Book of Time Slot Review
A wooden reel cabinet slung from ropes beside a big old oak, a grinning yellow cartoon in a bowler hat, and a scribbly mouse watching from the grass. That’s Hacksaw Gaming‘s Book of Time, and it commits to the least original idea in slots – the book mechanic – yet escapes it, because the game’s better half doesn’t use the book at all. Canny the Can is back, with a very different game than the one he starred in back in 2022.
It runs on a 5×4 grid with 20 fixed paylines, pays out at 96.13% RTP, and carries a 10,000x max win that only the bonus rounds can reach. The studio’s family here also includes Chaos Crew and Wanted Dead or a Wild. Stakes run from 0.10 to 100 per spin.
Base Game & Features
Wins form along 20 predefined lines on adjacent reels from the left, and the four-row grid gives each line plenty of room to fill. It’s a conventional setup, and Hacksaw don’t dress it up as anything else. The artwork does the dressing instead: hand-drawn vintage cartooning in flat, halftone-dotted colour, with a dirt path winding off to hazy blue hills behind the reels.
The torn-paper “Book of Time” banner sits pasted across the header, and a little black scribbly mouse watches from the grass at the bottom left, drawn in the same rough ink line as everything else. It’s a coherent look, and it holds up spin after spin.
The Book symbol is wild and substitutes for all paying symbols, and five of them pay the same 250x as the game’s richest regular symbol. It doesn’t appear at all in the What Time Is It? round, which keeps the two bonuses properly separate. The Clock Man scatter only shows up in the base game, where three of him open the clock feature.
Symbols pay as multiples of the total bet, and the table steps down steeply from the top:
- Blue Mouse – 3x, 20x, 250x for three, four, five
- Mummy and Frog – 2x, 10x, 75x
- Wand and Witch Hat – 1x, 5x, 50x
- A – 0.5x, 2.5x, 15x
- Q and K – 0.2x, 1.5x, 12.5x
- 10 and J – 0.1x, 1x, 5x
That top step matters: 250x for a five-of-a-kind is a solid ceiling for a base game. Everything below it falls away quickly, though. The drop from the Blue Mouse to the Mummy and Frog is steep, and steeper still further down, where the Wand and Witch Hat pay just 1x for three.
The royals pay scraps, with five Js worth 5x. Regular play is built to keep the balance ticking over while you wait on scatters.
Book of Time Bonuses: It’s a Classic! and What Time Is It?
It’s a Classic!
Three, four or five Book scatters in the base game trigger the classic book round, and the more you land, the bigger the head start:
- 3 Books – 10 free spins and 1 special symbol
- 4 Books – 15 free spins and 2 special symbols
- 5 Books – 20 free spins and 3 special symbols
One or more paying symbols are chosen as special symbols for the whole round, framed in gold and given a colour change so you can’t miss them. Only low or high paying symbols qualify; the Book itself can’t be picked. If special symbols land anywhere on at least three reels, they spread to cover those reels after normal wins are paid, and from then on they pay anywhere on the grid, gaps and all.
When more than one special symbol covers three reels on the same spin, they spread and resolve one at a time, each creating its own wins before the next resolves. The Book doesn’t act as a wild during this stage and can’t join pay-anywhere wins, so the round stands entirely on the symbols it picked.
A spread of the top-paying Blue Mouse across three, four or five reels is where the round’s biggest pays come from. That’s the dream, and everything else is scaffolding around it.
Retriggers
Three Books during the feature award 5 extra spins and one additional special symbol, which is where the round grows teeth: more symbols means more chances of a spread landing on three reels at once. Retriggers stop once the special symbol bar above the grid is full.
What Time Is It?
Three Clock Man scatters award 10 free spins, and this is the round that doesn’t behave like anything else in the game. Clocks above reels 2, 3 and 4 show a new time on every spin, and those faces are the engine of the whole feature. When a Clock Activator scatter lands on one of those reels, wild Multiplier Clocks spread down from the top of the reel and replace everything above the activator.
The clock face above each reel sets the value of the wilds that spread down it, and the range runs from plain WILD up to 12x, taking in every whole number between. A deep spread, with the activator landing low on the reel, converts more positions into wilds; a shallow one near the top converts few.
If a winning line contains more than one Multiplier Clock, their multipliers combine into a single figure before it’s applied to the win, so a 10x and a 12x on the same line pay at 22x. That addition is what gives the round its reach.
Bonus Buy and FeatureSpins
A BUY BONUS button sits in the main game and sells direct entry to the features. FeatureSpins are also on offer: each spin guarantees certain features at a set cost based on your current bet level, and they stay active until you switch them off. Each purchase runs at its own return rate:
- BonusHunt FeatureSpins – 96.27% RTP
- It’s a Classic! – 96.39% RTP
- Even More Classic! – 96.35% RTP
- The Most Classic! – 96.37% RTP
- What Time Is It? – 96.25% RTP
Every one of those sits above the base game’s 96.13%, and the It’s a Classic! buy is the pick of them at 96.39%. Feature buys can exceed the normal 100 top stake.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.2/10
Playing this is mostly waiting under a very pretty oak. The base game does its job and no more, and the reason anybody sits through it is the pair of rounds waiting at the end – one familiar, one that belongs to nobody else.
The strength is that second round. What Time Is It? builds wins out of wilds whose values stack on a single line, and when a deep spread meets high clock faces it produces pays the classic round simply can’t reach. The weakness is the classic round itself: it’s the one most of the marketing leans on, and a ten-spin run can pass without a single spread, because one named symbol landing on three reels at once is a narrow ask.
This is for players who like the book format but are tired of it, and for anyone who enjoys a studio drawing its own world instead of renting one. If you want a base game that pays its own way, the oak and its ropes aren’t for you – Canny’s woodland is company for the patient.
Book of Time FAQs
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What is the RTP of Book of Time?
Book of Time runs at 96.13% RTP, which was calculated over ten billion simulated rounds. The various bonus buy options each carry their own slightly higher return rate. -
How do you trigger the It’s a Classic! bonus in Book of Time?
Landing three, four or five Book scatter symbols in the base game starts the round. Three Books award 10 free spins and one special symbol, four award 15 spins and two special symbols, and five award 20 spins and three special symbols. -
How do the special symbols work in It’s a Classic!?
One or more paying symbols are chosen as special symbols for the whole round and framed in gold. If they land anywhere on at least three reels they spread to cover those reels, then pay anywhere on the grid even with other symbols between them. -
How many paylines does Book of Time have?
There are 20 predefined paylines, paid on adjacent reels from the leftmost reel across the 5×4 grid. -
What is the minimum and maximum bet on Book of Time?
Bets start at 0.10 per spin and top out at 100, though feature buys can exceed that upper limit. -
Can you buy the bonus on Book of Time?
Yes. A BUY BONUS button in the main game sells direct entry to the features, and a FeatureSpins option guarantees certain features on every spin until you disable it. -
Who makes Book of Time?
Book of Time is made by Hacksaw Gaming, and it marks the return of Canny the Can. -
What is the maximum win on Book of Time?
The maximum win is 10,000 times your bet, and it can be achieved in both the It’s a Classic! and What Time Is It? bonus games.
