Drill the Thrill

Drill the Thrill Overview

Drill the Thrill is a mining slot released through the Hacksaw Gaming network, built on a 3-4-4-4-3 reel layout that can expand mid-spin. The RTP is 96.32%, volatility is medium, and the maximum win is 10,000x the bet – achievable, the rulebook states, in all game modes.

The headline mechanic is the pair of drills. One opens the reels up, the other locks everything in place, and the game is built entirely around getting both onto the same spin. The numbers below come from the in-game rulebook and demo play at €5.00 and €10.00.

Theme and Graphics

You are underground in a mine lit by lava. Rails curve away behind the reels, the rock glows orange at the edges of the frame, and a bearded miner in a crowned helmet stands to the left holding a pickaxe. During the free spins the whole cavern turns red and the heat haze intensifies.

The reel frame is riveted iron, and the symbols are working tools: a miner’s helmet, a brass lantern, a pickaxe, a stick of dynamite and the miner himself, over card letters stamped into metal plates. Both drills are drawn as full machines – the Silver Drill in red housing on the left, the Golden Drill in blue and gold on the right.

Ways to Win, and Why the Number Changes

The base layout gives three rows on the outer reels and four on the middle three, which is 576 ways to win. When the middle reels expand, the count climbs, and the rulebook puts the ceiling at 4,608 ways.

That is the whole game in one sentence: the ways count is not fixed, and everything good happens once the reels grow.

The Silver Drill and Drill It Hard

The Silver Drill is an expanding wild that lands only on reel 1. It may arrive at one, two or full symbol height, but it always expands to cover the reel completely, turning it into a stacked wild and triggering the Drill it Hard feature.

When that happens, reels 2, 3 and 4 grow together from four symbols to five, six, seven or a maximum of eight. Reels 1 and 5 stay at three. After the expansion, Coin and Jackpot symbols can land on the middle reels alongside regular ones, and the rulebook guarantees at least one regular symbol on every expanded reel.

Each Coin carries a bet multiplier of 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x, 10x, 20x, 50x or 100x. Coins never appear in ordinary base-game play – they exist only inside this feature.

Four Jackpots

Jackpot symbols land alongside the coins and pay fixed bet multipliers: Mini 10x, Minor 100x, Major 500x and Grand 2,500x.

The Grand at 2,500x is a quarter of the game’s 10,000x ceiling, so unlike many hold-and-win titles the top jackpot here is not the cap – it is one component of a board that can go considerably further.

The Golden Drill and Hold & Win

Once reels 2, 3 and 4 have settled, reel 5 gets a chance at the Golden Drill, which can only appear if the Silver Drill has already triggered the feature.

If it does not land, the coins and jackpots pay out and the feature ends there. If it does, it expands to cover reel 5 as a second stacked wild, the regular wins pay immediately, and every Coin and Jackpot symbol on the middle reels becomes sticky – the game drops into Hold & Win.

That round starts with 3 respins. Empty positions are filled with non-paying Void symbols and only those respin; each new Coin or Jackpot replaces a Void, locks in place and resets the counter to 3. The respin panel at the foot of the grid shows the three steps counting down.

Two conditions end it instantly with the maximum win: filling every position on the expanded reels, or reaching a total coin and jackpot value of 10,000x. Otherwise the round runs out of respins and everything on screen is converted to cash.

Blast Zone Bonus

Three FS Scatters trigger the Blast Zone Bonus and 5 free spins. The enhancement is direct: reel 1 is filled with a Silver Drill on every single spin, so Drill it Hard is guaranteed active throughout the round.

Five spins sounds short, but every one of them starts with expanded reels and coins in play. The trade is that the round cannot be retriggered, and scatters themselves only appear in the base game – one per reel, on reels 2, 3 and 4 only.

In the captured round the free spins produced 45.00 and 75.00 on a €5.00 bet from boards carrying 1x, 2x and 3x coins – 9x and 15x the stake, with the round total climbing steadily rather than in one jump.

Buying In

In the captures, the Blast Zone Bonus costs €750.00 at a €5.00 bet – 150x, with a confirmation dialog before the money moves.

Hacksaw publishes the RTP for each purchase route: 96.28% for BonusHunt FeatureSpins, 96.31% for Drill it Hard FeatureSpins, and 96.3% for the Blast Zone Bonus. All three sit within a few hundredths of the base game’s 96.32%, and the Drill it Hard route comes with a caveat worth knowing – scatter symbols cannot land in that mode, so it buys the feature but closes the door to the free spins.

What the Symbols Pay

The regular pay table is small by design. At a €5.00 bet, five of the 9 or 10 pay 1.50, the jack and queen 2.00, and the king and ace 2.50 – half the stake for the best card symbol.

The mining tools do better: 5.00 for five helmets, lanterns or pickaxes, 6.00 for dynamite and 10.00 for five miners, which is twice the bet. Set against a single 100x coin, the message is obvious: line wins here exist to pass the time between drills.

Who Should Play It

Drill the Thrill suits players who like expanding grids and cash-collect rounds but find pure hold-and-win games too static. There is a clear escalation here – one drill, then two, then sticky symbols – and each step is visible on the board.

Anyone who prefers steady line wins should pass. Without the Silver Drill the game is a plain ways-to-win slot with a thin pay table, and at medium volatility with a 10,000x cap, the distance between an ordinary spin and a good one is considerable.

Where to Play Drill the Thrill

You can try this game on Casino007 Online Casino. There’s a unique casino bonus offer of 400% up to £1200 for a limited time.

Drill the Thrill was listed in the Casino007 game library under Hacksaw Gaming when we checked on 18 September 2026.