Sticky Bandits Trail of Blood

Gone are the blue skies and cactus-dotted plains of the earlier Sticky Bandits games, replaced here with clouded skies and gallows looming over a 5x3 grid set in town rather than out on the open range. It's a genuine tonal shift for the series, and the moodier art style suits the revenge story well without tipping into anything over the top.

RTP: What It Means for You

Trail of Blood is offered in more than one RTP configuration, with the return capping out at 96.23% on the top setting. That's a solid figure by industry standards, but it's worth checking the in-game info screen before you commit to a session, since operators can run the lower-paying versions instead.

Volatility Explained

This is a highly volatile slot, continuing a trait that runs through the whole Sticky Bandits range. Expect long stretches without a meaningful return interrupted by the occasional sizeable hit, rather than a steady trickle of small wins. Quickspin doesn't publish a hit frequency figure for this one, so go in expecting the bigger swings that high-variance math models are known for.

Max Win Potential and Betting Range

Trail of Blood is a noticeably bigger swing than the first couple of Sticky Bandits games, with a maximum win of 17,000x the stake on offer. Stakes run from 10p/c up to £/€100 per spin, and the game is fully playable on mobile as well as desktop.

Symbols and Paytable

Four Western-fonted card royals from J to A form the lower end of the paytable, paying 4x to 10x the bet for five of a kind, while the higher-value symbols climb considerably further up the table. It's a fairly standard high-low split, but the reward gap between the two tiers is wide enough to keep the bigger symbols feeling meaningfully more valuable.

Higher up the paytable, symbols connected to Tex Tallonis and his pursuit push the multipliers considerably further, and it's these top-tier combinations, alongside the free spins feature, that account for most of the game's 17,000x ceiling. The gap between the low and high pays is wide by design, which is part of why the volatility rating sits where it does.

Verdict

Sticky Bandits Trail of Blood trades the series' earlier brightness for a bleaker, more atmospheric take on the Wild West, and the higher win ceiling backs up the darker tone. If you've enjoyed the grittier end of Western-themed slots and don't mind a bumpy ride to get there, it's worth loading up the free demo at johnessyslots or testing your luck with real stakes.