Grug Make Fire Review 2026: RTP 96.19%, Worth Playing?

We tested Grug Make Fire at Flush in July 2026, just days after Hacksaw Gaming released the title on July 9. The slot runs on a 5 reel, 4 row grid with 14 fixed paylines, carries a 96.19% RTP, and is rated medium volatility. Max win is capped at 10,000x the stake, and bets range from $0.10 to $100.00 per spin. The game's central mechanic, a burning wild that converts the symbols sitting above it into Wilds or multipliers, is unusual enough to justify a closer look on its own merits, and this review walks through exactly how it plays, what the numbers mean in practice, and where the title falls short of a perfect score.

What Is Grug Make Fire?

Grug Make Fire is a Stone Age survival comedy built around a caveman named Grug, who anchors both the base game and one of the title's two Bonus Games. A second character, a T-Rex, appears specifically inside the other bonus mode, based on the official game assets Hacksaw Gaming released alongside the title. The tone leans comedic rather than gritty, which fits the studio's habit of pairing serious math models with lighter visual themes. The core joke of the title, a caveman perpetually one spark away from disaster, gives the burning wild mechanic a visual logic that ties the theme directly to the math rather than sitting on top of it as pure decoration.

Hacksaw Gaming has built a reputation over the past several years for titles that pair aggressive volatility with distinctive art direction. Wanted Dead or a Wild, Chaos Crew, and Le Bandit are among the studio's better known releases, and all three share a similar formula: a strong visual identity layered on top of a math model designed to reward patient, higher-variance play. Founded in 2018 and based in Valletta, Malta, Hacksaw now runs a catalogue of more than 100 video slots and has built a following among players who specifically seek out its releases rather than stumbling onto them by accident. That reputation is part of why a new Hacksaw title tends to draw search interest within days of launch, and Grug Make Fire is no exception. Players searching for the game so soon after release are typically looking for one of three things: confirmation of the RTP and volatility figures before they commit a bankroll, an explanation of how the burning wild mechanic actually behaves once it fires, or a straightforward opinion on whether the title is worth the time given how many new slots launch each week.

Structurally, the game keeps things straightforward. Five reels and four rows produce 14 fixed paylines, a slightly larger canvas than the 5x3, 10 to 25 payline layout many slots default to, which gives symbols slightly more room to line up across the extra row. The symbol set pairs five card royals, 10, J, Q, K, and A, as the low pay tier, all sharing the same values, with five creature symbols filling the mid and high pay tiers: two smaller dinosaurs pay the least, a green raptor and an orange bear pay a middle tier, and a pink T-Rex sits at the top of the regular paytable. A Burning Wild symbol, a Burnt Wild Multiplier created during play, and an FS symbol that triggers one of two named bonus rounds round out the symbol set. The in-game GAME RULES paytable confirms the mechanical relationship directly: low-pay symbols burn into plain Wilds, high-pay symbols each burn into their own Burnt Wild Multiplier variant, and the FS symbol exists purely to open Grug Find Food or Grug Fight Dino rather than to pay out directly on its own.

Burn-and-transform mechanics are not new to slot design, but Hacksaw's version stands out for tying the transformation outcome to symbol tier rather than applying a flat effect across the board. That distinction matters more than it might first appear, since the value of a Burning Wild landing changes depending on what happens to sit above it, giving each spin a small layer of context rather than a fixed, repeatable outcome.

RTP and Variance: What the Numbers Mean

RTP is easiest to understand in dollar terms. For every $1,000 wagered on Grug Make Fire across a very large number of spins, the math model returns roughly $961.90 to players as a group, with the remaining $38.10 built into the house edge over that same long run. Scaled down, that works out to roughly $96.19 back for every $100 wagered over the same long timeframe. No individual session will land anywhere near that average. Short sessions can swing well above or well below it in either direction, and that variance is exactly what the volatility rating is describing rather than the RTP figure itself.

