Money Train 5

Relax Gaming sent Money Train 4 off in 2023 as the final ride for its gang of bandits. Three years later Money Train 5 has rolled back into service anyway, hauling the series into a post-apocalyptic wasteland where city skylines lie in rubble and the passengers dress for fallout. Play happens on a 5×4 grid with 40 fixed paylines, where any base-game spin can trigger the Nuclear Wild. Crosshairs lock onto as many as five reels and plant bombs there, and each one detonates into a full wild column once it forms part of a win.

Everything else waits inside the bonus round, where eleven special characters take turns boosting, collecting and multiplying values while a train rolls from Station 0 toward Station 20. Returning favourites from earlier games share the carriages with newcomers including the Ticket Master, the Bomber and the Pyromancer. Milestone stations unlock fresh tools along the way, from persistent symbols at Station 5 to an extra row of reels at Station 10.

A mode switch splits the game into two versions of itself before the first spin. Standard Mode takes bets from €0.10 to €20 and caps any round at 50,000x, while Ultra Mode halves the top stake to €10 and doubles the cap to 100,000x. The trade runs deeper than the headline numbers, since Ultra lands its ordinary big wins a little less often yet delivers 1,000x-plus results close to three times as frequently. Both modes run at 96.10% RTP with high volatility, and the Super Charge menu sells direct entry to the bonus at prices from 100x to 2,000x the bet.

The Bonus Round Crew: Eleven Specialists Riding the Rails

The bonus round runs on its cast. Plain Bonus symbols supply the raw values, while eleven special characters decide what happens to them, and several of those characters only board once the train reaches a particular station.

Who Fires First

Every special symbol reveals a value of its own before it acts, so even the Collector and the Bomber put something on the board before doing their job. When several land together, they fire from the top row down and, within each row, from left to right. That order matters more than it looks, since a Payer sitting above a Collector feeds it, while the same pair the other way round sends the Collector home with less.

The Permanent Payer waits until every other character has finished, and Tickets close out the spin after that. So every boost is already in place before any reel slides off the grid. Special symbols only interact with positions inside the active game area, which keeps the fifth row out of reach until Station 10 switches it on.

Persistence Is Where Long Rounds Earn Their Keep

Persistent versions of the Collector, Payer, Sniper, Collector Payer, Necromancer, Arms Dealer and Bomber reactivate on every new spin, and they start landing once the train passes Station 5. The Pyromancer can manufacture more of them, because any normal feature symbol eligible for persistence upgrades automatically inside its Hot Zone. Bonus values that land in the zone, or get moved into it, double on arrival.

The Necromancer layers on top of all this by reviving one or two non-persistent specials that have already spent their turn. The Permanent Payer comes with its own guardrail. Characters created by the Necromancer or the Arms Dealer cannot grow its value, so only freshly landed Payers and Persistent Payers can boost it.

Money Train 5 Visuals: Rust, Smoke and Neon on the Wasteland Line

Relax paints the wasteland in rust and ash. Skyscrapers stand gutted against a sky of storm grey and smoky orange, cooling towers loom over flooded industrial ground, and further down the line the ruins give way to cracked desert where a battered roadside sign still advertises the train. Every colour on the reels has to fight its way through that murk, which is why the symbols glow.

A Crew Worth Recognising

The four paying characters carry most of the personality. The Necromancer is a skull in a cowboy hat, a red lens screwed into one eye socket and a cigar clamped between his teeth. The Collector fills a suit of battered golden power armour, the Sniper hides behind a sugar-skull face under a green-trimmed sombrero, and the Payer poses in a wide blue hat with blonde braids and an energy pistol.

The newcomers lean harder into the apocalypse. The Ticket Master is a faceless figure in a long coat and wide-brimmed hat, with two points of blue light where his eyes should be. The Bomber wears a gas mask and bright dyed hair, and the Arms Dealer grins through a cigarette with welding goggles pushed up on his forehead.

Symbols Built From Scrap

The low symbols look salvaged, each card suit set in a riveted metal frame with a glowing mesh centre in red, yellow, green or blue. The Wild is a gas mask with the word stamped across the top in chunky gold letters, while the Bonus symbol resembles a bronze porthole with a teal light burning inside. The Nuclear Bomb sits on striped orange hazard backing, and when crosshairs lock on, orange laser lines streak across the grid before a reel erupts in flame.

