Stack’Em: Canny the Can, stacking multipliers and the 10,000x cap

At a glance

Released

25 May 2021wide release; dates vary by source

Grid

5x6clusters of 5+

RTP

96.20%lower versions disputed

Volatility

High4 of 5 on Hacksaw’s scale

Hit frequency

10.56%per Bigwinboard

Max win

10,000xthe bet, per round

Bet range

0.20–100per review sites

Buy

129xnot in the UK per SlotCatalog, CasinoRange

On the release date the sources split three ways. Bigwinboard, AboutSlots, SlotArk and SlotCatalog’s “wide release” field say 25 May 2021; Roshtein’s site and the Hzura catalogue say 24 May. SlotCatalog’s headline date is 14 May, which its own tooltip explained in late 2021 as an exclusive launch (“Exclusively from 2021-05-14”) ahead of the wide release.

How a spin pays

Five reels, six rows, and a win is five or more matching symbols connected anywhere on the grid. The rules just say “connecting”; Bigwinboard specifies vertically or horizontally. Bigwinboard and AboutSlots list five low symbols, the letters A, G, E, R and T, and five high ones: a leaf, a dead bird, a skull, a snake and a thumbs up. A wild substitutes for all paying symbols, and Mona the Mouse, marked FS, is the free spins scatter.

Stacking and the reel multipliers

From Hacksaw’s in-game rules:

• Winners stay, everything else goes. After every base-game win, the non-winning symbols are removed, and all winning symbols are kept and dropped to the bottom of the grid.
• Each reel counts its stack. Below each reel is a value showing how many winning symbols are stacked on it.
• The values add, then multiply. Every winning cluster is multiplied by the total of the values it sits above. A cluster over 1x, 3x and 2x is paid at 6x. This repeats for as long as new wins keep stacking.

Bigwinboard and SlotCatalog put the limit at 6x per reel and 30x in total, which fits a reel only six rows tall. Both also say the multipliers clear before the next paid spin; the rules don’t say so in as many words. AboutSlots’ worked example: a six-symbol cluster with four symbols on reel 1 and two on reel 2 leaves 4x under reel 1 and 2x under reel 2.

Free spins

The rules describe one bonus, which they simply call the free spin feature. Three or more scatters in the base game award 5 free spins, shown as hearts above the reels, and it runs until the hearts are gone. Free spins work differently from the base game: all symbols are cleared between spins, and the rules describe the stacking only for the base game.

• Total multiplier. Every win adds its cluster size to a total multiplier shown above the reels. A six-symbol cluster adds 6.
• The X symbol. It can appear on any free spin. Winning clusters that connect with it are multiplied by the total above the reels; SlotCatalog’s wording is that they “need to be adjacent”.
• The ? symbol. It gives one of three kinds of reward: 2 to 5 extra lives; +1, +2, +5, +10, +25 or +50 on the total multiplier; or the total multiplier times 2, 3, 4 or 5.

Bigwinboard and SlotCatalog describe the add-on as a range from +1 to +50; the rules allow only the six values listed. The only source of extra spins in the rules is the ? symbol. Bigwinboard found five spins “aren’t much” and extra hearts “a little irritating” when they arrive at the wrong time; SlotCatalog says it “can be frustrating when the ‘X’ symbol doesn’t play ball”, since the total only boosts clusters that connect with an X.

That total works out to 7,295.3x the bet. The rules place the free-spins total multiplier above the reels, which is where the 406X sits.

RTP and volatility

Every review we read calls Stack’Em high volatility. Hacksaw’s own slots list shows 4 of 5 bars, one short of the top of its scale. Bigwinboard calls it “a temperamental beast” and puts the hit frequency at 10.56%, roughly one winning spin in ten; SlotCatalog calls the volatility “quite brutal”.

SlotTracker’s users have logged 205,983 spins with a combined return of 89.33%, a hit rate of 10.43% and a bonus about once every 265 spins. Those are records of real play from a self-selected group, not the game’s design figures.

Bonus buy

On our arithmetic, at a bet of 1 that is 129 per bonus, with a theoretical average loss of 4.90 over many purchases; results from any single bonus vary widely. Bigwinboard’s summary is that the return is 96.2% “whether you pay for free spins or not”. The rules contain one line for the buy’s RTP, which fits a single option, but the copy we read leaves the value blank.

The 10,000x cap

Hacksaw’s rules set the max win at 10,000 times the bet and describe how it happens: a cluster of Thumbs Up symbols lands, grows through later drops, and after each increase is multiplied by the sum of the multipliers under the reels. Those multipliers belong to the base game, so on our reading the official route is a base-game one, though the rules never use the words “base game”. SlotCatalog disagrees: it says the 10,000x comes in the bonus round and the base game pays up to 6,000x on a single spin. CasinoRange repeats the 6,000x but attaches it to the bonus multiplier.

Our arithmetic, using the reviewers’ 200x for a 25+ Thumbs Up cluster: at the 30x ceiling, one payout comes to 200 × 30 = 6,000x. On our reading, the rules have the cluster paid again after each increase, and they add all wins in a round together, so a Thumbs Up cluster that keeps growing could collect several payouts of that order. The rules copy we read leaves the odds of the max win blank. When the cap is reached the round ends at once, and in free spins any spins left are discarded.

Bigwinboard notes the cap is around five times what Stick’Em offered; AboutSlots puts the old figure at 2,048x.

Big wins on record

• Roshtein, $2,910,150 at $750 (3,880.2x), shown as his personal best on roshtein.com in a copy archived in June 2024. The figures are consistent on our arithmetic: 750 × 3,880.2 = 2,910,150. No date is given, and nothing says whether it came from the base game or the bonus.
• ClassyBeef, “2.2 million”, from the title of a video on his own channel published on 1 December 2021. Neither the title nor the description gives a currency or a bet.
• Other max-win claims. CMoney and LOCO x MOOSE each describe a 10,000x max win on their own channels (the latter at CSGO500), and BlackManiks posted one titled “STACK ’EM MAX WIN!!! 10000X!!!!” on 27 June 2021, a month after release. None of them states a bet or a cash amount.
• Syztmz, $72,953 at $10 (7,295.3x), and Chimper, whose screen appears to show $40,000 at $4, both pictured above from clips on this site.

Other titles credit Roshtein with “1.8 mil”, “over $1,500,000” and “3000X”, and Trainwrecks with “1.4MM”, but these come from third-party clip channels and give no bets. We found no written source for the $914K in an Xposed clip title on this site. Nothing here comes from a casino or from Hacksaw.

Stick’Em and other cluster games

Stick’Em, the prequel, ran on a 5x4 grid with no wild, per AboutSlots; SlotCatalog mentions sticky-symbol respins. The studio blurb in Hzura’s catalogue calls it “our first ever slot game”, and Hacksaw’s slots list still carries it with a volatility meter of 3 out of 5. Bigwinboard sees a link back to Stick’Em’s 1930s feel and hears the piano-led swing band return, played faster in the bonus.

SlotCatalog suggests Forest Fortune and Frutz as other Hacksaw cluster games, AboutSlots compares Stack’Em’s big bonus multipliers with Forest Fortune’s, and SlotCatalog’s “Related slots” list includes Chaos Crew. For that game, see the Chaos Crew guide; for another Hacksaw game with a different set of tricks, Hand of Anubis.