Beam Boys: Slot Overview

Beam Boys… Beam Boys… still drawing a blank on a witty opener, so we’ll let Hacksaw Gaming set the scene: ‘Pack your safety goggles and immerse yourself in the world of Beam Boys – where the kittens finally team up with the laser pointers!‘ Fair enough. Beam Boys is an online slot in which cats fire laser beams from their eyes and, as they do, spread wild symbols across the grid. Curious? Let’s check it out with standard eyesight, not full Scott Summers laser vision.

Just like art cycles through trends and eras, Hacksaw Gaming seems to do the same. Beam Boys sits firmly in the studio’s ‘black and white’ period, sharing the same look as earlier titles like RIP City, Chaos Crew, and Itero. Expect heavy monochrome, punctuated by sharp hits of blue or orange. A standout twist is that players can choose their preferred volatility level. Much like Pragmatic’s Zeus vs Hades, toggling to Normal Volatility washes the screen in blue, while switching to Extreme Volatile brings orange to the forefront. Next to the grid stands the main cat, complete with lightning blasting from empty eye sockets and odd metallic implants—basically a strange cyborg feline.

On the volatility front, the Normal (often called low) option carries a 2/5 rating, while Extreme cranks it up to 5/5. RTP also shifts depending on the selection, moving from a default 96.35% on Normal to 96.26% on Extreme. In either mode, stakes range from 10 c to $/€100, and there are four feature buy choices to browse. Beam Boys uses a ways-to-win approach on a 6×4 game board instead of paylines—something a little out of the ordinary for Hacksaw Gaming—paying when matching symbols connect from the leftmost reel across adjacent reels. The game states there are 6,561 ways to win, which is tricky to reconcile, as many 6×4 ways setups typically total 4,096.

Symbols include grey-toned 10 to A card ranks, followed by a dead mouse, a dead bird, a dead fish, a rabbit, and a snake. A winning way of 6 matching royals returns 0.5 times the bet, while 6-of-a-kind premium symbol wins pay 0.8 to 2 times the bet. Wilds appear as the Laser Cat, and the lightning bolts it spreads into other positions are wild as well, substituting for all standard paying symbols.

Beam Boys: Slot Features

Here we’ll cover more detail on the volatility toggle mentioned earlier, along with Beam Boys’ Wild Rows, the bonus round, and the feature buy options.

Volatility Switch

With Normal Volatility selected, wins tend to be smaller but arrive more regularly, while the Extreme setting generally delivers bigger hits less often. The default hit rate is 35.75% in Normal and 33.11% in Extreme.

Wild Rows

Wild Laser Cat symbols may land on reels 2 to 6. When one appears, the Wild Laser Cat shoots a laser beam leftward across every position in that same row, turning them wild.

Bonus Game

Landing 3, 4, 5, or 6 scatter symbols in the base game grants 5, 10, 20, or 40 free spins, respectively. During free spins, there is a better chance of landing Wild Laser Cat symbols. In addition, landing 2 scatters awards +2 free spins, while landing 3 scatter symbols awards +4 free spins.

Bonus Buy

Beam Boys’s feature buy includes four options available under both volatility settings:

• BonusHunt FeatureSpins – 5x the bet where each spin is 10 times more likely to trigger a bonus game. RTP for Normal(low) Volatility is 96.32%, while the RTP for Extreme Volatility is 96.38%.
• Wide Spectrum FeatureSpins – 50x the bet for at least 1 Wild Laser Cat symbol to land on reels 2 to 6. RTP for Normal (low) Volatility is 96.3%, while the RTP for Extreme Volatility is 96.32%.
• Narrow Spectrum FeatureSpins – 200x the bet for at last 1 Wild Laser Cat to land on reels 4 to 6. RTP for Normal (low) Volatility is 96.3%, while the RTP for Extreme Volatility is 96.4%.
• Photonic Fur Bonus – 110x the bet to get 10, 20, or 40 free spins. RTP for Normal (low) Volatility is 96.32%, while the RTP for Extreme Volatility is 96.33%.

Beam Boys: Slot Verdict

Oddly enough, Beam Boys contains plenty of the familiar explosive elements you’d expect from a Hacksaw Gaming slot, along with a couple of fresh touches, yet it didn’t have that warm core that makes a game easy to connect with. Maybe it’s the limited palette paired with those blank, white-eyed cats—hard to pin down—but Beam Boys felt tougher to enjoy than much of Hacksaw Gaming’s output, even compared to their darker themes. Titles like Hand of Anubis or Mayan Stackways came across as having more heart than Beam Boys. Not that a slot needs to be all cuddly and cute, but the game’s cold, lifeless, chrome-heavy shell could be a bit off-putting.

That said, Hacksaw Gaming absolutely knows how to build a slot that can erupt, and Beam Boys has the right tools to do it when momentum hits. The ways format helps, because a Wild Lazer Cat landing on the far-right reel can spread wilds all the way left, potentially connecting every pay symbol on the grid. This is one reason the game’s 12,500 maximum winning potential can be achieved in any mode, whether in the base game or the bonus.

Of course, plenty of Hacksaw Gaming slots can reach their max win at any stage, given how much firepower the developer tends to pack in. With Beam Boys, the volatility switch and the spreading wild mechanic are both solid ideas, but there are other games in the Hacksaw Gaming catalogue that feel more satisfyingly complete across several areas, rather than leaning so heavily on novelty in the way Beam Boys seems to.