Production Details Worth Noticing

• Colour-coded crew cards: every bonus character arrives in its own coloured frame, from the Absorber’s yellow to the Bomber’s magenta, so a crowded grid stays readable at a glance.
• Tickets in five colours: +1 through +5 each carry their own shade, running from cyan to red.
• A station track with landmarks: the progress bar marks each milestone with its own icon, ending in a weapon at Station 20.
• Four win tiers: Big, Mega, Epic and Explosive wins each get their own celebration screen, and the Explosive tier rolls out the whole crew.
• Neon mode controls: the Standard/Ultra toggle glows magenta when Ultra is live, and the Enhanced Spin switch lights up green.

Does Money Train 5 Play Well? The Numbers Behind the Ride

Relax publishes more of the maths than most studios bother with, and the figures tell a clear story about where the money goes and how long you might wait for it. Both modes share the same 96.10% RTP and high volatility rating, yet they distribute their wins quite differently.

The Base Game Keeps the Balance Ticking

Roughly one spin in five returns something, which is a respectable rate for a high-volatility title, though most of those hits come from card suits and three-of-a-kind character lines. A single line tops out at 20x the bet, so the base game’s bigger moments depend on the Nuclear Wild spreading full Wild reels across several of the 40 lines at once. A 15x-plus result turns up about once every hundred spins in Standard, often enough to keep a session from feeling dead between bonuses.

Ultra Trades Mid-Sized Wins for Monster Ones

Ultra Mode lands every tier from Big to Epic a little less often than Standard, and in return it roughly triples the rate of 1,000x-plus results. The average bonus climbs just as sharply, with an Ultra Free Spins round averaging about two and a half times what a Standard one pays. That shift suits players chasing a headline result and willing to sit through leaner stretches, while Standard delivers a steadier drip of mid-sized hits.

High Volatility Means the Train Carries the Load

The averages set the expectations. A Standard Free Spins round comes out close to 96x the bet on average, and the figure jumps to nearly 500x once the train starts from Station 15. The real value sits in the long rounds, where persistent symbols stack up, the fifth row opens and the Bomber starts multiplying everything on the grid. Short rounds that stall before Station 5 will pay modestly, and a bankroll built to survive several of those will get far more out of the game than one expecting every bonus to reach the later stations.

The Money Train Series: Five Rides Down the Same Track

The first Money Train rolled out in 2019 as a Wild West heist, and each sequel since has pushed the setting further from the frontier, through a steampunk post-apocalypse into increasingly futuristic territory. The formula stayed recognisable throughout: a crew of bandits, a Money Cart bonus stuffed with modifiers and a ceiling that climbed with almost every release. By the time Money Train 4 arrived, the series had passed three billion game rounds and collected more than ten industry awards.

The Last Stand That Wasn’t

Relax marketed Money Train 4 as the end of the line, promising that the bandits were riding the rails for the last time and backing the send-off with a 150,000x ceiling, a record for any Relax title. The studio reversed course in June 2026 and announced a fifth instalment for September. The new cap lands at 100,000x in Ultra Mode, level with Money Train 3 and below the so-called finale, so Money Train 5 competes on structure, with stations, tickets and two modes, more than on raw ceiling. The franchise has also branched into spin-offs such as Slingo Money Train and the festive Money Sleigh.

Our Take on Money Train 5

Money Train 5 arrives as the sequel to a game its own studio declared final, and Relax answers that awkward brief by rebuilding the ride instead of stretching the ceiling once again. Tickets physically move the reels, stations unlock new tools as a round runs longer, and the mode switch hands the player a genuine decision before the first spin, all of which gives the fifth instalment an identity of its own.

Eleven specialists acting in a fixed order, seven of them capable of turning persistent, make the bonus round the real reason to play, because its rounds snowball in ways the player can follow and anticipate. Reaching Station 15 changes the texture completely, with the Bomber multiplying the whole board and the Pyromancer’s Hot Zone doubling everything that lands inside it.

Base play follows series tradition by doing far less, with line pays capped at 20x per line, the card suits handling most of the steady work and the Nuclear Wild left to produce the bigger hits. That leaves long stretches where the only real question is whether three Bonus symbols will turn up.

Anyone judging a sequel by its headline number will notice that Money Train 5 tops out at 100,000x in Ultra, below Money Train 4’s 150,000x, while Standard Mode halves that figure again. Ultra’s tripled rate of 1,000x-plus results goes a fair way toward making up for the step back.

• Who it suits: fans of the series, players who enjoy long hold-and-win rounds that keep evolving, and anyone who wants to choose between steadier mid-sized wins and a sharper shot at a monster result.
• Who should look elsewhere: players who want an entertaining base game in its own right, or who treat the highest possible ceiling as the main reason to play.