It is worth being direct about where 96.19% sits in context. Some competing studios market slots with RTPs closer to 96.5%, and Grug Make Fire's figure falls a little under that mark. It is not a poor RTP by industry standards, and Hacksaw has not published any higher-RTP variant of this title, so 96.19% is the number players are working with. It simply is not the headline figure some other releases lead with, and we would rather say that plainly than round it up in the marketing sense. Players comparing several titles side by side before choosing where to spend a session should weigh this figure alongside volatility and max win rather than looking at RTP in isolation, since a slightly lower RTP paired with a more favorable volatility profile can still suit certain playing styles better than a higher RTP title with a flatter, less eventful math model.

Medium volatility describes how that return gets distributed across spins rather than how much of it comes back. Wins land at a moderate pace: not as frequently as a low-volatility title, and not as rarely as Hacksaw's more extreme high-volatility releases. Between those wins, the burning wild mechanic keeps individual spins visually active even when a big payout is not landing, since burnt symbols still convert and reshape the reel even on rounds that do not clear a full winning line. The 10,000x stake max win sits at the upper end of what medium-volatility math models typically support, but it represents a ceiling reached under rare conditions, specifically when Burnt Wild Multipliers stack inside one of the two Bonus Games, rather than something a typical session should be built around. Players who have tracked Hacksaw's other medium-volatility releases will recognize this pattern: steady, moderate-sized wins punctuated by occasional larger swings tied directly to the feature mechanic rather than to the base game paytable alone.

Bankroll sizing follows naturally from those two figures once they are read together. A player working with a modest session bankroll and playing near the $0.10 minimum will experience the medium volatility rating as intended: regular smaller wins from Wild conversions, with the occasional larger swing when a Bonus Game triggers. A player betting closer to the $100.00 maximum will feel the same volatility profile at a much larger dollar scale, where the gap between a quiet spin and a Bonus Game hit becomes far more consequential to a session's outcome. Neither approach is wrong, but the stake size chosen should match how much variance a player is comfortable absorbing over the course of a sitting.

How the Burning Wild Feature Works

The core mechanic in Grug Make Fire is the Burning Wild symbol. The in-game rules confirm that when a Burning Wild lands, it burns every paying symbol and every FS symbol sitting above it on that same reel, not just the single symbol directly adjacent to it, and only one Burning Wild can land per reel. What happens to each burnt symbol depends on what it was. A burnt low-pay symbol, one of the 10, J, Q, K, or A card royals, transforms into a standard Wild. A burnt high-pay symbol transforms into its own Burnt Wild Multiplier instead, a tile carrying an additive multiplier value between 2x and 200x into any winning combination it forms part of. If more than one Burnt Wild Multiplier lands in the same winning combination, their values add together before applying to that win. A burnt FS symbol does not disappear either: it survives the burn and instead displays a higher free spin value than it would have shown unburnt, 3 to 6 instead of the base game's 2 to 5.

This gives the feature two distinct outcomes from one trigger condition. A spin that clears out several low-pay symbols will seed the reels with extra Wilds, increasing the odds of a straightforward paying combination. A spin that clears high-pay symbols instead produces Burnt Wild Multipliers, which push toward larger individual wins rather than more frequent smaller ones. Because the mechanic can fire more than once in a single spin if multiple Burning Wilds land, the reels can shift meaningfully between the initial drop and the final result, and a single spin can theoretically combine both outcomes if Burning Wilds land above both low-pay and high-pay symbols in the same drop.

The practical effect during testing was that the reels rarely felt static. Even on rounds that did not produce a line win, a Burning Wild converting a symbol overhead changed what the next spin's reel was working with, which kept individual rounds visually distinct from one another even across a long session at the same stake. Because the mechanic sits directly on the base game rather than being locked behind a separate feature purchase, it fires on ordinary spins without requiring the FS trigger, which is part of what gives the medium volatility rating its shape: value accumulates gradually through Wild conversions between the larger swings tied to the two Bonus Games.

