Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox

Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox: Slot Overview

Games developer ReelPlay leads players to some chilly northern latitudes in an online slot titled Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox - a wintery, fantasy-themed slot powered by partner Yggdrasil Gaming's Gigablox mechanic. Alongside random reel mergings, which create these larger than normal Gigablox symbols, other features in Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox include wild multipliers, Arctic Blasts, and free spins.

The Arctic, in pictures at least, is quite an enchanting looking place of wind-swept snowy plains, icebergs, and craggy mountains. Technically speaking, the Arctic is the northern polar region and includes land masses such as Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia. In Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox, ReelPlay has pushed the magic angle to create a white-outed world of colourful skies, snow, clouds, jagged peaks, with a castle nestled upon one of them. Graphically, the game is a collection of okay bits and cheap effects, the latter particularly so on the reels. The same goes for the chinkly sound effects, where Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox winds up feeling like a dated video game or one of those mobile games that's been cobbled together on the quick to make a few bucks through video advertising pop-ups.

Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox is a medium volatile slot, played on a 6-reel, 5-row game grid with 50 fixed paylines. On each spin, reels randomly merge together to create larger than normal Gigablox symbols. Gigablox can be anything from 2x2 to 5x5 in size, and any symbol can be a Gigablox symbol. When evaluating wins, Gigablox symbols are broken down into 1x1 size tiles to calculate the payout value. Playable on any device, RTP varies with a maximum value of 96.1%, while bets of 50 p/c to $/€50 may be selected.

Along paylines, winning combinations occur when three to six matching symbols land from the leftmost side over adjacent reels. Gems start the symbols off in purple, blue, red, green and gold colours as the low pays, while deer, owls, wolves, and polar bears are the high pay tiles. Landing a six-of-a-kind winning line gets you 1x the bet for the gems or 1.5 to 5 times the stake for the animals. Lastly, wild symbols appear in the base and bonus game, whereas x2 wilds appear only in the bonus. Both may land on reels 2-6 to substitute any regular pay symbol to assist with complete winning lines.

Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox: Slot Features

One more feature to look out for in the base and bonus game is the Arctic Blast. When one or more Mystery Gigablox symbols lands on the reels, the Sorcerer changes them into one of these – Polar Bear, Wolf, Gold Gem, Blue Gem, Purple Gem, scatter, or wild. The Arctic Blast reveal occurs before any wins are evaluated or features trigger.

Free Spins

Landing the equivalent of 5 1x1 sized scatter symbols triggers the free spins round. When scatter Gigablox symbols hit, they are broken down into the 1x1 size scatters that form them. Each triggering 1x1 scatter awards 1, 2, or 3 free spins. During free spins is where the x2 wild symbol appears, doubling all wins when substituting in a winning line. When wild Gigablox symbols appear from the Arctic Blast, the Sorcerer splits it into 1x1 wilds and 1x1 x2 wilds. Both wild types are collected after wins have been evaluated – wilds are worth one point, and x2 wilds are worth two points on the Wild Collection Counter. When the Wild Collection Counter reaches 5, 10, 15, or 20, +2 free spins are awarded. When the round ends, the Wild Collection Counter resets to zero.

Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox: Slot Verdict

Gigablox slots continue to be a mixed bag of good and not-so-good games. Some studios have taken to the mechanic and run with it; others appear to have just whacked it on a project with little to no interest in really doing something new or remarkable with its functionality. So it seemed in Megapearl Gigablox, and so it seems with Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox, too. ReelPlay has demonstrated artistic flair in both aesthetics and gameplay in the past - it invented the popular Infinity Reels mechanic, after all. Money Mariachi Infinity Reels or Odin Infinity Reels are two examples, yet they've also got another side that turns out games like Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox, which is lacking in a number of areas.

Suspicions were invoked by the artwork and sound effects. The fantasy Arctic idea kind of works, yet it also comes across as underdeveloped as well. The random no-name wizard is passable as a character, but he just doesn't strike one as being an extraordinarily powerful mage. All he really seems to do a lot of the time is raise his staff when Mystery Blocks land to reveal their symbol. On a side note, it's a little unclear why a fairly standard Mystery Symbol reveal had to be called The Arctic Blast. Funnily enough, free spins are arguably less imaginative than the naming of the Mystery Symbol feature. There it's a simple case of landing wilds or x2 wilds in an attempt to win up to 8 extra free spins in the process. Max win is surprisingly okay, at 4,720.74x the bet, but it does feel like some pretty funky sorcery would be required to leap to those levels.

All up, Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox was a pretty low-key game to review. During testing, it didn't get anywhere particularly special and cruised at a leisurely pace while doing so. Simply put, there are stronger Gigablox games out there compared to Arctic Sorcerer Gigablox, which leaned closer to a cheap saw someone in half trick than full-blown green lightning sorcery.