The Vault Chase

The Vault Chase: Slot Overview

What is it with the link between online slots and heists? Is it a feeling of getting one over the system when a gamble is successful, the warm fuzzy thought of extracting more resources from a venture than were put in, the excitement of pretending to be part of a high-stakes criminal enterprise, the simple chance of getting loot, or is it something else altogether? Let's have a little think about that as we gang with software provider AvatarUX and attempt to crack open The Vault Chase, an online slot about safes, keys, and gold.

The vault in question sits behind the game's reels, looking like a criminal has busted through a brick wall to crack it open. What they've found are gold coins spilt on the floor and gold bars neatly stacked on shelves, all shiny and grabbable. Zilch in the way of background information fleshes the game out, so who's doing the heisting or who's being heisted is a mystery. The Vault Chase features male and female character symbols, but that's about it. Not having a story tee up the action is no big deal breaker, but not having one did emphasise a lack of major personality.

The Vault Chase is a medium volatile slot which plays out on a 5x4 reelset. It's got 25 paylines evaluating winning combinations of 3 to 5 OAK from the leftmost reel onwards. This feeds into a 96% RTP when betting 10 c to $/€300 per spin, or when making use of the ante bet, the stake increases by 50% for double the chance of getting the bonus.

Jack to Ace leads off the paytable before bumping into higher-paying rings, diamonds, dudes, and dames. Winning combinations consisting of 5 matching royal symbols pay 0.8x to 1.6x the bet, increasing to 2x to 4x the bet when hitting 5 matching high pays. Wilds help connect winning combinations by substituting for all regular paying symbols. They hit on all reels and are worth 6x for a 5 OAK wild win.

The Vault Chase: Slot Features

Cracking The Vault Chase is made possible with Key symbols, Safe symbols, a Vault Meter, the Vault Booster, free spins, and feature buys.

Key Symbols and Safe Symbols

Key symbols are worth between 0.2x and 200x the bet. When keys land, they are collected by the Vault Meter. Safe symbols can land at any moment, but only one type, either Standard Safe or Big Safe, may appear at a time. If a Safe lands with 5 or more Key symbols, it triggers the Vault Break. When the Vault Break activates, players can choose to open the Safe or collect the Cash Prize. The Cash Prize is equal to the combined value of all Key symbols in view. Standard Safes may contain a prize of 1x to 2,000x, while Big Safes awards 0 to 5,000x the bet.

Vault Meter & Vault Booster

The Vault Meter tracks Key collection progress. The meter advances through levels as it fills, increasing the value of future Key symbols and Safes, offering higher rewards as players progress. The Vault Booster symbol, meanwhile, instantly fills the rest of the Vault Meter when it lands, advancing the player to the next level for upgrade rewards on the next spin. It can only appear once per spin.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 gold bar scatters triggers 10, 15, or 20 free spins, respectively. Though unclear, it would appear that free spins offer a higher chance of getting features. Again, not specifically stated, wilds seem to be able to land in free spins with a multiplier of x2 to x20. Landing a scatter grants +1 free spin.

Feature Buys

At the Xpress section, players may buy 10, 15, or 20 free spins for 60x, 150x, or 400x their stake.

The Vault Chase: Slot Verdict

It's funny to think that once upon a time, the banknotes in our wallets were backed by precious metals like gold, whereas now they're backed essentially by good faith. Does this mean the monetary system is nothing more than an illusory house of cards that could crumble at any moment and send the world spiralling into a brutal chaos where wealth is backed by the fist? Maybe? Till this does or does not happen, if you want to pretend you're part of a high-stakes heist while having a gamble, then The Vault Chase might fill the void.

As far as heist slots go, The Vault Chase might have benefited from a bit of extra attention to fleshing out the theme. It felt slightly unfulfilling thematically, and that an extra layer of X-factor might have really brought the game alive. It didn't help that the paytable was light on some details, and nothing was provided to explain what exactly was going down. Again, slots don't necessarily need a Tolstoyan novel to lay the scene, but compared to a theme-rich slot like FloridaMan, The Vault Chase came across as a bit shallow. It would also have been nice if a safe level tracker was provided to keep tabs on progress and greater clarity on prize ranges at different levels - if there are such ranges. A lot seemed a bit vague, and even higher-level Safe prizes could be disappointing, including getting the dreaded 0x reveal.

Having said that, there was something compelling about spinning on to collect Keys and level up the Vault Meter, similar to the thrill of not knowing what's over the hill or just around the corner, and it didn't take a huge amount of time to eventually reach the max level. Opening safes brings a jolt of suspense each time since they can technically bestow sizable rewards, and 10,000x is the game's max win. By the end of the bank job, The Vault Chase turned out to be an interesting heist slot, but it's hard to call it a great one.