There’s something deeply unsettling about people who smile all the time. A smile is lovely when someone’s genuinely happy. But when it’s plastered across their face 24 hours a day, I start to get suspicious. Are they hiding something? Have they just murdered someone? Are they about to try to sell me life insurance? None of these possibilities fills me with anything approaching confidence.
Hacksaw Gaming clearly shares my concerns, having created Boney Bill, a permanently grinning, hollow-eyed cartoon character for its new Halloween-ready Wicked Grin slot.
Keep your teeth where I can see them
The Wicked Grin slot features a 5×5 grid, with wins awarded for landing six or more matching symbols anywhere on the reels. Betting starts at $0.10 and tops out at $35 per spin. With a maximum win multiplier of 10,000x, playing at that upper limit gives you a shot at winning up to $350,000.
With medium volatility, the slot balances smaller, more frequent wins with the occasional larger payout. Its theoretical RTP is 96.27%.
In parallel to its pay anywhere mechanic, the slot features cascading reels which remove symbols involved in winning combinations allowing new symbols to drop into the empty spots. Cascades will continue to occur until no new winning combination is formed.
When a Boney Bill symbo appears on the bottom row, it expands to fill the entire reel above, transforming all of the symbols into Coins worth between 1x and 500x your bet or Multipliers ranging from 2x to 20x. Multipliers increase the value of Coins positioned above them and those on adjacent reels, if there are any.
There’s also a Super Wicked Grin symbol, which causes Wicked Grin symbols on neighbouring reels to expand from their current positions, even if they haven’t landed on the bottom row.
The slot features two rounds of free spins: Stash N Stack and Coin Craze. Both trigger when FS scatter symbols land on the bottom row and expand to fill the entire reel. Each position reveals a number between 1 and 3, and the combined values determine how many free spins you receive, ranging from 5 to 30.
Regular FS symbols trigger Stash N Stack, which introduces a Stash Multiplier above each reel, starting at 1x. Whenever a Wicked Grin symbol expands, the Coin values on that reel are multiplied by the corresponding Stash Multiplier. The multiplier then increases by 1 for the next spin, letting values build as the round progresses.
Super FS symbols trigger the Coin Craze bonus, which replaces the Stash Multipliers with Coin Collectors above each reel. When Wicked Grin symbols expand, you collect and store the Coin values they reveal until the end of the round. Multipliers can also increase the stored values on their own reel and neighboring reels.
At the end of Coin Craze, the game adds all collected values and awards them as a single payout. Both bonus rounds can be retriggered, awarding 5 to 15 additional free spins per expanding Scatter, up to a maximum of 30 extra spins.
If you don’t fancy waiting for either bonus to appear, there are four purchase options that range from increasing your chances of trigger free spins to outright buying a round.
Is the Wicked Grin slot something to smile about?
Visually, the Wicked Grin slot looks like something that escaped from a 1930s animation studio after getting involved in some particularly questionable activities. I rather like it. The black-and-white cartoon aesthetic has plenty of character, although it’s not particularly out of the box for Hacksaw.
I’m not entirely sold on the way the bonuses are triggered. While you only need to land one special symbol, it has to appear on the bottom row. It’s certainly novel, but I find it a little frustrating. With the usual three-Scatter mechanic, landing one or two symbols at least gives you the feeling that you’re getting closer to triggering a bonus, even when you’re not. That sense of anticipation feels a little lost here.
All in all, I give the Wicked Grin slot an eight out of ten.
If you’re looking for a few Hacksaw Gaming slot that I get my highest recommendation, try Death Becomes You and Grug Make Fire.
