Book of Time Slot

Book of Time takes the classic book-of mechanic that half the slots industry has copied from Novomatic and adds a time travel twist with a character called Clock Man. 5x4 grid, 20 paylines, 96.13% RTP, high volatility, 10,000x max win. I played 280 spins at €0.50 and the base game was standard Hacksaw high-vol fare. Long dry patches where nothing connected for 15 or 20 spins straight, interrupted by occasional payline hits returning 5x to 15x my bet. The rhythm felt familiar. Spin, wait, spin, wait, small win, spin, wait some more.

Book symbols act as both wild and scatter. Three of them trigger the "It's a Classic!" bonus round. Four give you 15 free spins. Five give you 20 spins but good luck landing five books on any single spin. The classic bonus works exactly like every other book slot you've ever played. Game picks one, two, or three special symbols at the start of the round that expand to cover entire reels when enough of them land. It's a proven formula that's been working since Book of Ra in 2005. You know what you're getting before it starts.

What Time Is It?

The second bonus is where Hacksaw's twist comes in and the game justifies its name. Three Clock Man scatters trigger "What Time Is It?" and give you 10 free spins. Clocks appear above reels 2, 3, and 4 at the start of the round. Each clock displays a time that determines a multiplier value for that specific reel. As you spin through the round, the clock hands move and the multipliers change. Hit a win that passes through a reel with a high clock multiplier and the payout jumps significantly. The escalation is what makes it work. Early spins in the round usually have low multipliers on the clocks. By the end of the round they've climbed and each spin carries more potential.

I triggered the Clock Man bonus naturally around spin 190 without buying it. Clocks started at low multipliers, 1x and 2x across all three reels. Nothing happened for the first five spins of the round. By spin 6 reel 3's clock had climbed to 5x. A high-pay symbol expanded across reels 2 and 3 on spin 8 of the feature. The 5x multiplier on reel 3 applied to the full win. That single spin paid 72x my bet. Easily the best moment of the entire session and the only time I felt genuinely excited. Rest of the round added some smaller wins and the total return landed at 118x.

The Classic Bonus Buy

Bought the "It's a Classic!" bonus at 80x (€40) to compare it against the Clock Man feature I'd already seen. Game picked a mid-pay symbol to be the expanding symbol. It expanded twice during the round but only covered two reels each time. Partial two-reel expansions. Not enough coverage. Returned 31x total. That's €15.50 back on a €40 buy. A substantial loss that felt worse because I could see what was going wrong in real time. The chosen symbol kept landing on reels 1 and 5 where it expanded in isolation without connecting to anything useful in the middle. The classic book mechanic needs the chosen symbol to fill at least three adjacent reels to produce meaningful payouts. Two disconnected reels just doesn't cut it.

Theme is steampunk-meets-time-travel. Gears, pocket watches, leather-bound books, and brass instruments fill the background. The Clock Man character looks like a Victorian professor with oversized goggles perched on his forehead. Visual design is clean throughout. Nothing groundbreaking but every element feels intentional and well-produced. Colour palette favours warm browns and polished brass tones with blue-green accent lighting that gives the whole thing a slightly magical feel without going overboard.

Two Bonuses but Only One Worth Chasing

The Clock Man bonus is clearly the better feature by a wide margin. Multipliers climbing throughout the round create escalating tension where each spin matters more than the last. You watch the clocks tick upward and know that a good symbol landing now is worth more than it was three spins ago. That building pressure is addictive. The classic bonus doesn't have that. It's a standard book feature with Hacksaw's art style layered on top. It functions fine but it doesn't feel different from any other book slot on the market and there are hundreds of those already.

Session ended down €11 after 280 spins and one bonus buy. The natural Clock Man trigger saved the whole run from being significantly worse. 96.13% RTP is slightly below Hacksaw's usual range where most games sit around 96.25% to 96.35%. Not a major difference in practice but worth mentioning. I'd play Book of Time again specifically to chase the Clock Man feature. The classic book bonus I could take or leave.