You can harm me with sticks and stones, but words can never hurt me, as the old adage goes. It takes courage to repeat such a phrase while taking verbal abuse, but the truth is that words may cause far more pain than physical harm. Anyway, let’s set it aside for the time being and have a look at Break Bones, a slot machine game created by Hacksaw Gaming. Break Bones is a more subdued effort than we’re used to seeing from the studio; it’s played on a 3×3 game grid and has Wild Multipliers, Global Multipliers, Echo Spins, free spins, and a bonus buy option, but it’s not as flashy as their usual output.
A number of familiar elements from prior games make their return in Break Bones, making it feel like a reunion slot. One is the skull-and-neon-90s-house-party aesthetic, which harkens back to the artist’s earlier work (see: Chaos Crew). The same rude, indifferent, and obnoxious demeanor pervades Break Bones. Hacksaw Gaming excels at this, and the strategy holds up well even in the more compact 3×3 layout. While not as aesthetically appealing as something like Hand of Anubis, Break Bones serves a different function and has a different focus than one of Hacksaw Gaming’s flagship games. The background is a rather plain graffiti-coated wall. It does its purpose, encouraging at least a few of clicks on the spin button to find out what the grid’s future holds.
Bets may be placed between 10 pence and £/€100 for each spin before you begin. While reducing the grid size, the creators also toned down the volatility; the result is a medium rating (3 out of 5), which is lower than is typical for this group. There are four different variations of the RTP, with the standard, non-bonus purchase mode offering the highest payout at 96.22 percent. Only three-of-a-kind wins are possible at this stake size, giving the game an overall hit rate of 38.97%.
There are a total of 8 different standard pay symbols, plus a wild, a Wild Multiplier, a scatter, and an EchoSpins symbol. The lower value symbols are the royals J through A, while the higher value symbols are the four skulls, which can be any color and appear in any of four different stances. Royal flushes pay 0.2x the wager for three of a type, while three skulls pay 0.5x to 4x the bet. The ‘W’-shaped arrangement of bones represents the wild sign, which may replace any other pay icon.
Skull and Bones: The Slot’s Extras
Most of the game’s features have been seen before, but they are all put to excellent use on Break Bones’s little display. Wild Multipliers, Global Multiplier, EchoSpins, and a Bonus Game are the supplementary features.
The Global Multiplier and Other Weird Multipliers
When wilds appear, they might be a Wild Multiplier worth 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 25, 50, or 100 times the wager. The values of Wild Multipliers contribute to a Global Multiplier whenever they appear as part of a winning line. All victories on the current spin will have this Global Multiplier added to them.
EchoSpins
The EchoSpins feature is activated when the Skeleton Hand icon appears on the screen. It can give anything from one to five EchoSpins. Any Wild Multipliers that occur during EchoSpins have their values added to the Global Multiplier over and over again. At the conclusion of an EchoSpin, the Global Multiplier is cleared.
Extra Round
If you get three bonus symbols, you get ten free games. More EchoSpins may be won during free spins, and the odds of landing Skeleton Hands to initiate them are higher than they are in the standard game.
In games where it is possible to purchase bonus spins instead of gaining them through normal means, the bonus buy button will appear. The result is a return to player (RTP) of 96.34% at a cost of 80 times the initial wager.
Brutal: The Judgment of the Slot
After the success of Fruit Duel, Hacksaw Gaming released another installment in their 3×3 Spins series, titled Break Bonus. It’s like Fruit Duel in that it’s a jiggery-pokery of elements taken from other, larger games and crammed into a smaller board. Break Bones takes its cues from a very different set of sources than Fruit Duel did, which combined Hacksaw Gaming’s love of fruit with gameplay elements from slots like Gladiator Legends and Warrior Ways.
The studio’s signature visual contrast between gritty urban concrete and vibrant colors is seen in Break Bones. They succeed well, and their visual style complements the edgy, nonconformist spirit of the games in question. Feelings reminiscent of a beat-up station wagon covered with Santa Cruz, Powel Peralta, and Vision Skateboard stickers from the 1980s, with its punk, skull, and retro skater aesthetic. Break Bones isn’t the only film to benefit from this method, and it’s surprising that no other films have “borrowed” the style. Hacksaw Gaming is now caring for it.
Break Bones is the younger sibling, cousin, or other relative of the deep-thinking slot Itero, and its EchoSpins feature prominently, ideally with multipliers. However, the general efficacy of EchoSpins has been diminished due to the reduction in grid size, but they may still be entertaining when they replicate prior successes and increase their value with a growing Global Multiplier. The maximum payout on this slot machine is 3,333 times the initial wager, which is lower than the norm for slots from developer Hacksaw Gaming. We suppose it’s good for players who have superstitious beliefs about the number three.
The goals Hacksaw Gaming had for Break Bones seem to have been met. It’s like a summary of previous works that were crammed onto a three-reel arcade machine. Again, Break Bones was probably not meant to be a showcase game, but if you’re interested in a faster, simplified version of the EchoSpins with a Global Multiplier idea that is possibly easier to dip in and out of than Itero, with a lot more skulls, then you should check it out.