Across the July 11 test session, Burning Wild activity was noticeably more common than either Bonus Game trigger, which is consistent with how Hacksaw typically layers its feature mechanics: a frequent, smaller-scale mechanic doing most of the work between rarer, larger-scale bonus rounds. That layering is worth understanding before playing, since it sets realistic expectations. Most spins will involve some Burning Wild activity or none at all rather than a full Bonus Game trigger, and treating the burn mechanic itself as the primary source of ongoing value, rather than waiting purely for the FS trigger, matches how the math model is actually built.

How Grug Find Food and Grug Fight Dino Work

Landing 3 FS symbols anywhere on the grid at the same time triggers Grug Find Food, awarding a range of 6 to 18 free spins. The exact count is not fixed at a single number: each FS symbol that lands displays its own free spin value, base game FS symbols show 2 to 5, and the total awarded is the sum of every FS symbol's value on the triggering spin. Inside Grug Find Food itself, FS symbols can still land and retrigger extra spins, showing values of 1 to 3 (or 2 to 4 if burnt), with each additional FS symbol landed during the bonus adding at least 1 and at most 4 more free spins. The bonus otherwise keeps the base game's mechanics intact, with an increased chance of Burning Wild symbols landing throughout.

Landing 4 FS symbols simultaneously instead triggers Grug Fight Dino, a larger version of the same feature awarding 8 to 24 free spins. Grug Fight Dino keeps every mechanic from Grug Find Food and adds a progressive Wildfire Bar, a meter tracked outside the reel grid that climbs as winning symbols accumulate during the round. The bar starts at Level 0 and advances through four thresholds: 12 winning symbols reach Level 1 and award 1 Burnt Reel, 46 winning symbols reach Level 2 and award 2 Burnt Reels, 96 winning symbols reach Level 3 and award 3 Burnt Reels, and 150 winning symbols reach Level 4 and award 4 to 5 Burnt Reels. Each time a new Level is reached, the bar resets and starts climbing toward the next threshold, except at Level 4, where it holds steady for the rest of the bonus rather than resetting again. A Burnt Reel behaves exactly like a Burning Wild landing on that reel: it burns the low-pay and high-pay symbols, along with any FS symbol, sitting on that reel and converts them the same way the base game does.

The distinction between the two bonuses is not about which character appears on screen, both Grug and the T-Rex antagonist show up as background art across the base game and both bonus rounds, it is about scatter count and depth. Three FS symbols buys a shorter, simpler round. Four FS symbols buys a longer round with a mechanic layered on top that can, if the Wildfire Bar climbs far enough, burn multiple reels automatically without needing new Burning Wild symbols to land naturally.

Bonus Buy Options

Grug Make Fire offers a BUY BONUS button directly on the base game screen, and Hacksaw Gaming built it around four separate FeatureSpins purchase modes rather than a single flat price. Bonushunt FeatureSpins guarantees certain features on every spin for a cost set by the current bet level, and it carries a 96.26% RTP while active. Grug Play FeatureSpins goes further, guaranteeing features on every spin too, but FS symbols cannot land at all while this mode is active, trading away any chance of a natural Grug Find Food or Grug Fight Dino trigger during those guaranteed spins in exchange for a 96.32% RTP. Both FeatureSpins modes remain active until manually disabled, rather than running for a fixed number of spins.

The other two Bonus Buy options are more direct: paying to enter Grug Find Food outright carries a 96.31% RTP, and paying to enter Grug Fight Dino outright carries a 96.37% RTP, the highest of the four buy variants and marginally above the base 96.19% RTP as well. None of the four modes had an exact cost multiplier itemized on the confirmation screens captured for this review, since the BUY BONUS button opens a separate purchase menu rather than displaying the price directly in the rules screens, so players should check the live in-game price before buying rather than assuming a fixed multiplier of the total bet.

