Powered by SlotsReach.com
Everything happens on the bottom row
Hacksaw has a reputation for games capable of carving through a balance in a handful of spins, but Wicked Grin arrives with a more approachable three out of five volatility rating. Framed across a 5×5 grid with no traditional paylines and no wild symbols, the slot is hosted by Boney Bill, a cartoon skeleton lifted straight out of 1930s animation. The math profile features a 10,000x top prize alongside four RTP models: 96.27%, 94.32%, 92.28%, and 86.28%.
The game directs almost all of its payout potential into a single area. While landing matching symbols anywhere on the grid delivers small scatter wins, the regular paytable is modest, leaving virtually all the heavy lifting to an expanding reel mechanic that operates exclusively on the bottom row.
Six of anything, anywhere
Payouts do not rely on paylines or connected clusters. Landing six or more matching symbols anywhere across the 25 positions awards a win. Winning symbols then vanish from the board, allowing new ones to drop into the vacant spaces in a tumbling cascade that repeats until no new winning combinations appear.
The paytable begins with the four standard playing-card suits at the lower end, where six of a kind returns 0.1x the bet. The payout tiers scale upward through six-or-seven, eight-or-nine, ten, eleven-to-twelve, and seventeen or more symbols. Grapes, watermelon, a bell, cherries, and a blue 7 make up the premium tier, with seventeen or more blue 7s topping the standard paytable at 100x. Against the 10,000x maximum win ceiling, it quickly becomes clear that regular symbol combinations are designed to keep the grid moving rather than produce massive hits on their own.
The bottom row does all the work
The main action revolves around the silver Wicked Grin skull disc. When a Wicked Grin lands on the bottom row, and strictly on the bottom row, it expands upward to cover the entire reel. The expanded column then turns into coin prizes or multipliers. Coins land with values ranging from 1x up to 500x the bet and are added together, while additive multipliers range from x2 to x20.
A Wicked Grin landing on any of the upper four rows remains inert. Because the symbol carries no standalone payout and does not act as a wild, an unexpanded grin simply takes up a space that could otherwise help form a six-symbol scatter win.
The multipliers also depend heavily on where they appear. A multiplier adds its value to coins above it on the same reel, as well as to coins sitting higher up on neighbouring reels. As a result, a multiplier revealed near the top of a column catches very little, whereas one sitting near the bottom applies its boost across the entire reel and adjacent columns.
The gold Epic Wicked Grin provides an exception to the placement rule. When an Epic grin lands on the bottom row and expands, it forces every other grin present anywhere on the grid to expand as well, regardless of where they sit. Reaching the game’s 10,000x top prize requires landing five grins across the bottom row simultaneously, turning the full 5×5 layout into coins.
Stash N Stack and Coin Craze
Bonus round triggers follow the same bottom-row rule. Scatters appear as red FS discs; landing one on the bottom row causes it to expand across the full reel. Each position on the expanded reel reveals a number between one and three, and the sum of those numbers sets the total spin count, awarding between 5 and 30 spins.
The type of scatter determines which bonus is awarded. Standard red FS symbols trigger Stash N Stack, while gold Super FS scatters activate Coin Craze. The two scatter types cannot appear on the same grid together.
Stash N Stack places five plaques above the grid, one for each reel, all starting at x1. Whenever a grin expands on a reel, that column’s coins are multiplied by its active plaque value, and the plaque then increases by one for subsequent spins. Because a plaque only increases when its specific reel is triggered, building up high multipliers requires repeated expansions on the same columns.
Coin Craze shifts the focus to long-term accumulation. Instead of multiplying payouts on individual spins, a collector above each reel banks every coin value that appears on that column throughout the feature. The accumulated total is held until the end of the round, with any multipliers landed along the way applied directly to the final banked prize.
Feature options and volatility
The buy menu provides four distinct choices priced at 3x, 50x, 80x, and 200x the bet, split between feature-spin modes and complete bonus rounds.
Stash N Stack (80x) and Coin Craze (200x) grant direct access to their respective free-spin modes. On the feature-spin side, BonusHunt (3x) makes each spin five times more likely to trigger a bonus round, while Grinny (50x) guarantees that at least one grin symbol lands on every spin. Because Grinny guarantees a grin without guaranteeing bottom-row placement, it carries considerable variance. While the base game is rated three out of five for volatility, the buy options are individually tagged as High volatility, with BonusHunt rated as Very high.
Visuals and presentation
Wicked Grin leans heavily into classic 1930s rubber-hose animation. The base game is framed inside a dark, vintage vignette, transitioning to a forced-perspective checkerboard floor during bonus rounds. Boney Bill oversees the reels wearing red shorts, white gloves, and a cape, presenting the game like a vintage stage host.
The art direction contrasts muted, monochrome backgrounds with bold fruit symbols and metallic bronze, silver, and gold coin discs. The visual identity shares common ground with titles like Pray for Six and Six Six Six, relying on classic cartoon styling and character animation rather than overt horror themes.
Pros
- Column expansions transform entire reels into coins worth up to 500x each alongside additive multipliers.
- A 3 out of 5 volatility rating offers a more balanced session flow than higher-variance studio titles.
- Distinctive rubber-hose cartoon art style and animation.
- The 10,000x maximum prize can be achieved in both base play and bonus rounds.
Cons
- Standard scatter payouts are low, with the top base symbol paying 100x for 17 or more.
- The upper four rows cannot trigger expanding grins or scatters on their own.
- No wild symbols on the grid to assist with scatter wins.
Verdict
Wicked Grin centres its gameplay around a clear, focused mechanic. With standard paytable wins topping out at 100x, the slot directs the bulk of its potential toward bottom-row triggers. When a skull lands on that bottom row to convert an entire column into coin prizes and multipliers, the mechanic delivers substantial momentum. For players who appreciate vintage animation and want a distinctive expanding-reel feature without extreme variance, Wicked Grin offers a well-crafted alternative.
