Shadow Treasure: Slot Overview

Hacksaw Gaming has never been the type to coast on earlier successes. After making a hugely effective leap from scratchcards to slots, the provider has also started teaming up with outside studios. Backseat Gaming and Bullshark Games are already firmly on board, and now there’s another name in the mix. The studio is literally called NowNow Gaming, and its first title running on Hacksaw OpenRGS is the Lara Croft-style, tough-as-nails adventure slot Shadow Treasure.

Shadow Treasure opens with a brief backstory about a fearless heroine heading into danger with a map and compass. It’s fairly standard stuff, and giving the character a proper name—like Play’n GO did with its Wilde adventurers—could have made it feel more personal. Still, down we go into the hazardous setting: a gloomy, low-lit underground space, almost like a glowing-eyed, gargoyle-guarded Khazad-dûm. The interface is unmistakably Hacksaw Gaming, and the backdrop artwork is solid. Also, watch out for the giant spider creature, depending on how you’re viewing the game.

Shadow Treasure uses 5 reels and 4 rows, with 14 paylines running across the grid. It’s a fairly volatile slot (rated 4 out of 5 for volatility) and comes in two RTP versions: 96.29% and 94.3%. Stakes range from 10 c to $/€100, and there’s also a free spins buy option.

The paytable begins with five gem symbols in purple, blue, green, orange, and red, paying 0.7x to 1.5x for a 5-symbol hit. Next come the map, compass, backpack, and the adventurer woman, which award 2 to 5 times the stake for 5 OAK. Wilds can land on all reels and substitute for any standard pay symbol when calculating wins. A win made up of 5 wilds pays 10 times the stake.

Shadow Treasure: Slot Features

Shadow Treasure is built around a win-and-respin mechanic called Stack, Spin, Win! which can trigger in both the base game and during free spins. In both stages, there’s also a Reel Multiplier feature connected to Stack, Spin, Win!, which can significantly boost payouts.

Stack, Spin, Win!

Whenever a winning combination hits, the winning symbols remain on the reels while every other position spins again. If the win increases, the newly landed symbols stick too and the cycle continues, stopping only when no additional winning symbols appear. Once the respin sequence ends, the game pays out.

Reel Multipliers

A random multiplier is displayed above each reel in ascending order, with possible values from x2 to x500. When a reel becomes full of winning symbols, its associated multiplier is activated. The multiplier that applies is the highest unlocked value shown above the reels. This depends on how many reel multipliers have been unlocked consecutively, starting from the leftmost reel. The longer the consecutive chain, the higher the final multiplier can climb, up to the top value on the rightmost reel. If the leftmost reel’s multiplier isn’t unlocked, then no multiplier is awarded.

Hidden Treasure Free Spins

Scatter symbols that land on the initial spin and any following respins are added to a meter beside the grid. Hitting 4 scatter symbols in the base game triggers 15 free spins. Every extra triggering scatter beyond 4 adds +5 free spins, up to a maximum of 45. Free spins use the same core mechanics as the base game, but with a change to how reel multipliers work. At the end of each free spin, all unlocked multipliers above the reels are applied to the win, even if they weren’t unlocked consecutively. If multiple multipliers are active, their values are summed before being applied. Reel multipliers reset to locked at the start of each free spin, and scatters do not appear during the feature.

Bonus Buy

In Shadow Treasure, players can purchase the bonus feature instead of triggering it naturally. For 100 times the bet, you receive 15 free spins.

Shadow Treasure: Slot Verdict

NowNow Gaming is a South African-born studio that aims to ‘revolutionize the iGaming industry by creating innovative and unparalleled gaming experiences‘, according to its founder. That’s a familiar claim, of course. Does Shadow Treasure deliver on it? Partly. By Hacksaw Gaming standards, it’s not a major leap forward, but in the right moments it can pull off some slick moves. The win-and-respin concept isn’t brand-new—similar systems have been used effectively in standout titles like Nolimit City’s Serial. As in Serial, Shadow Treasure’s win engine is central to opening up additional mechanics. The difference is that instead of Enhancer Cells impacting the reels, the excitement here comes from multipliers ramping things up.

It helps that reel multipliers can appear throughout, across all modes, along with the possibility of landing Shadow Treasure’s 12,000x max win. The base game is stricter, since reel multipliers must be unlocked consecutively from the leftmost reel to reach the bigger displayed values—and with x500 in play, those upper numbers can be enormous. The bonus round turns the dial up because any unlocked reel multiplier can contribute, and if more than one is unlocked, their values combine. The slot also hands out a notably generous amount of free spins, considering the gameplay leans heavily on respins. That extra spin count gives you room to breathe, though this is still a slot—so expect dead spins and other mathematical safeguards to ensure Shadow Treasure isn’t some kind of hacked cash machine.

In South Africa, the expressions ‘now’, ‘just now’, and ‘now now’ can apparently carry different meanings. Between that culturally nodding studio name and the solid details added to Shadow Treasure, it may not sit at the very top tier alongside Hacksaw Gaming’s biggest hitters, but it’s still a win-and-respin slot with plenty going for it.