Army of Ares: Hacksaw declares war on multipliers
Released on 4 December 2025, Army of Ares is Hacksaw Gaming's take on Greek mythology, a theme the studio had largely left to its competitors until now. The result is no pastiche. Where the genre normally leans on orbs falling from the sky and one global multiplier, Army of Ares builds its potential reel by reel, with bookkeeping the player can follow live. The grid is 5x4 with 14 fixed paylines, formed left to right from three matching symbols. That line count is low for a twenty-position grid, and it is not an oversight: it forces combinations to run across the grid and makes fully wild reels far more decisive than they would be in a 1,024-ways system. That is exactly the job of the Wrath Reels. When a Wrath scatter lands, it expands to cover all four positions of its reel, turning it entirely wild, then reveals a multiplier drawn between x2 and x300 that applies to the whole reel. Each expansion also adds between zero and five extra wild symbols elsewhere on the grid. The key point: when several Wrath Reels contribute to the same win, their multipliers are added together. Two reels at x150 give x300, not x22,500. That choice limits runaway spins but multiplies the merely good ones. Three bonus rounds trigger from FS scatters, and the studio has separated them clearly. Fear and Flame needs three scatters and awards ten free spins during which the wilds added by Wrath Reels carry their own multiplier, from x2 to x100. Wrath and Ruin opens at four scatters and switches logic entirely: no spin counter, but three refilling lives instead. Ares Ascends finally requires five simultaneous scatters. It is the game's hidden mode, the one that starts with the grid already loaded with discs and a Battle Horse in place, and the only one that puts the ceiling genuinely within reach. The heart of Wrath and Ruin lies in two symbols. Green discs reveal a value from x1 to x100 that is added to the reel multiplier of the reel they landed on. Red discs reveal a value of x2, x3, x4, x5 or x10 which instead multiplies the multiplier already accumulated on that reel. The order matters enormously: a red disc arriving after a run of greens is worth vastly more than the same symbol landing first. Battle Horses add a third layer. Each horse that lands is collected above its reel and stays pending; only once the spins are finished does it activate and reveal its own multiplier, up to x50, applied to that reel's total. A session can therefore look mediocre throughout and turn on the final screen. The reference RTP is 96.26%. As across the whole catalogue, Hacksaw ships trimmed versions to operators: 94.34%, 92.28% and 86.22% are the three alternative tiers recorded for this title, the lowest of them sitting well below the studio's usual 88% floor. It is worth checking the figure shown in the info panel before starting a session. Volatility is high, with hit frequency measured around 25%, one paying spin in four. The ceiling is set at 15,000 times the stake. There are four bonus buys and their spacing is unusually wide. BonusHunt FeatureSpins costs 3x the stake and simply raises the chance of triggering a bonus, at 96.28% RTP. Carnage FeatureSpins moves to 60x for 96.21% RTP, the lowest of the four. Fear and Flame is bought at 100x the stake at 96.25%, and Wrath and Ruin at 200x the stake at 96.30%, the best RTP on the menu. Ares Ascends, consistent with its role as a hidden mode, is not offered for sale. Visually, Hacksaw once again drops the pixel art of its early years for dark, dense illustration, bronze helmets and ash-coloured skies, with a percussive soundtrack that swells during reel expansions. The look is less instantly recognisable than a Wanted Dead or a Wild, but the readability of the multipliers stacked above each reel is beyond reproach.
