Theme & Design

Run of the Mill Aztec Style But With Added Red-Eyed Monster!

I wasn’t as impressed by Mayan Stackways visuals as I have been by many other Hacksaw Gaming slots. It follows a fairly traditional style, set as it is in a dense jungle and the reel set housed in a stone temple framework. The symbols are not as intricate as you find in other slots in this genre, and the blurred background means you miss the usual lush vegetation.

To differentiate Mayan Stackways from the competition, Hacksaw have created a skeleton-zombie Mayan God, though his role in the narrative is unclear. He does have the red-eyed characteristics of the monster from Hand of Anubis, so maybe they are trying to add some continuity there. During your spins he just hangs out to the right side of the reel set, impatiently tapping his skeleton hand against the stones as the reels spin.

In another typically-Hacksaw fashion, the soundtrack is very sparse too. It’s a matter of taste whether you like that – personally I think it works. There is little sound apart from the thud as symbols drop into place until a Stackways arrives, then a flurry of Aztec drums comes in to add a little drama.

Overall the production isn’t bad, just not as arresting as other slots from this studio.

RTP and Variance

Mayan Stackways has four available RTP settings: 96.23%, 94.29%, 92.41% or 88.38%. The optimum RTP of 96.23% is good value, but not all casinos will run the game at this setting. We verified the RTP of Mayan Stackways at five UK slot sites to see what setting they had chosen. This what we found:

• Casumo (independent): 94.29%
• BacanaPlay (Skill on Net): 92.41%
• Barz (White Hat Gaming):  94.29%
• Pub Casino (L and L Europe): 92.41%
• MrQ (independent): 96.23%

Your best option for playing Mayan Stackways, if RTP is an important consideration for you, is MrQ, where the RTP is set to the maximum of 96.23%.

Mayan Stackways is a volatile slot with the potential to deliver some exciting win sequences where stacks and multipliers combine, but also one that can take a long time to break down. In this respect it it similar to many other Hacksaw Gaming slots like Itero, Hand of Anubis and Rotten.

Maximum Win

Mayan Stackways has a top payout of 10,000x. This is the standard max win for a high variance slot from Hacksaw. There are a few with better potential if that is what you are looking for – you could try RIP City or Cursed Seas, both of which are capped at 12,500x. Or, if you want even bigger potential then try our list of highest maximum win slots.

Explore Games With Similar RTP, Variance and Maximum Win

Like the numbers? Here are some more games you might want to try.

Symbols and Paytable

A Win Ways Game Where StackWays Are Vital To Powering Big Wins

Mayan Stackways is a 5 reel and 4 row game with a win-ways mechanic which means that there are no traditional paylines. Instead, wins are triggered by landing identical symbols on adjacent reels, regardless of position, from left to right, starting with the left-most reel.

When combined with the Stackways mechanic which stacks up to 10 symbols per reel, that creates up to 100,000 ways to win per spin. Effectively, Stackways is a method of expanding your reels in the same way that xWays from Nolimit City does, or Megaways from Big Time Gaming.

Browsing the paytable I immediately noticed that symbol values are low. It means that straightforward wins will rarely amount to anything significant. But don’t let that put you off. The high number of win ways available, and the use of multipliers elsewhere in the game which can boost your wins significantly.

So stay tuned to see how those features work for you.

Aside from special symbols there are 10 basic symbols in the game. Low payers are the cards 10 through to Ace. These are valued at between 0.1x for 3 on a line up to 0.7x for five on a line. Premiums are the Aztec symbols, 3 animals and 2 characters. These are valued at between 0.5x for 3 animals up to 4x for 5 characters.

There are NO WILDS in this game.

Features and Gameplay

StackWays And a Classic Hacksaw Bonus Round 

Hacksaw Gaming slots are not complex and Stackways is no exception. The base game is all about the Stackways symbol and trying to unlock one of two bonus rounds – Stack Spins and Mayan Gold.

Stackways

Stackways is a variation on the expander symbol feature found in ‘Book of ..’ slots like Book of Dead and Book of Ra. When the Stackways symbol lands, IF by expanding up or down its reel it can complete a winline, then it does. The number of symbols in the expansion is determined by the number displayed on the Stacksways symbol. And the symbol chosen for the expansion is determined by which would create the longest win line.

Remember, wins are created by landing identical symbols on adjacent reels, regardless of their position, so the more symbols in the stack, the more winlines that are created.

Stack Spins

Look out for Skull Scatters in the base game – landing 3 or more on a spin unlocks Stack Spins. You get 10 spins with a greater chance of landing Stackways symbols. This round can also be extended by landing 3 more scatters to give you 4 more spins.

During this round, if an Activator symbol lands, it GUARANTEES that on every remaining spin in the round, a Stackways will land.

Mayan Gold Bonus Round

The main event in Mayan Stackways is the Mayan Gold Bonus Round, triggered by landing 4 Skull Scatters at once. Like many other Hacksaw bonuses, it’s all about collecting multipliers to trigger a massive payout when the round concludes.

During the round only coins, multipliers, Stackways and collect symbols land. Each coin has a value that will be added to an accumulator displayed at the top of its reel. Coins may be Bronze (valued 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5), Silver (valued 10, 15 or 20) or Gold (valued 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 500 or 1,000).

When a multiplier lands, it is applied to the accumulator value at the top of its reel (2x, 3x, 4x or 5x).

Stackways fill the reel with a number of coins equivalent to the number displayed on the Stackways symbol. Each coin takes its value from the accumulator at the top of the reel. Once this happens, the reel locks. And once all five reels lock, the round ends.

But there is a twist. You can land a Collect symbol at any point which takes all coins on currently locked reels and puts them in a vault, unlocking the reels as it does.

At the end of the round, ALL coin values on the reels, and that in the vault, are added together and multiplied by your bet value for the payout.

Golden Opportunity

There is one more bonus enhancement in this game – if you land FIVE scatters in the base game you go direct to the Mayan Gold with a value of 50 displayed on each of the five coin accumulators above the reels.

The Final Verdict

Mayan Stackways is a slot that is all about waiting for the big moments. It might not look that exciting – the theme and design are more generic than most Hacksaw Games – but this tough slot’s best attributes will be the clever ways in which it promises to eventually kick out some big wins.  From the astute mix of win ways mechanic and stacking symbols that means its more than just another expanding symbols game, to the Activator which locks in your Stackways for the full feature, and the collector symbols which extend your Mayan bonus by unlocking reels to land more coins, Hacksaw have round multiple ways to deliver a big win in style. And of course, we should add to that mix the Golden Opportunity feature – undoubtedly an extremely rare treat, but one that will set up an epic Mayan Bonus round any time it drops.

So in conclusion, whilst our own testing didn’t produce any moments of magic, what is clear when looking at the features on offer, is that Mayan Stackways has some original and exciting tricks available to produce special moments for those with the patience to chase them down.