A late book slot with a better game folded inside it
Canny the Can and the Book of Time is two bonus rounds on one set of 20 fixed lines, and by my arithmetic only one of them is built to reach the 10,000x ceiling. In What Time Is It? a single line tops out at 9,000x and a single spin can hit the cap. In It's a Classic! the biggest spread is 5,000x, and what the round is worth depends mostly on which symbol it draws. The base game cannot pay more than 5,000x in line wins, and the buy menu prices everything within a seventh of a point of return.
The book half arrives late to a crowded format. Book of the Fallen and Book of Vikings already run its template: fixed lines, a Book that is wild and scatter at once, and one paying symbol picked before the free spins that expands across the reels. The addition here is a gate, since a special symbol must land on three reels in one spin before it spreads. The clock half comes from the studio's own shelf instead. Mighty Masks puts the same 5x4 grid and 20 lines under a multiplier-driven free spins round, and Hand of Anubis shares the rule that a round ends at 10,000x and throws away the spins still owed. It's a Classic! repeats a format and What Time Is It? refines one, which is where the upside sits.
The base game is a waiting room, and the game sells a way out
Every win needs three matching symbols from reel 1, and three of a kind pays from 0.1x on the ten and jack to 3x on the mouse. I count seven of the ten paying symbols returning the stake or less for three on a line. At a 16.35% hit frequency, 83.65% of spins return nothing.
No line pays more than 250x, because the mouse and the Book share the top award and only the highest win on a line is paid. Twenty lines at 250x is 5,000x, so even a screen of nothing but mice and Books stops at half the cap, and nothing in the base game multiplies a line.
BonusHunt FeatureSpins costs 3x the bet per spin and makes a bonus more than four times as likely, so per unit of stake the rounds come more than a third more often. Its 96.27% return is 0.14 of a point above the top base setting, which makes it a shorter wait rather than better value. A mode built to spend less time in the base game says what the base game is for.
The book round is a draw on which symbol turns special
Everything It's a Classic! pays beyond ordinary line wins comes from the spread. A special symbol on three or more reels fills them, sits on all 20 lines and pays anywhere, so a spread is worth 20 times that symbol's award for that many reels.
| Special symbol | Three reels | Four reels | Five reels |
|---|
| Mouse | 60x | 400x | 5,000x |
| Snake head, dead bird | 40x | 200x | 1,500x |
| Hat, wand | 20x | 100x | 1,000x |
| Ace | 10x | 50x | 300x |
| King, queen | 4x | 30x | 250x |
| Jack, ten | 2x | 20x | 100x |
The best candidate out-pays the worst 30 times over on three reels and 50 times over on five. On a jack or ten, the best event the symbol can produce, a five-reel spread, pays 100x, exactly what the cheapest buy costs. The same spread on the mouse pays 5,000x, fifty times that price. None of the five low symbols spreads for more than 300x, and the Book cannot rescue a poor draw, because it stops acting as a wild during the spreading stage.
Retriggers add five spins and another special symbol until the bar above the grid fills, which means more attempts at the gate and no change in what a spread pays. It's a Classic! is 100x for 10 spins and one symbol, 10x a spin. Even More Classic! is 200x for 15 spins and two symbols, about 13.3x a spin. The Most Classic! is 400x for 20 spins and three symbols, 20x a spin, and its medium volatility shows what the extra money buys: more candidates clearing the gate, each cleared spread still worth its row in that table. With fewer spins and fewer candidates per unit of stake than the 100x entry, it is the weakest of the three.
The clock round makes the ceiling a real target
What Time Is It? is simpler and better built. Clocks above reels 2, 3 and 4 show a new reading every spin, from a plain wild through 12x. A Clock Activator on one of those reels turns every position from the top of its reel down to itself into wild Multiplier Clocks at that reading, so a top-row Activator converts one position and a bottom-row one converts four. Values on a line are added, which limits any line to 36x.
Adding is the right choice. Multiplied, three 12x reels would put 1,728x on a line, and one four-mouse line would clear the cap alone. Added, the best line is five mice at 36x, 9,000x, nine tenths of the ceiling. Bottom-row Activators on all three middle reels under three 12x readings put every one of the 20 lines through three wild reels, so each line pays at least four of a kind of its reel 1 symbol. Four mice at 36x is 720x a line, and a reel 1 of mice takes the 20 lines to 14,400x before the cap stops the round. The book round cannot do that from one spread: its best is 5,000x, and it reaches 10,000x only by stacking line wins, several special symbols or several spins.
The cost is that nothing extends it. The Book is removed from its reels and the Clock Man appears only in the base game, so ten spins is the whole round, and Activators that land high or not at all leave it paying little more than ordinary lines, with no Book to help them. Buying it costs 200x, or 20x a spin, the same price as 15 spins and two special symbols in the book round. The clock buy returns 96.25% against 96.35% for Even More Classic!, a gap of 0.2x per purchase, and that is a fair price for the one round where a single line comes within a tenth of the cap.
The casino's setting matters more than anything on the buy menu
The five paid entries return between 96.25% and 96.39%, a spread of 0.14 of a point. The game runs at 96.13%, 94.34%, 92.33% or 88.25% depending on the casino, a spread of 7.88 points and more than fifty times as wide. The built-in cost is 3.87% of stake at the top setting and 11.75% at the bottom, three times as much, and the casino makes that choice. The rules screen shows the setting in use.
Measured as best case against price, the menu runs from generous to thin. The 10,000x cap is 3,333 times a 3x FeatureSpin, 100 times the 100x entry, 50 times either 200x entry and 25 times the 400x one. Reaching it discards the spins still owed, bought spins included, so the dearest entry has the least headroom and the most paid spins to lose. On shape the clock buy is the one worth making, and the 400x tier is the one I would skip.
One good round does not lift the frame around it
The game suits a player who wants a very high volatility multiplier round, accepts ten unextendable spins for 200x, and checks that the casino runs 96.13%. For that player the clock round is the game and the rest is the route to it. Anyone who wants a base game with something happening in it gets 16.35% hits and three-of-a-kind awards that mostly return the stake or less, and anyone drawn by the book format finds it as the main event in Book of Vikings, whose free spins turn on one expanding special symbol.
The score follows from that arithmetic: a properly built clock round held to ten spins, a book round whose worth is set by a symbol draw, a base game empty enough that the game sells a mode to skip it, and five buy prices that differ in variance while their returns barely move. That is one good idea surrounded by filler.
