Yggdrasil Gaming’s partner, Jelly, has brought back the Gigablox mechanic for another round. Their previous release, Buffalo Blox Gigablox, had a nice appearance but was somewhat underwhelming within the expanding range of Gigablox slots. For their second attempt, Jelly has stuck with an animal theme but introduced a completely different cast of creatures. The result is Beasty Blox Gigablox, a jungle-themed game featuring a mix of traditional Gigablox features and some new elements.
Welcome to the jungle: Beasty Blox Gigablox is set in a lush, verdant environment with a hint of danger. The scene includes a spear bobbing up and down on the left and a pole topped with a skull, sending a clear message that visitors are not welcome. Interestingly, the antagonistic presence seems to be animals dressed in human clothes rather than humans. Like Buffalo Blox, Beasty Blox boasts impressive visuals, with clean, detailed artwork. However, the default RTP is 95%, which isn’t terrible but could be higher to make the game more competitive among its Gigablox peers. The game features a highly volatile math model and a straightforward betting range of 20 p/c to $/€50 per spin, with no ante bet or feature buy option available.
The game grid of Beasty Blox Gigablox is held together with four pieces of lashed wood, featuring 6 reels, 4 rows, and 4,096 ways to win. Matching symbols must land on adjacent reels from the leftmost side to trigger a payout. The pay symbols include leafy 9-A card royals worth 1 to 1.5 times the bet for six of a kind, and animal symbols such as a snake, a crocodile, a lion, and a gorilla, which pay 3 to 6 times the bet for a six-symbol win. Skull wilds can substitute for all pay symbols to help complete wins and can land on all but the four central reels.
Beasty Blox Gigablox: Slot Features
Beasty Blox features both traditional and unique elements, including the Gigablox mechanic, free spins, wild multipliers in free spins, and Super Staxx.
Gigablox: The game randomly merges reels to create Gigablox symbols, which can appear in blocks up to 4×4 in size. For win evaluations, these Gigablox symbols break down into 1×1-sized symbols. All pay symbols or Super Staxx symbols can appear as Gigablox, but wilds and diamonds cannot. Gigablox symbols are guaranteed to be active on every spin.
Free Spins: Diamond symbols act as scatters in Beasty Blox. Landing at least 5 scatter symbols triggers the free spins feature, with each scatter revealing 1 or 2 free spins, for a minimum of 6 free spins. During free spins, wilds reveal win multipliers of x2 or x3, and these multipliers can multiply each other. Wild multipliers are always active in free spins and do not need to be part of a win to activate.
Super Staxx: Super Staxx symbols appear only during free spins. When they land, they reveal any pay symbol but never wilds or scatters. Super Staxx symbols reveal 2 to 5 ways per revealed symbol, enhancing the potential for big wins.
Slot Verdict: Beasty Blox Gigablox
Beasty Blox Gigablox incorporates some good ideas, but it’s a pity they don’t appear more frequently or in greater numbers. Super Staxx, for example, is a fantastic concept for a Gigablox game with a ways-to-win pay system. It would have been intriguing even with fixed paylines, but using it with thousands of ways to win was quite exciting. Unfortunately, Super Staxx didn’t appear often, and when it did, it didn’t seem to have much impact. Maybe we just had bad luck? Hopefully, Jelly will bring back Super Staxx and use it more effectively in future Gigablox slots.
Another favorable element is the wild multipliers in free spins, which are active whether they’re part of the actual win or not. This is a generous touch. However, the free spins didn’t trigger very often either. It’s as if the game is holding back, reluctant to reveal its best features. Players with the patience to wait might be rewarded, as Beasty Blox Gigablox has a winning potential of 5,000x the bet, nearly double that of Jelly’s previous Gigablox game.
What makes the wait more bearable is Beasty Blox Gigablox’s pleasing artwork. However, a bit more frequent use of the features would have been appreciated. If Super Staxx, arguably the most original aspect of Beasty Blox, had been available in the base game, it might have been more engaging. While there are good elements here, the frequent plain vanilla base game spins can get tedious. Although Beasty Blox Gigablox sits around the middle of the Gigablox spectrum, there are far more explosively engaging options to choose from.