This Week

This Week (2026 Week 31): The Series Families in Our Hacksaw Library + Mechanic in Focus: Non-Reel Formats

This week's roundup updates weekly, pairing the Hacksaw games in our library with a single mechanic knowledge point. This issue opens with the series families, then turns the lens on the most-overlooked group of all — the titles that never spin a reel.

This week's roster: the series families

Our library currently covers 125 Hacksaw titles. Grouped by name, the recognisable series break down like this:

SeriesTitlesRepresentative
Le series13Le Bandit, Le Pharaoh, Le Viking
Princess4Sun Princess, Dusk Princess
Chaos Crew3Chaos Crew, Chaos Crew 2
Marlin Masters3Marlin Masters
Stackways / Ways3Mayan Stackways, Ronin Stackways

Field-by-field comparison across the three Chaos Crew generations is in this week's piece, The Chaos Crew Trilogy. Full coverage at All Games.

Mechanic in focus: the ones that don't spin

Hacksaw talk defaults to slots, but a group in our library never runs a reel at all: drop formats like Divine Drop and Xmas Drop, instant-win formats like Pray for Three and Power of Ten.

The correct read

What the format changes is not the return figure but how fast you learn the result. An instant-win round can be over in a second or two, so the same stretch of time holds far more bets than a reel game would — and the expected burn runs correspondingly faster. If you want a cap, a round count works far better than a clock.

Full breakdown in this week's mechanics piece, The Ones That Don't Spin, with a downloadable non-reel formats cheatsheet added this week. Next issue returns to the signature x-mechanics.

FAQ

Is your series grouping official?

No. It is an editorial grouping by game title, used to aid comparison; it is not Hacksaw Gaming's official product taxonomy. Each title's actual classification and rules are whatever the official documentation says.

Why cap instant-win play by rounds instead of time?

Because instant-win rounds are extremely short, a time cap constrains almost nothing — the same ten minutes covers far more rounds than on a reel game. Counting rounds gives you a stopping point that actually lands.