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Hacksaw Gaming is taking a break from their usual gritty, high-volatility nightmares to bring us Supernova Shooting Stars. Blending a classic fruit machine aesthetic with a neon-soaked cosmic backdrop, this 5-reel, 3-row, 9-payline slot sits firmly in the medium volatility bracket.
Under the hood, this game relies on a very specific, highly conditional wild mechanic.
The Paytable: Prepare for Micro-Wins
Let’s start with the bad news: the base game payouts are incredibly stingy. Because the game’s entire math model is built around generating wild reels, standard line hits pay practically nothing.
To put it in perspective, landing three Bells is the only 3-of-a-kind hit that will return your base stake. Landing four of any royal symbol pays a measly 0.5x. Even a premium full line of five standard wilds only pays 10x. You are going to see a lot of winning combinations hit the board, but you’ll often be losing money on the spin. This game is all about the special features.
The Mechanic: Expanding Stars (With a Problem)
The heavy lifting in Supernova Shooting Stars is done by two special symbols: the Purple Star and the Epic (Gold) Star.
- Purple Stars expand downward to the bottom of the reel, turning those positions wild.
- Epic Stars expand to cover the entire reel, regardless of where they land.
Here is the snag, and it might frustrate some players: A star will only expand if doing so completes a winning payline. If an expansion wouldn’t result in a win, the star just sits there as a single wild block.
In practice, this can be agonizing. You’ll watch a beautiful Epic Star land on reel four, get ready for a full wild reel, and then watch it do nothing because the fruits on reels one, two, and three didn’t line up. When they do expand in the base game, it’s usually to connect a tiny 0.5x or 2x win.
Where is the Potential? The Multiplier Hunt
Since the game doesn’t have standard multiplier symbols, you have to build them. This is the mechanic you are actually chasing.
When a spreading Star expands over a standard Wild already sitting on the grid, that cell transforms into a multiplier ranging from 2x up to 250x. These apply to any winning lines passing through them, and if you get more than one on a line, they add together rather than multiply each other.
Over my base-game spins, the game had a decent hit frequency, about two-thirds of spins resulted in a “win”, but the vast majority were dead wins that paid under the stake. The game rarely drops standard wilds in the base game, giving your expanding stars very few targets to hit. It’s a bit of a slog.
The Bonus Rounds: Rain of Light & Starstruck
Landing scatters will get you into one of two bonus games:
- 3 Scatters triggers “Rain of Light”: 8 free spins where you are guaranteed at least one Star (Purple or Epic) on every spin.
- 4 Scatters triggers “Starstruck”: 10 free spins where you are guaranteed at least one Epic Star on every spin.
The bonuses sound great on paper, but again, there is a downside. Guaranteeing an Epic Star on every spin is useless if the game doesn’t also increase the density of standard wilds on the grid. Without standard wilds to cover, those Epic Stars just create plain wild reels for low payouts. For the bonus to actually pop off, you need the game to feed you standard wilds before the stars drop.
Chasing the 5,000x Max Win
If you’ve played Hacksaw’s Trials of Zeus, the bracket is the same: medium volatility and a 96.26% default RTP. However, while that game reaches 20,000x, Supernova Shooting Stars caps the max win at 5,000x your bet.
Achieving that cap requires a perfect storm: a grid loaded with standard wilds, and Epic Stars dropping at the top of the reels to convert them all into big, additive multipliers.
Is it worth playing?
Yes, if you enjoy medium-volatility games that keep your balance ticking over with frequent (albeit tiny) hits. The overlapping wild-multiplier mechanic is genuinely clever. However, if you are someone who chases big swings and hates “conditional” features, where special symbols tease you but don’t trigger, the base game here might test your patience.
