives you 10 free spins, and the Rush Express feature comes with a higher hit rate during the free spins round. You cannot retrigger the bonus round, however, and there are no ways to win extra spins either.
The 200 Spins Gold Rush Express Slot Experience
The bell collected some gold nugget prizes for us a few times in the base game, and then we trigger the bonus round at 1:06 into the 3:42-minute highlights video. We got plenty of cash prize collection action, and you can check it all out for yourself by hitting the play button below.
Review Summary
Area Vegas recently released their debut, Area Link Phoenix, which wasn’t too shabby, and Gold Rush Express is pretty decent as well. It comes with the familiar mining theme that most players enjoy, and they have taken the time and effort to provide unique train animations. Even the train itself is made of gold, and the nuggets abound on pretty much every spin. They are collected by said gold train to provide the occasional jackpot pick game, or their cash prize values are collected by the Bell.
On occasions, you get the gold train collector symbol instead of the bell, and this boosts the sum total up to a more respectable number. The free spins round is basically just a way to get more frequent Rush Express triggers, and it also helps that the spins are free, of course. In a game like this you will most likely need the top-tier Mega Jackpot to crack the 5,000x potential, although the 500x jackpot combined with an x10 multiplier gets the job done as well. Gold Rush Express will probably not take the slot community by storm, but it is still a decent second attempt from the budding Games Global partner studio.
