Laser Heist: how it plays, odds and payouts

Laser Heist is a burglar ladder with a safety net. A corridor of eight laser gates stands between you and the diamond. You slip through each gate with a chance that depends on the mode, and the first beam you trip is absorbed by your shield at the cost of half your winnings so far. A second tripped beam ends the run. At each gate you can tap Cash out (lock in the multiplier you hold) instead.

How a round works

1. Pick a mode: Easy, Medium, Hard or Hardcore. Set your bet and tap Start.
2. Each gate is slipped through with a fixed chance for the mode: 92%, 82%, 70% or 55%.
3. Passing a gate multiplies your take by a factor. The factor is larger once the shield is gone, because the next beam is lethal.
4. The first tripped beam spends the shield and halves the take, and you carry on through that gate.
5. A second tripped beam ends the round and loses the bet. Cash out between gates to keep the take, or clear all eight.

The gates are drawn when the round starts; the contortions on screen are the reveal. Your take starts at 0.97x because of the 3% house edge.

What one gate does

Each cell shows the chance of that outcome at a gate and the factor applied to your take.

The "no shield" factor is simply 1 divided by the chance of passing. With the shield up the factor is a little smaller, because a tripped beam is not fatal yet. Every row is set so the gate is a fair bet, which makes the take worth 97% whenever you stop.

Worked example: Medium

Pass gate 1 with the shield up: 0.97 x 1.1098 = 1.0765x. Trip the beam on gate 2: the shield absorbs it and your take is halved to 0.5383x. Pass gate 3 without a shield: 0.5383 x 1.2195 = 0.6564x. Pass gate 4: 0.8005x. You are still alive, but you are nursing a take below your bet and any trip from here loses everything. At that point Cash out would give you about 80 coins on a 100-coin bet.

Compare a clean run: three clean gates give 0.97 x 1.1098^3 = 1.3257x, and the chance of three clean gates on Medium is 82% cubed, or 55.1%. The whole corridor clean on Medium happens in 20.4% of rounds and pays 2.23x.

Reaching the end

Easy is a gentle game: even a perfect run pays only 1.36x. On Hard and Hardcore the best result (5.88x and 31.85x) is not the clean run. It is the route where the very first gate trips the beam, the shield absorbs it, and the other seven gates are then cleared without a shield, because the larger no-shield factors then apply to a take that starts from the halved one. You cannot choose that route; it needs the first beam to trip (30% or 45% of the time) followed by seven clean gates, which is 2.5% of Hard rounds and 0.68% of Hardcore rounds.

Max win and limits

The biggest possible pay is 31.85x on Hardcore. The game-wide limits (50,000x the bet and 250,000,000 coins per round) are not reachable. Volatility is low overall, rising to medium only on Hardcore.

What matters and what does not

• Mode: sets the pass chance and with it the pace of growth. All four return 97%.
• Reflexes: none. The beam patterns are decoration for a result that is already fixed.
• Cashing out with the shield up or down: with the shield up you can survive one slip; without it, any slip is fatal. The offered pay reflects that, so neither state is better value.

See how ladder and tower games work for the general principle that every fair step leaves the average unchanged.

How it differs from other cash-out games

Safe Crack ends on the first miss but has a vault card at the end; Laser Heist forgives the first miss and has no final card. Mines and Tower pay a fixed multiplier for each safe step, whereas here the pay depends on the route you took, including whether the shield has been spent.

Play with limits

Coins are virtual, have no cash value and cannot be withdrawn or exchanged for prizes. For adults (18+), for entertainment. Set a time limit before you play; see playing safely in Cashout Arcade.