Nightmares VS GigaBlox: Slot Overview
For some people, sleeping is high on their list of favorite things to do. Makes sense, too. While slumbering, we can drift away from deadlines, demanding customers, bills, and the 101 other mundane things that can drag in waking life. In dreams, you can swashbuckle over the seven seas, cruise the cosmos, or be the main character in a story limited only by your unconscious imagination. Spare a moment then for those poor souls plagued by night terrors, where the thought of going to sleep may well evoke feelings of dread. It’s the emotions of fear and dread that software developer Hot Rise Games, in conjunction with ReelPlay and Yggdrasil Gaming, attempts to tap into through Nightmares VS GigaBlox.
This is not the first time Hot Rise Games has picked a topic and put it up against the Gigablox mechanic. It’s the third, actually; the previous two games were Monsters VS GigaBlox and Gods VS GigaBlox. So far, all three have been good-looking games that have shared certain features as well as offering gameplay variants. True to its name, Nightmare VS GigaBlox is the spookiest-looking one of the lot so far. Okay, it’s an online slot, not a Freddie Krueger flick, so the game is unlikely to fuel many night terrors. But an eerie village location and its monster inhabitants have been nicely rendered, so the game isn’t without a certain creep factor.
Gigablox was built by Yggdrasil Gaming, but it has worked its way out to numerous partner studios for use in their own games. In Nightmare VS GigaBlox, the mechanic is hosted on a 6×6 gaming grid with 50 fixed paylines. Beneath the creepy exterior, Nightmares VS GigaBlox runs on a medium-high volatile math model producing four RTP models depending on the configuration. The highest return value is 96.1% or 96% when buying the bonus round, and both values can easily be confirmed from the info screen. Bet selection starts at 50 p/c and goes up to £/€20 for those with thicker wallets.
To add coins back into your wallet while playing Nightmares VS GigaBlox, you’ll need to land matching symbols on at least 3 adjacent reels from the first reel onwards. When 6 OAK wins hit, they pay 1.5x the bet when made up of the J to A card ranks or 2.5 to 10 times the bet for the premium character symbols – Swamp Man, Dead Beard, Princess Cleo, Max Wolf, Adam Frankenstein, and Vamptress. The final piece of the paytable puzzle, for now, is the wild symbol, which lands on all reels. Wilds substitute for any pay symbol and award up to 50x the bet for a line of 6 winning wilds.
Nightmares VS GigaBlox: Slot Features
If you’ve managed to gird yourself through the horror so far, it’s time for features. Here you’ll find Gigablox, the VERSUS feature, and a bonus buy.
Gigablox
Any symbol can land as a Gigablox. Symbols merge to create blocks of symbols from 2×2 to 6×6 in size.
VERSUS Feature
When 6 or more scatters are anywhere in view, the VERSUS feature is triggered, initially awarding 6 free spins. For the round, a Champion and a Challenger are randomly selected from the high-pay symbols. When these symbols land during the feature, they are collected. As the collection progresses, rewards are triggered at various set points. Collecting Champion and/or Challenger symbols can lead to awards of wilds, multipliers, extra free spins, and what are known as major prizes.
Bonus Buy
If you’d prefer the Challenger and Champion get to battling right away, it is possible to buy the VERSUS feature for 80 times the stake.
Nightmares VS GigaBlox: Slot Verdict
For number three in the VS GigaBlox line-up, Hot Rise Games has trimmed the experience down compared to the previous game we’d reviewed. The stand-alone free spins round is gone, so the only bonus round to shoot for is the VERSUS one. Not sure exactly why this is so, but whatever Hot Rise Games’ reasoning was, VERSUS is it. The feature is quite similar to the one found in Gods VS GigaBlox, too, with no titanic changes, though it is cheaper to buy than before, which could be of interest to followers of the VS GigaBlox range.
Of the three entries in the line-up, Nightmares VS GigaBlox was the least visually impressive of them. Personal preference, of course, but popping graphics has been one of the hallmarks of the last two games. Monsters VS GigaBlox had colossal beasts duking it out, and Gods VS GigaBlox had deities facing off, and both did so in a fun, larger-than-life eye-catching way. Nightmares VS GigaBlox, while an attractive game, was less strikingly so than those preceding it, although players who prefer horror games may think the opposite, fair dues.
The watered-down impact was amplified by the way Hot Rise Games has slimmed the features. It meant that while Gods VS GigaBlox felt like it built on Monsters VS GigaBlox, Nightmares VS GigaBlox feels not exactly a step backwards, though a step sideways at least. Still, Nightmares VS GigaBlox offers entertainment value for GigaBlox enthusiasts to have a crack at. The optics hit wasn’t as high this time around compared to the last two, but those who favour horror may think otherwise.