What we like / What could be better
What we like
- Fixed jackpots inside the Hold and Win round give the bonus a payout floor, not just a lottery-style top end.
- A 5x3 grid with 15 fixed paylines keeps the base game easy to read, no cluster-pay math to track.
- Stakes from A$0.20 to A$100.00 cover a small session and a serious one on the same title.
- Bonus Buy lets you test the Hold and Win round on demand instead of waiting on the base game to trigger it.
What could be better
- Two RTP settings exist (96% and 95.6%), and the lobby you land on doesn't always tell you which is live.
- Medium-high volatility with a 5405x ceiling means long stretches without a bonus round are normal, not a malfunction.
- The Bonus Buy price isn't published in the specification we have, so you're budgeting for it without a number.
- We haven't verified which offshore lobbies currently carry this exact title; availability changes without notice.
First Spins: How Thunder Coins XXL Actually Feels
The theme is classic fruit machine dressed in electric neon: bells, sevens and lightning-bolt wilds on a 5x3 grid with 15 fixed paylines. Nothing about the base game asks you to learn a new payout logic. Line wins land the way they do in any traditional pokie, and the balance ticks up in small, steady amounts between bigger moments.
What changes the feel is the medium-high volatility rating. Expect the base game to run quieter than a low-volatility fruit slot: several spins can pass with nothing more than a partial line hit. That's by design, not a fault. The mechanic doing the heavy lifting is Hold and Win, and everything about the pacing points toward that round rather than the base game's own payouts.
Sticky symbols show up occasionally in the base game too, nudging toward a trigger without guaranteeing one. Twenty minutes in, you'll have a clear read on whether the session has enough spins left in it to reach a bonus round, and that's really the number that matters more than any single win.
RTP: Two Settings, and the Number on Your Screen Isn't Fixed
Playson lists two RTP configurations for Thunder Coins XXL: Hold and Win: 96% and 95.6%. The operator running the game chooses which one goes live, the same way it happens across most modern pokie releases. Nothing forces a casino to disclose which setting it has picked.
The paytable or info screen inside the game itself is the only reliable place to check. Open it before you deposit, not after. A 0.4 percentage point gap sounds small, but across thousands of spins it's the difference between a game paying back A$96 and one paying back A$95.60 for every A$100 wagered, on average, over the long run.
We haven't independently verified which setting any specific offshore lobby has activated for this title. If the in-game paytable doesn't show a number at all, that's worth treating as a strike against the operator, not against the game.
The 5405x Ceiling and What Medium-High Volatility Means for It
5405x your stake is the maximum listed win. At a A$1 spin, that's a A$5,405 ceiling. At the maximum A$100 stake, it's a theoretical A$540,500, though nobody should stake A$100 a spin expecting that outcome on any given session.
A ceiling that high, combined with medium-high volatility, tells you two things. First, the big multiplier is stacked into the Hold and Win round rather than the base game. Second, reaching that ceiling requires a specific, low-probability run inside the bonus, near-maximum coin fills plus a strong multiplier draw, not just triggering the feature once.
Practically, most bonus rounds pay somewhere well below the ceiling. Treat 5405x as the number that describes the game's shape, not a realistic target for a single session.
How the Hold and Win Round Pays
The round starts once enough coin symbols land on the grid inside a single spin or across a short run of spins. Once triggered, every coin symbol that has landed sticks in place, and the game grants a fixed number of respins. Each new coin that lands resets the respin counter; the round ends when the respins run out with no new coin landing.
Coins on the grid at the end pay according to their individual values, and the game applies a multiplier on top of the total before it pays out. Some coin positions carry fixed jackpot values rather than cash amounts. Playson's specification confirms fixed jackpots are part of the mechanic but doesn't list the individual tier values, so we're not going to guess at numbers we can't confirm.
This is the standard shape of a Hold and Win pokie. What XXL adds is the multiplier stacking on top of the coin total, which is what pushes the ceiling up toward 5405x.
Bonus Buy: What It Changes, and What We Don't Know Yet
Bonus Buy skips the wait and drops you straight into the Hold and Win round for a fixed cost, taken as a multiple of your current stake. It's the fastest way to see the feature without grinding base-game spins toward it.
