Marlin Masters Hacksaw Gaming slot review with free demo

Marlin Masters – a slot from Hacksaw Gaming.
This slot, both in visuals and gameplay, reminds me of the popular fishing series from Pragmatic. In the bonus game you also have to collect fisherman symbols to fill a meter, getting extra spins and increased multipliers. However, this slot has some differences from the Pragmatic games.
For example, if fish symbols are on the reels you don’t get a fixed payout, but the sum equal to the values shown on all those symbols. Also, in the base game fisherman symbols can drop and then they collect all fish symbols from the reels, even without the bonus round – that happens in the base game.
I played this slot a lot less than the Pragmatic series. In the bonus game I never once reached the second level and my wins never exceeded x100. As for fishermen appearing in the main game, I never had a win like that either – a fisherman did drop, but at that time there wasn’t a single fish symbol on the reels.

Marlin Masters

I’m not really a fan of fishing slots, of which Pragmatic has plenty, and I almost never stick around for more than 50 spins. But I do love the slots from Hacksaw, who decided to release their own “fishing” game. Visually it’s okay, below the best slots from this provider, but it’s way better than the fishing games from Pragmatic. The volatility is average, you can spin the base game for a long time, it often throws coins into the balance, and in theory, there’s also a chance to catch a big fish (up to x1000) or a big multiplier (up to x20), but in reality, I haven’t caught more than x90 in a spin. There’s an extra chance for x3, but there’s no point in spinning for long, since the base bonus here is pretty cheap (x65), and there’s also a top one (x200), which differs from the base in the number of spins (+5) and the multiplier (starts at x2 and can go up to x15), but it’s not worth your money and can often just give you 10 spins in a row without returning even a third of its cost. There’s also an epic one that can only be won, but I don’t see much potential in it, just a guarantee that at least one fisherman and fish will drop on each spin, which is whatever. All wins here were up to x300, and there were often promising starts followed by a scam, overall it’s an average slot, for those who like it.

Good slot from our favorite Haxaw. It’s already relatively not new.

There are fishermen, which are everywhere, and they’re in this provider too.
What can I say about it: the slot is nice, the colors are bright, everything is clearly drawn. The music is unobtrusive. It never lagged or froze, like it sometimes happens with others.

Gameplay is all standard. You spin the reels, waiting for the bonus. You need to collect 3 or 4 scatters. With 4, you’ll get the top bonus.

There’s an activation for a higher chance. I only spin with it, without it, bonuses don’t drop at all. If fishing gets boring, there’s a buy option for both a simple and a top bonus. Well, there’s not much difference in x and the number of spins. You also catch fishermen and fish. I haven’t had any super big wins here, but I caught x500. But that was just once) Otherwise, if you buy, usually that’s the only way to break even. In the spins themselves, payouts are small.

What I’ll say in conclusion is that I can recommend this slot to my friends. It doesn’t give out max wins, but surprisingly, it keeps the balance. My rating for this little slot will be 7 out of 10. Wishing everyone good wins))

Hacksaw also decided not to stay on the sidelines and released its fishing game.
In my opinion, the slot is more interesting from this manufacturer. Although the mechanics are no different, at least there’s no predictable script with x20 here. When in Pragmatic the fishing game gives a minimum win of x20, even if you have 15 spins in reserve, the fishermen won’t drop anymore.
There are also two types of bonuses in the game, regular and top. In the regular one, the game starts with 10 spins and a lower x for the fishermen. In the top one, you’ll have 15 spins and the fishermen drop with a higher x. You can also hit the hot mode, but I’ve never hit it, so I don’t even know how it’s different.
I’ve had big wins in both the top and regular modes. So I didn’t notice much difference in the bonuses. That is, even in the top bonus, it could give x30 or in the regular x1000 and vice versa. When the slot first came out, I was really lucky in it, and wins of x500-x1000 were caught quite often. Over time, I stopped being lucky in it, and even x100 became a rarity. Now I almost stopped playing this slot. I only check it out if I’m really lucky in all of Hacksaw and it puts bonuses everywhere.

One of Hacksaw’s recent slots – Marlin Masters. Released in January 2025. A kind of fisherman-themed slot, but with its own pros and cons.
Overall, I don’t really rate Hacksaw slots. They all look kind of ugly, drab. And very rarely give something good. I often see their slots in win compilations. But I suspect they spin them for a very long time and put in a lot more than they get back.
But things are actually much better with this slot. 14 lines, but any symbol wins pay out very little. You can forget about winning anything with regular symbols. They’re just there to fill space.
So in regular spins you get fish and fishermen, just like in the bonus. But fishermen are very rare. The fish themselves have the usual multipliers of the bet on them. And here’s the big plus of this slot. These fish can line up into paylines and bring wins by adding up their values. This happens both in regular spins and in the bonus.
For spinning there are the usual Hacksaw settings. A x3 bet to increase the chance. A spin that’s guaranteed to have fish and a fisherman. There’s the normal bonus. The super bonus. And a separate bonus for the bravest ones 🙂
1. Normal bonus – 10 spins. Fishermen have a random multiplier. Collect 4 fishermen – get +10 spins and fishermen start spinning with a minimum multiplier of x2.
2. Super bonus – 15 spins. Fishermen start at x2. For 4 fishermen – +15 spins and we raise the minimum multiplier.
It’s worth noting right away that these are often the good old fisherman bonuses. It can drop one/two and you’ll just waste all the rest of the spins. Hacksaw didn’t invent anything new here. You can easily whiff on the payout. But I have to admit that in these bonuses I often saw 2-3 fishermen drop at once. Much more often than in other slots of this type.
3. The third bonus, if you hit all 5 scatters, or buy it. In this bonus there’s no collecting fishermen. But every spin definitely brings some number of fish and at least one fisherman with a random multiplier. I once saw this bonus somewhere… and it hardly returned anything. Often you’d get one fish x5 and 1 fisherman. So on a huge board there was just one fish. Total trash. I don’t recommend buying this bonus. Maybe it can bring something… but at first glance it’s not worth expecting.
In the end I can say this is one of the more interesting fisherman slots and definitely one of the best from Hacksaw. Worth trying for sure.