About Book of Time
Book of Time went live on 24 November 2022, after a few days of exclusivity at selected partners from 15 November. Its full official title is Canny the Can and the Book of Time, named after the soda can that serves as its hero — a perfectly absurd choice that sums up the studio's humour rather well. The frame: 5 reels, 4 rows, 20 fixed paylines, stakes from €0.10 to €100.
Twenty lines is double what most "Book of" machines offer, since they tend to stick to the 5x3 grid and 10 lines inherited from the original model. On paper that is an advantage; in practice Hacksaw claws it back elsewhere. The hit rate is just 16.35 %, one of the lowest figures in the entire catalogue, and volatility is published at 4.5 out of 5. Put plainly, five spins in six give you absolutely nothing. This is a game you play waiting for a bonus, not one you play accumulating small returns.
The Book symbol takes the usual dual wild-and-scatter role. As a wild it substitutes for every symbol, and five of them on a line pay 250x the stake on their own, which is well above the norm for this kind of symbol.
Three, four or five Books trigger It's a Classic!: 10, 15 or 20 free spins respectively, with 1, 2 or 3 special symbols drawn before the round begins. Each special symbol expands across its whole reel and pays anywhere across the 20 lines, with no adjacency requirement. Three special symbols expanded at once is the scenario that approaches the ceiling.
The second bonus is what genuinely sets the game apart. Three Clock Man symbols trigger What Time Is It? and its 10 free spins. Clocks appear above reels 2 to 4, each showing a multiplier value between 1x and 12x. When an activator symbol lands on one of those reels, Wild Multiplier Clocks spread down from the top and replace the symbols in place. If several of those wilds feed the same win, their multipliers are added together — a 12x, a 9x and a 7x on the same line give 28x. Nothing comparable exists elsewhere in the "Book of" segment.
There are five buys. BonusHunt FeatureSpins costs 3x the stake (96.27 % RTP). Then come three It's a Classic! tiers that map exactly onto the three natural triggers: 100x the stake for the 3-Book version (96.39 %), 200x for the 4-Book version, branded Even More Classic! (96.35 %), and 400x for the 5-Book version, The Most Classic! (96.37 %). Finally, What Time Is It? costs 200x the stake (96.25 %). All of these modes run above the base RTP, which is welcome, but 400x remains a very heavy ticket.
The base RTP itself sits at 96.13 % in its best build, a shade under the studio average. The other three tiers drop to 94.34 %, 92.33 % and 88.25 %. The casino decides alone; the game's « i » menu is the only place the truth is written down.
Worth comparing with Le Pharaoh and Hand of Anubis for Hacksaw's ancient-adventure register.