Is Grug Make Fire Worth Playing at Flush?

Grug Make Fire suits players who like a mechanic that does more than one thing, since the burning wild system offers two separate outcomes depending on which symbol type gets burned. It also suits players comfortable with medium volatility who want steadier win frequency rather than the long dry spells associated with Hacksaw's more extreme releases. The $0.10 minimum bet keeps the entry point low for anyone wanting to test the mechanic before committing a larger bankroll, and the full range extends up to $100.00 per spin for higher rollers who want the math model's larger swings to matter more per spin. The 14 fixed paylines across a 5x4 grid also give the title a slightly different feel from most 5x3 slots, which is worth experiencing at least once even for players who are not usually drawn to caveman themes.

It will suit fewer players who specifically want a single, simple RTP figure to judge the game by, since Grug Make Fire actually offers five different numbers depending on how it is played: 96.19% base, and four more Bonus Buy variants ranging from 96.26% to 96.37%. It also is not the strongest match for players chasing the highest possible RTP outright, since even the best of those five figures, Grug Fight Dino's 96.37%, sits a little under some competitors' advertised averages, and that gap compounds the more a player wagers over time. Anyone planning to use the BUY BONUS button should also confirm the live purchase price before spending, since the exact cost multiplier for each of the four modes was not itemized on the rules screens used for this review.

Weighed together, Grug Make Fire lands as a genuinely interesting medium-volatility release with a mechanic that feels distinct from most burn-and-transform slots on the market, backed by a fully transparent set of four Bonus Buy modes and two clearly named, well-documented bonus rounds. The 96.19% base RTP still sits a touch under some competitors' advertised averages, which is the main thing holding it back from a stronger score. A 4.0 out of 5 editor rating reflects that balance: a well-built, well-documented feature set let down slightly by a base RTP that is fair rather than exceptional.

One clarification worth making plainly: Grug Make Fire is not provably fair. Provable fairness applies specifically to Flush Originals such as Crash, Dice, Mines, Plinko, Keno, Wheel, and Video Poker, where players can independently verify each outcome. Third-party provider slots like this one, built by Hacksaw Gaming, instead run on certified random number generation audited by independent testing labs, which is the industry standard for licensed slot content but works differently from the on-chain verification Flush Originals offer. You can browse the rest of Flush's library at flush.com/casino, and play Grug Make Fire directly at Flush.

Responsible Gambling

Medium volatility does not mean low risk. It means wins are spread out differently than on a high-volatility title, not that losses are smaller or less likely over time. A $38.10 house edge per $1,000 wagered is still a house edge, and it applies regardless of how a given session feels while it is happening. It is easy to read "medium volatility" as a signal that a title is somehow gentler on a bankroll than a high-volatility one, but the RTP, not the volatility rating, is what determines the long-run cost of play.

A simple math example makes the session cost concrete. At the $0.10 minimum bet, 100 spins works out to $10.00 wagered before any wins are factored back in. At $1.00 per spin, that same 100 spins becomes $100.00 wagered. At $5.00 per spin, a bet size well within Grug Make Fire's $0.10 to $100.00 range, 100 spins becomes $500.00 wagered in a single sitting. Neither of these figures accounts for the RTP returning a portion of that back over time, but all three illustrate how quickly stakes add up across a normal play session, especially at bet sizes closer to the $100.00 maximum. Flush offers deposit limit tools in account settings that let players cap how much they can add to their balance over a given period, which is worth setting before, not during, a session, since limits are far easier to stick to when they are decided ahead of time rather than adjusted mid-session.

If gambling stops being enjoyable or becomes something you feel you cannot stop, visit GamCare or BeGambleAware for free and confidential support. US-based players can contact the National Problem Gambling Helpline at 1-800-522-4700. Flush's own responsible gambling resources and account tools are available at Flush Responsible Gambling page. Never gamble more than you can afford to lose.