Steamrunners: Slot Overview

Steampunk has long been a familiar inspiration for online slots, marrying Victorian styling with imaginative, machine-driven fantasy. Early on, titles such as Steam Tower by NetEnt helped define the look and feel, drawing players into worlds of cogs, goggles, and polished brass contraptions. Since then, releases like Cazino Zeppelin and Land of Zenith have continued to fly the flag for the theme, each bringing its own angle to the steam-powered vibe. Now, Hacksaw Gaming steps into the genre with Steamrunners, presenting this retro-futuristic setting through the studio’s own visual approach and gameplay ideas.

From the official description, Steamrunners appears to be the name for the “fierce, fearless” characters shown in the game, “riding gas-powered gadgets and rogue airships” as they travel “through skybound cities to glimmering sky courts and beyond.” Sorry for leaning on the quotes, but steampunk naturally invites that kind of storytelling, and Hacksaw Gaming’s wording does a good job of setting the scene. The visuals do, too, with a cloud-top city backdrop and a selection of on-theme objects filling the screen. Even so, while Steamrunners clearly channels the steampunk mood, you might also feel the studio is operating slightly outside its most natural comfort zone.

The action plays out on a metallic framework of pipes, lights, and gears across 5 reels and 4 rows. Wins are calculated using 14 paylines, all beginning on the leftmost reel and paying left to right. For volatility, Hacksaw Gaming has opted for a medium profile, alongside a stake range of $/€0.10 to $/€100 per spin. There are four RTP versions available, with 96.32% being the top value to watch for.

There are ten symbols on the paytable, made up of 10-A card royals plus a telescope, a scroll, a hat, a gramophone, and a pair of glasses. A royal 5 OAK returns 1x the bet, while landing 5 OAK with a premium picture symbol pays 2.5x to 5x the bet. The wild substitutes for all standard paytable symbols and pays 10x the bet when 5 wilds form a win on their own.

Steamrunners: Slot Features

As you take in the sky-high scenery, keep an eye out for spreading Gas Canister symbols, Sky City, Gaslight District, and Court of High Steam free spins, along with feature buy options.

Wild Gas Canister Symbols

When a Green Gas Canister lands, it spreads both horizontally and vertically, converting itself and adjacent low-paying symbols into wilds provided they are part of a win. The spread carries on if newly affected low pays or wilds link up with those already transformed. A Purple Gas Canister changes itself and every low-paying symbol on the grid into wilds, again only when they contribute to a win. Any transformed wild can randomly reveal a multiplier from x2 to x200, while pre-existing wilds struck by a canister are given x2. If a win contains more than one multiplier, the values are added together before being applied. Only one Gas Canister can land at a time.

Sky City Bonus Game

This round starts when 3 FS scatters land, awarding 8 free spins. In addition to the base game rules, any wilds carrying multipliers become sticky, remaining in place until the feature ends. Wild multipliers double whenever they are influenced by a spreading Gas Canister symbol, up to a maximum of x5,000. Across all three bonus rounds, landing 2 or 3 scatters awards an extra +2 or +4 free spins, respectively.

Gaslight District Bonus Game

Gaslight District is triggered by landing 4 FS scatters in the base game, granting 10 free spins. It runs the same as Sky City, with the added rule that at least one wild is present on the grid for the full duration of the bonus.

Court of High Steam Hidden Epic Bonus Game

Landing 5 scatters in the base game unlocks this hidden bonus and awards 10 free spins. It uses the base game mechanics, but guarantees one Gas Canister on every free spin.

Feature Buys

Steamrunners includes four purchasable options. These are BonusHunt FeatureSpins at 3x per spin, which makes it 5 times more likely to trigger a bonus game, or SmokeShow FeatureSpins, which ensure 1 Gas Canister lands for 50x the bet. In addition, Sky City and Gaslight District can be purchased for 80x or 200x the bet, respectively.

Steamrunners: Slot Verdict

It’s been some time since a steampunk-themed slot made much noise. For a period, the style built real momentum, with releases such as Yggdrasil Gaming’s Cazino Zeppelin series and Push Gaming’s Land of Zenith standing out as strong representatives. Attention may have cooled since those days, but Hacksaw Gaming’s Steamrunners does its part to spark renewed interest in all things brass and steam. It’s also given the team room to build a mechanical fantasy that echoes the feel of the Netflix hit Arcane, and even The Aeronauts, a film inspired by meteorologist James Glaisher’s real balloon journeys—reminding us that soaring above the world can be wonderfully liberating, but also seriously cold.

Steamrunners, however, doesn’t feel chilly at all. Instead, it comes across as inviting, pulling players into a cloud-bound world of pipes and gadgets. Hacksaw Gaming is well known for its love of spreading mechanics, and here the spread isn’t limited to just vertical movement (as in Hounds of Hell) or a purely horizontal approach that adds wilds (as in Beam Boys). In Steamrunners, the spread can move in more than one direction, flowing around the grid based on where wins can form. The real boost to the wild-conversion effect is the possibility that some transformed wilds can reveal multipliers as high as x200. Adding more pressure to the system, wild multipliers remain sticky in the two lower-tier, non-hidden bonus rounds. Pushing the concept further still, those wild multipliers can be doubled up to x5,000, which is massive for a Hacksaw Gaming slot—massive for any slot. The challenge, of course, is getting meaningful wild multipliers onto the grid in the first place, which may not be easy.

Still, the upside is there, including the chance to land wins of up to 10,000x the bet in all game modes. With that in mind, Steamrunners is a compelling addition to Hacksaw Gaming’s catalogue and another step in the studio’s ongoing exploration of spreading-style gameplay. It may not be an instant top-tier standout, and it can feel a little demanding, with the biggest results leaning heavily on potentially uncommon multiplier setups. Even so, the potential is real, and it’s backed by a well-executed steampunk presentation that leaves plenty of room for the imagination while you spin.