Golden Fish Tank 2 Gigablox slot drops two new ideas into the calm coral aquarium that the first game built its name on. Oversized symbols now land on every spin and fill anything from a 2×2 clump to a 4×4 wall of one fish, and a treasure chest can appear on reel 5 for a cash win or a run of free spins. The tank beneath is as soothing as ever, and you still shape your own bonus. What the follow-up really changes is how often the reels give you something to watch.
Yggdrasil’s GigaBlox system is the headline addition, and it fires on each spin. At least 2 neighbouring reels lock together into one oversized symbol, from 2×2 up to 4×4. Anything can form one, the wild, the chest and the free spin symbol included.
A 4×4 fish counts as 16 matching positions at once, so a payout that would have been three or four symbols swells into a much larger one. Pick the expanded reels feature, and during the bonus, the grid grows to 6 rows, so the blocks can hit 6×6. Watching a lone fish swell to fill most of the grid is a good part of the fun.
Golden Fish Tank 2 GigaBlox spin showing oversized 4×4 club and spade symbols filling multiple reels
The treasure chest lands only on reel 5. It slides to the centre and grows, then lets out a cluster of bubbles, one reward inside each. Those pop away until just one remains, either a cash sum of up to 500x the bet or a handful of free spins. The chest turns up in standard play and the bonus alike, and since it can arrive as a GigaBlox, a larger one pays a better average.
The free spins run as they did before. Land 5 or more free spin symbols in the main game, and each one is a spin, so 5 symbols open the round on 5, and the tally builds from there.
Before it starts, you collect a set of picks, 3 to 7 of them, uncovered by clicking objects on the seabed. Each reveals one of 6 features that hold for the full round. They range from a wild fish that makes one symbol wild everywhere to a x2 multiplier on all wins, the expanded reels, one or two extra wilds dropped in at random each spin, a fish stack that supersizes one symbol, or more spins. Line a few up, and the mix you land shapes how the whole round plays.
Two choices sit around the bonus. The Golden Bet costs 20% more per spin and grants one more feature pick when the free spins trigger, and it works whether you spin for it or buy straight in, which few games permit.
The gamble is bolder. Before the round, an I Want More button lays out a row of starfish. Turn over a golden one to bank another feature, up to a point, but a grey starfish cancels the whole free spins round. Press I’m Happy, and you keep what you hold.
25 lines run across the 6-reel board, paying left to right, and a GigaBlox block can blanket much of the grid in one go. A wild stands in for every fish and suit symbol and carries its own pay, sitting top of the table. The free spin symbol shows only during standard play, so the trigger can’t come from within the bonus.
Draw the expanded reels among your free-spins picks and the board opens to 6 rows and 40 paylines.
The stake options are $0.25 to $100 per spin. Return to player is 96%, and the game runs at medium-high volatility, so wins land in uneven bursts, not a steady flow. The top prize is 5,000x the bet.
The number that draws the eye is how cheaply, compared to most other slots, you reach the bonus. A buy costs 60x your stake, $15 at the 25c minimum and $60 at a $1 stake, with a pricier Golden Spin version that adds a pick. The Golden Spin is the buy’s version of the Golden Bet, paid once instead of on every spin. That is a low bar beside the many feature slots selling their bonus at 100x or more.
The four card suits all pay alike, so the fish are the ones to line up, with the wild ahead of them all.
| Symbol | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wild | 1.60 | 4.00 | 8.00 | 20.00 |
| Yellow-green fish | 1.00 | 2.40 | 6.00 | 12.00 |
| Orange fish | 0.80 | 2.00 | 5.00 | 10.00 |
| Blue fish | 0.80 | 1.60 | 4.00 | 8.00 |
| Pink fish | 0.60 | 1.20 | 3.00 | 6.00 |
| Card suits (each) | 0.20 | 0.40 | 1.00 | 2.00 |
Cash wins at the $1.00 stake shown in the demo, for 3 to 6 of a kind.
Golden Fish Tank 2 takes a well-liked aquarium slot and hands it two things worth having, the GigaBlox symbols and a surprise treasure chest. Pair those with a bonus that's cheap to reach and easy to tune, and this is the stronger of the two versions. It breaks no new ground for the fish-slot, but as a relaxing, generous take on the theme it plays well above its modest ambitions.
The presentation stays closest to what came before, and it still grabs you right away. This is a bright coral underwater scene, sandy floor and swaying weeds, colourful fish drifting past bubbles that rise to the surface. The symbols wear a soft, almost 3D finish, bobbing gently in the current. Even the card suits hold a little motion within, like a wisp drifting inside a fortune-teller’s ball. A jet of water joins up the win. The soundtrack is calm and ambient, the kind you’d catch wandering a real aquarium, and it picks up as you spin before easing back after a few idle seconds. It’s a pleasant loop, and we left it playing while writing this review.
Set beside the first Golden Fish Tank, the outline is familiar. The aquarium, the fish, the choose-your-own free spins all carry over, the feature picks a touch more generous this time. A bonus buy comes with it now, the ceiling clears the old 2,000x, and volatility has crept up a notch to match. Same tank, further to fall and further to climb.
Between features, the blocks arrive spin after spin, usually a 2×2 or 3×3 clump of one fish, now and then a 4×4 filling most of a corner. They shift the feel more than the odds. A near-miss becomes a decent win when a large slab of matching fish drops in, livening the flatter spells. Through our free play, the wins ran small, mostly under $1, with the odd bigger block pushing one past that.
The bonus is where this one makes its case, and reaching it is the easy part. Our opening buy cost 60x at a $1 stake, for 5 free spins and 3 picks, and we skipped the gamble to keep them, drawing a wild fish, a fish stack and 5 more spins. The screen washes purple for the round. Six spins in, we had scraped together just $9.20, then one spin landed a Super Big Win of $47.80, a school of fish sweeping in from both sides as the counter kept ticking up, and the rest tidied up smaller wins to a $71.60 close, a little above the buy. A chest then broke the surface on reel 5, grew to the centre and spilled its bubbles, which settled at a final 10x, $10 back off that spin.
The carried-over gamble is where that cheap access can bite back. On the second buy, we switched the Golden Spin on, which took the cost from $60 to $100 and turned the buy frame gold, for 9 free spins and 5 picks. This time we tried the I Want More gamble for a further feature and flipped a grey starfish, wiping the whole round before a spin was played. It is a real sting, and it makes the safe I’m Happy button worth its place. Cheap as the buy is, one bad pick can hand that value straight back.
Our three buys finished far apart, one big hit deciding each of them, and the bumped-up volatility shows it. A third golden buy went the other way. Here, 6 free spins and 5 picks brought 10 more spins, and an extra wild or two dropped in at a random spot each spin, so the round ran long. Wins stayed mostly under $10, with one reaching $21 and another $18.20, and the round closed at $76, above the buy-in of the run before but short of the $100 this one cost. More spins and more features, still down, where the shorter opening round had finished ahead on one strong hit. If you like the underwater fish theme and fancy a calmer change of pace from the likes of Big Bass or Fishin’ Frenzy, this sequel is a gentle, generous one to try in free play.
