Slots review Hacksaw Gaming The Bomb

The Bomb: Overview

Hacksaw Gaming’s growing Pocketz slot line focuses on clean, straightforward design built to perform smoothly on mobile. Up to now, the games have looked charming and light, yet often deliver more punch than you’d expect. That pattern carries on with The Bomb: it appears modest at first glance, but it hides a €1 million jackpot. Alongside that headline prize, there are extras like free spins and special symbols to keep things lively while you chase the top reward—so let’s dive in.

The Bomb runs on a 5×5 grid, set against a pastel-pink rocky desert backdrop. Of the Pocketz titles so far, The Bomb is probably the trickiest to pin down thematically. Are the bombs in the desert hinting at gold mining, or is it more like a test site? The lone banjo soundtrack leans toward the Wild West, yet the symbols don’t really match a western vibe at all. Either way, it’s easy on the eyes and plays just as well on phones as it does on desktop—exactly what the studio aims for with the Pocketz series.

That also means you can play The Bomb on virtually any device, with stakes ranging from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin. If you’re playing purely for the jackpot, there’s no indication that higher bets improve your odds of landing it, which could affect how you size your spins. The jackpot element may also have influenced the RTP, which sits at 95.17%—a touch lower than earlier Pocketz releases, though not dramatically so given the added prize pool. Volatility is on the high side and smaller clusters pay very little, so sessions can feel grindy—particularly when you’re trying to connect with those hard-to-find bonus symbols.

The paytable includes 9 standard symbols plus a couple of special ones. Wins are divided between 5 low-value shape symbols and 4 bomb types. Clusters of 5-6 symbols pay from 0.10x to 1x the stake, while the biggest clusters (15+) return from 20 to 120 times the stake. The wild doesn’t pay by itself, but it can replace any symbol except the bonus or TNT symbol. One wild can also contribute to multiple clusters at once, allowing for a multi-win.

The Bomb: Features

Although the jackpot is clearly the headline attraction, there’s more going on too, including TNT boxes, free spins, and a Mr Bomb feature. Everything is built around the cascade mechanic. Each spin drops 25 symbols onto the grid, and the goal is to form clusters of 5 or more matching symbols. Any win activates the cascade feature. Winning symbols detonate, making room for new ones to fall in and potentially create additional wins. Cascades keep rolling as long as fresh winning clusters continue to appear.

Watch for the TNT boxes. These regular seized symbols can land anywhere on any spin. Once a cascade chain ends, TNT boxes explode and clear all adjacent symbols, giving you another opportunity to connect a win.

Above the reels you’ll see a meter tied to the Mr Bomb feature. Every cascade contributes to filling the meter, and when it’s fully charged, players are awarded a 500x prize. This feature triggers after 62 cascaded symbols.

Green barrel bonus scatter symbols unlock the game’s biggest potential—landing 3 on the screen starts the bonus game. In the bonus game, symbols cascade and will be either rocks or mystery crates. Rocks do nothing, while crates may be empty, hold jackpot symbols, or award multipliers. Multipliers can be ‘add’ multipliers of +1 to +10, or ‘multiply’ multipliers of x2 to x10.

At the end of each round, rocks are cleared away so more crates can drop into the open spaces. The feature ends once the grid is completely filled with crates. At that point, multipliers are calculated against the total bet and paid out. However, if five jackpot symbols are gathered during the feature, the million euro jackpot is awarded immediately and the bonus game ends.

The Bomb: Verdict

If nobody mentioned the jackpot, you’d hardly guess this small, simple slot could deliver such a massive payout. Then again, if you’re familiar with Hacksaw Gaming, you’ll know huge jackpots aren’t unusual for them—and The Bomb isn’t even their largest. Players can take up to €2 million in Haunted Circus, for instance. There’s also been chatter at Hacksaw about a €50 million fixed prize, though that still hasn’t appeared.

Naturally, landing something that big requires a lot of luck. In reality, most players won’t get close to the top prizes. So what about everything else? It holds up fine and feels like classic Pocketz, and the series remains a fun one overall. Still, in a few respects, The Bomb comes across as one of the weaker entries so far.

For starters, the theme doesn’t come together as neatly. In slots like The Respinners, the parts fit together in a way that made the whole concept click. With The Bomb, it’s a bit muddled. Sure, that may not matter when you’re chasing a million, but the little details do add up.

Another point is how repetitive The Bomb can feel. Bonus games may take a long time to show up, and the Mr Bomb feature can feel like it’s constantly dangling just out of reach. With a stronger theme, you might overlook that more easily, but as it stands it can become monotonous—especially with the very basic visuals. That said, it can still come good, and non-jackpot wins of up to 5,000 times the stake are possible during free spins.

The Bomb is still a solid Pocketz release, even if it doesn’t hit quite as well as some others in the lineup. Even so, it’s easy to imagine a discreet fist pump on a packed commuter train when five jackpot symbols drop during the bonus game—quietly, of course, so you don’t bother anyone nearby.