The specification we're working from confirms the mechanic exists but doesn't list the exact price multiplier Playson set for it. Some operators disable Bonus Buy in certain jurisdictions regardless of what the game supports, so the option showing up on Playson's own listing doesn't guarantee it's switched on wherever you play. Check the bet panel in the actual lobby before assuming it's there.
Thunder Coins XXL vs the Rest of Playson's Hold and Win Line
XXL sits above the original Thunder Coins in Playson's catalogue, the naming making the relationship explicit rather than us reading it into a release date. The predecessor built its reputation on the same fruit-machine-and-lightning theme; XXL is the studio revisiting that theme with a higher ceiling and the multiplier layered onto the coin round.
Playson has released several other Hold and Win titles over the years, including Fruit Super Nova Hold and Win, built on the same core respin mechanic with a different symbol set and payout structure. If you've played either, the Hold and Win logic in XXL will feel familiar from the first bonus trigger. What differs from title to title in this family is usually the ceiling, the volatility rating and how the multiplier is applied, not the basic respin structure itself.
Playing Free: Demo Mode Before Any Deposit
Thunder Coins XXL: Hold and Win runs in a free-play demo on most sites that carry Playson's catalogue, using play credits instead of real balance. The demo is the right place to confirm the RTP setting shown in the paytable and to sit through a few Hold and Win triggers before staking real money on the same mechanic.
Free play doesn't require an account on some lobbies and does on others; that varies by operator, not by the game. If a site asks for full registration before it shows you a demo, that's a data point about the site, worth weighing against how much you want to test the game first.
How to Play: Staking, Spins in Reserve, and the Demo First
Stakes on Thunder Coins XXL: Hold and Win run from A$0.20 to A$100.00 per spin. Nothing about bet size changes the odds of any individual spin; the outcome is generated independently each time, regardless of stake, session length or anything a player does mid-session.
What bet size does change is how many spins your bankroll can sustain, and that matters directly with medium-high volatility. A working approach:
- Set a session bankroll first, separate from money earmarked for anything else.
- Divide that bankroll by a stake size that gives you at least 150–200 spins. Medium-high volatility games can run long stretches without a feature trigger, and a bankroll that runs out at spin 40 never gets to see the mechanic the game is built around.
- Run the demo first, specifically through a few Hold and Win triggers, before moving to real-money stakes on the same setting.
- Confirm the RTP number in the paytable before depositing; if it's not shown, that's a reason to look elsewhere.
- Decide your stop-loss and walk-away point before the session starts, not during it.
None of this improves the odds of any spin. It manages how long you get to interact with a game whose main mechanic is deliberately infrequent.
One Thing Before You Load the Reels
This review is written for readers 18 and older. Poker machines are entertainment with a built-in cost, not an income source, and that's true regardless of RTP or volatility numbers. If pokie sessions start feeling less like entertainment and more like something you can't step away from, Gambling Help Online (1800 858 858) offers free, confidential support around the clock. Our review methodology, including how we read specification sheets like this one, is laid out on our methodology page.
Where Australians Can Play Thunder Coins XXL: Hold and Win
Australia's Interactive Gambling Act keeps this title off any site running local Australian licensing, so play happens through offshore lobbies that carry Playson's catalogue. We haven't verified which specific lobbies currently list Thunder Coins XXL: Hold and Win on their landing pages as of this review; availability shifts as providers rotate content deals.
The table below lists offshore operators from our own coverage where we've seen Playson titles in the lobby. Links route through our own outbound redirect and are affiliate links, disclosed in full on our editorial policy page.
Check the search bar inside the lobby for the exact title before depositing. A studio being listed doesn't guarantee every individual game from that studio is live on every skin.
Similar Pokies From Playson's Hold and Win Line
If the coin-and-multiplier format of Thunder Coins XXL works for you, the rest of Playson's Hold and Win output is worth a look. Fruit Super Nova Hold and Win runs the same respin logic on a different fruit-and-symbol set. The original Thunder Coins is the smaller-grid predecessor this title expands on.
Look for volatility rating and win ceiling first when comparing; the theme changes more than the underlying math usually does within one studio's Hold and Win family.