Cursed Crypt

Provider

Hacksaw Gaming

Default RTP

96.22%

Volatility

Medium-high

Maximum win

10,000x

Core mechanic

Respins

What Cursed Crypt is

Cursed Crypt is Hacksaw Gaming's 2022 Egyptian release, and it deliberately avoids the gold-and-scarab treatment the theme usually gets — the setting is a gothic crypt, the palette is green and bronze, and the tone is closer to horror than to adventure.

Default return is 96.22%, volatility is medium-high — rated 4 out of 5 by the studio itself — and the maximum win is 10,000x your stake. Stakes run from around $0.10 to $100 per spin.

Its genuinely notable feature is not the mechanic. It is that each bonus buy option carries its own published RTP, which is unusual transparency and the most useful thing on this page.

1,024 ways on a 5x4 grid

Five reels, four rows, 1,024 ways to win — 4⁵. Matching symbols pay from the leftmost reel across adjacent reels, with any position on each reel counting.

As with every ways-to-win game, the paytable is scaled to the count, so 1,024 ways does not mean better odds than a 20-line game. What it does mean is more frequent registered wins at proportionally smaller sizes, which suits the medium-high volatility rating.

The Cursed Reels mechanic

The central feature. A Curse symbol spreads upward through the reel it lands on, transforming the positions it passes into identical symbols.

Converting a column to matching symbols across a 1,024-way grid produces combinations that would not otherwise have formed, and a curse hitting a premium symbol is where the game's better results come from.

It is worth noting this is a variation on something Hacksaw does across several titles — spreading symbols that fill positions upward appear in Beast Below and elsewhere. If you have played those, the mechanic will feel familiar; the difference here is that the conversion targets are handled differently in each bonus mode.

Two free spins modes

• Wrath of Sobek — the standard round, with the Cursed Reels mechanic active as in the base game.
• Tomb of Tutankhamun — the premium round, where only high-paying symbols or Wilds fill the Cursed Positions. Priced at around 200x the bet as a buy, described as very highly volatile, and carrying a reported RTP of 96.34%.

That restriction on Tomb of Tutankhamun is the whole difference. Removing low-value symbols from the conversion pool means every curse produces something worth having — which is why the round is more volatile and better returning at once.

Each buy has its own RTP — this matters

Most studios publish one return figure and leave you to guess what a bonus buy does to it. Hacksaw publishes a separate RTP for each buy option on this game, and the numbers differ meaningfully.

How you play	Reported return	Cost per $1,000 staked
Base game	96.22%	~$38
Tomb of Tutankhamun buy (~200x)	96.34%	~$37

The published numbers

Statistic	Figure
Default return	96.22%
Maximum win	10,000x
Volatility	Medium-high (4 out of 5, studio's own rating)
Grid	5x4, 1,024 ways
Stake range	~$0.10 to $100
Free spins modes	Two, with separate published RTPs

Volatility rated 4 out of 5

Hacksaw rates this 4 out of 5 rather than maximum, and reviewers describe it as medium-to-high. That places it below Wanted Dead or a Wild and well below the studio's harshest work.

Combined with a 10,000x ceiling — reachable from the base game as well as either bonus mode — that makes this one of the more approachable games in the catalogue. The ceiling is described as achievable from all modes rather than gated behind the premium round, which is not something we can say about most games on this site.

Pace, and budgeting in spins

Hacksaw runs fast, and this game includes a super turbo mode that makes it faster still. At roughly a second a spin — or less in turbo — you complete close to double the spins of an older title in the same time.

Pace	Spins per hour	Turnover at $0.50	Expected cost at 96.22%
Older-style slot	~800	$400	~$15.10
Hacksaw pace	~1,500	$750	~$28.35
Turbo	~2,000+	$1,000+	~$37.80+

Turbo mode is the most expensive button on the screen and it does not look like one. Budget in spins, and think twice before enabling it.

Multiple RTP builds and the demo trap

96.22% is the default and Hacksaw supplies more than one configuration. Demo mode does not reliably show your casino's active build — use the free version to learn how the Cursed Reels spread, then read the real-money game information panel for the return, limits and buy prices that actually apply to you.

Stake sizing in practice

• Budget 250 to 300 spins. Medium-high volatility means a modest bankroll gets a fair sample.
• Leave turbo off unless you have deliberately shortened the session to account for it.
• If you buy, read the published RTP for that specific option — they differ, and the information is right there.
• The stake range runs to $100, which on a 10,000x ceiling is a very large exposure. Read the total bet field.
• Take a large result off the table.

Where this fits in a session

Cursed Crypt is the game to pick when you want atmosphere and a considered buy menu rather than an extreme distribution. It pairs naturally with Hand of Anubis — same studio, same dark Egyptian treatment, different mechanics — and the two make a coherent session.

Budget 250 to 300 spins, decide in advance whether you are buying and which option, and keep turbo off. At 96.22% it is the joint-weakest return of the Hacksaw games we cover, so this is a game to choose for the design rather than the price.

Common misconceptions

The first is that 1,024 ways improves your odds. The paytable is scaled to the ways count.

The second is that all bonus buys on a game share its RTP. On this title they explicitly do not, and the figures are published.

The third is that turbo mode is a convenience feature. It is a cost multiplier — same edge, far more spins per hour.

Who this suits

This suits a player who wants a well-made medium-high volatility game with a genuine choice of bonus routes, and who appreciates knowing the return attached to each. The horror-Egyptian treatment is among the better-looking things Hacksaw has made.

It suits less well anyone choosing on return — Stormforged at 96.41% is the same studio's best — and anyone who will leave turbo on without adjusting the spin budget for it.

FAQ

Dark Egypt versus the usual treatment

Egyptian slots are the most repeated theme in the industry, and almost all of them look the same: gold, scarabs, bright blue skies, a Book symbol. Cursed Crypt and its stablemate Hand of Anubis deliberately go the other way — gothic, green-lit, closer to horror than to archaeology.

That matters commercially more than aesthetically. The Book-of-Ra-descended Egyptian slots — Book of Dead, Legacy of Dead and dozens of clones — all share one structure: ten paylines, an expanding symbol, a binary bonus. Cursed Crypt shares none of it.

	Cursed Crypt	Book of Dead
Structure	1,024 ways, spreading Curse symbol	10 paylines, expanding symbol
Bonus	Two modes with published RTPs	One round, random symbol draw
Default return	96.22%	96.21%, with builds to ~84%
Volatility	Medium-high (4/5)	High

Nearly identical default returns, completely different games. The important difference is the bottom-left cell: Play'n GO ships Book of Dead in five configurations down to around 84%, while Hacksaw's spread is far narrower. On configuration risk alone, this is the safer Egyptian slot to open at an unfamiliar casino.

Reading the buy menu as a risk dial

Because this game publishes a separate return for each buy option, it is one of the few places where you can compare purchase choices numerically rather than by feel. Worth walking through how to think about it.

A buy priced at 200x costs 200 spins of your budget. At $0.20 a spin that is $40; at $1 it is $200. The published return for that option — 96.34% for Tomb of Tutankhamun — tells you the long-run price of using it, and it is slightly better than base play.

What the percentage does not tell you is the distribution. Tomb of Tutankhamun is described as very highly volatile, which means a single purchase most likely returns well under its cost, with the value concentrated in rarer large rounds. Buying it once is a coin flip; buying it fifty times is where the 96.34% starts to describe your actual experience.

So the practical rule: if you cannot afford enough purchases for the percentage to mean anything, the percentage is not the thing to decide on. Decide on whether one round at that price is entertainment you want to buy.