Golden Fish Tank 2 Gigablox

Golden Fish Tank 2 Gigablox: Slot Overview

Some people like to get out amongst nature, wrestle fish, show 'em who's boss and maybe haul a few on to land. Others prefer to bring nature to them and watch fish do laps in a fishbowl, maybe swim in and out of little, tiny shipwrecks or plastic weeds. Any players in the latter group might be tempted by the sequel to Yggdrasil's classic 2016 piscine-themed slot Golden Fish Tank. The newer version, Golden Fish Tank 2 Gigablox, has been modernised in many ways while keeping the bubbly aquatic feel that helped make the first one a hit.

It's funny, despite having the words 'Fish Tank' in the title, neither game looks like they are actually set in a fish tank. There's just too much sand, weeds, and bubbles going on. If anything, Golden Fish Tank 2 looks older than the original, more basic from a visual perspective. The game has plenty of charm though, the masses of fish lining the game's transparent grid have a dose of Pixar-like loveable goofiness about them. Waves of relaxation are intensified by the aquatic inspired music, as a similar set of pleasant popping sounds play when reels stop spinning or wins count-up.

One of the main changes is the use of Yggdrasil's Gigablox mechanic. The studio has leant this out to a number of its partners, for better or worse, yet it works like a charm in Golden Fish Tank 2. Basically, the game has 6 reels. However, reels merge on every spin to create Gigablox symbols sized 2x2, 3x3, or 4x4 – in the base game. When part of a win, Gigablox symbols break down into regular 1x1 sized symbols for the payout evaluation.

Mathematically, things have moved on as well. Volatility, for starters, has been increased from medium to medium-high, though RTP has remained about the same at 96%. As before, the game is available to play on any device, and bets range from 25 p/c to $/€100 per spin. This is playing normally, though. If you engage the Golden Bet feature, bets increase by 20%. The benefit of doing this is you get an extra feature pick when free spins trigger.

On the default 4-row grid, players get 25 paylines to hit winning combinations of three to six of a kind on. Low pay symbols are made up of the four card suits, while the four high pays look like really bewildered versions of the four fish that appeared in the original. Landing six premium symbols on a winning line is worth a payout of 6 to 12 times the stake. Coming in at 20x the bet for a line of six is the wild symbol - it lands anywhere to replace any other pay symbol.

Golden Fish Tank 2 Gigablox: Slot Features

Features are a nice mix of old and new, where as well as Gigablox plus the Golden Bet, we find free spins, a treasure chest feature, and a buy bonus.

Treasure Chest

Treasure chests appear on the last reel and always award a prize even if they are only partially in view. A bunch of bubbles waft across the screen, popping one at a time until just one remains to award its prize. In the base game, this could be 2-500x the bet or 5-16 free spins. In free spins, it is possible to win 2-500x the bet or 1-5 extra free spins. The bigger the chest, the better the average prize.

Free Spins

Landing at least 5 scatter symbols in the base game triggers the free spins feature. The number of free spins symbols in view is the number of awarded spins. Next, players receive a random number of feature picks. If you are using the Golden Bet, you always get 1 extra feature pick here.

However, if you are not happy with the number of feature picks, you can gamble for more. To do so, 3 starfish appear on screen. Players pick one, and if it reveals gold, you win another feature pick. If it reveals a black starfish, you are sent back to the base game.

A bunch of undersea items appear on the screen for the feature pick. Players click the objects one at a time to reveal these modifiers:

• Wild Fish – one of the fish symbols is turned wild.
• x2 Multiplier – is applied to all wins in free spins.
• Expanded Reels – 2 rows are added to the reels. This allows Gigablox up to 6x6.
• Extra Wild – 1 to 2 wilds are added in random positions on each free spin.
• Fish Stacks – one fish symbol type can land stacked on the reels.
• Extra Free Spins – 1 to 5 free spins are added to the total.

Buy Bonus

Players get 2 options for buying their way to the bonus round. The first is the standard bet option which awards 5-16 free spins for 60x the total stake. The second is with the Golden Bet switched on, so players get the +1 pick; this costs 100x the stake.

Golden Fish Tank 2 Gigablox: Slot Verdict

You could say Gigablox has taken to Yggdrasil's classic like a fish to water. Sorry, that was terrible, but it does describe Golden Fish Tank 2 quite well. Yggdrasil hasn't tinkered with the wrapper much, so players who liked the simple underwater scene of the first game will be chuffed that the studio has largely left it alone. If anything, they've simplified it even further, so if nothing particularly exciting is happening on the reels, it might be tempting to zone out for a bit to just watch the fish do their thing.

Fortunately, Yggdrasil has programmed the game to avoid experiencing a lot of downtime. Gigablox keeps you second-guessing, intermittently linking up into something decent, and free spins seemed to trigger quite frequently on their own, without the need for activating the bonus buy. Like real-life fishing, the pick feature can be torturous, though, especially when you've maxed the number of picks and not collecting anything interesting from them. Without a combo made up of wilds, the x2 multiplier and the reel expanding modifier, chances are your wins are not going to be all that impressive.

When compared to other Gigablox games Yggdrasil has done, Golden Fish Tank 2 isn't as exhilarating as, say, Hades Gigablox, but it goes for a different angle. Golden Fish Tank 2 offers a nice balance between chilling with nature and finely tuned mathematics. It's certainly a much higher performer than the first one. If you haven't played the original or haven't played it for a while, it'll be a shock to see the game advertising wins of up to x300. Perhaps this was no big deal back in 2016 when Golden Fish Tank was first released, but it seems bizarrely quaint when compared to Golden Fish Tank 2's stated 5,000x max win figure.

The original was a huge success with its, at the time, cutting edge technology, design and features, so our expectations were high. Golden Fish Tank 2 is a neatly designed sequel, which integrates Gigablox like it was meant to be, yet there is a lingering feeling that the producers could have tried a wee bit harder.