Slot of the Week: Gonzo’s Quest

In the mood for something that’s guaranteed to entertain as a way of forgetting the woes of the workweek? Then settle in for our analysis of this week’s Slot of the Week, one of the world’s all-time favorites, Gonzo’s Quest!

Featuring the amusing Spanish explorer Gonzo and offering mechanics that changed the whole industry, Gonzo’s Quest takes you on a journey into the Peruvian jungle in search of hidden treasures. Will you discover El Dorado? Read on to find out how!

In Short:

• Gonzo’s Quest is a 20-payline online slot by NetEnt
• It is available to play at 20 New Jersey online casinos including Golden Nugget, Virgin Casino, SugarHouse, and Unibet Casino
• Unique features include Avalanches and increasing win multipliers
• The maximum payout of Gonzo’s Quest is 12,500x bet

The Basics

Launched in late 2013 by leading games developer NetEnt, the original 20-payline slot Gonzo’s Quest has become something of a legend thanks to a combination of easy yet thrilling gameplay, industry-changing mechanics, a comical main character, and decent win-potential.

According to the game’s intro, the story begins in 1541, off the coast of Peru, where a shipful of Spanish explorers awaits the sunrise to explore the riches of a strange new world. However, creeping around over the creaky wooden boards in the middle of the night is Gonzo, who has his own plans. Grabbing the treasure map, he makes a run for it, jumping ship and heading ashore into the dark jungle in search of El Dorado on his own.

First Impressions

After the slot’s intro, the reels will be revealed, and you’ll immediately notice they’re not really reels at all, rather various colored stone blocks that fall into place from above. These blocks sport an intricate Inca style design and occupy the 5-reel by 3-row play area, which itself is set against the backdrop of the Peruvian jungle, complete with vines and large palm leaves. A stone wall featuring more mysterious face designs, one of which is spouting a small waterfall, gives the impression we’re in some sort of Incan structure. When you hit the spin button, all blocks will fall away, briefly revealing a golden Incan pyramid before the play area fills with a new set of stone blocks.

Gonzo himself stands to the left of the reels and as you play, he’ll look around, scratch his beard, and even moonwalk across the screen if you score a big win! Each spin triggers a brief flourish of sound in anticipation, while wins are celebrated with a very Spanish guitar strum. There’s no soundtrack here, with jungle background noises breaking the silence and adding further anticipatory effects instead.

Symbols

The slot’s seven basic symbols are intricately designed Incan faces with the higher value ones recognizable by the presence of gold on their facial features. Some of these faces are human in nature, while others are more animalistic.

In addition to these basic symbols, you’ll also find the gray stone block with a gold question mark in a circle, which is the game’s wild symbol, substituting for all other symbols in the game. Then there’s the feature-triggering all-gold Free Fall symbol, which we’ll cover in more detail shortly.

Gonzo’s Quest Features

Gonzo’s Quest offers two main features: Avalanches and the Free Falls feature. While that might not sound like very much, it’s the simplicity of the game that makes it so appealing and easy to play. Let’s take a closer look at them in turn.

Avalanches

Each time you hit the spin button, a new set of stone blocks falls into place in the play area. If any of these block falls happens to result in 3 or more symbols matching along one of the game’s 20 paylines, you’ll trigger a win. What happens then is the symbols involved in the win will explode into dust, with those above falling into place to replace them, and additional ones coming into view to fill the play area again. This is what’s referred to as an Avalanche, each of which can result in a chain reaction of wins. But that’s not the end of it…

Even better, each time you trigger an avalanche, your win is boosted by an increasing win multiplier, as indicated by the multiplier section at the top right of the play area. Wins can be boosted by up to 5x multipliers in the base game.

As an interesting side-note, NetEnt was one of the first developers to introduce the concept of Avalanches, which triggered a wave of games incorporating a similar mechanism under different names (eg. cascades) by other developers. Whatever name you give it, this feature can be found in many of the industry’s most popular slots.

Free Falls Feature

Those all-gold symbols are the ones to watch if you want to trigger the game’s main feature, the Free Falls round. However, somewhat irritatingly, these symbols are not scatters, as you’ll find in many other games, meaning you’ll need to line up three of them in consecutive order along one of the game’s paylines to trigger the feature. Making up for that is the fact that the wild symbols can actually stand in for these feature-triggering symbols too, which is something you don’t find in many other games. It may take a little while in some cases, but you’ll soon discover the wait was totally worth it…

You’ll be rewarded with 10 Free Falls (free spins) with those win multipliers on each successive avalanche three times higher than in the base game. That means you can expect your wins to be boosted by up to 15x multipliers!

Gonzo’s Quest Payouts

So what kind of win-potential are you looking at in Gonzo’s Quest? The paytable in the in-game menu shows you what you can expect to get back depending on which symbols you’ve lined up, how many of them you got, and what your bet per spin is.

Here’s how it all breaks down:

Symbol	3x	4x	5x
Gray and gold head	2.5x bet	12.5x bet	125x bet
Green and gold head	1x bet	5x bet	50x bet
Beige and gold head	0.75x bet	2.5x bet	25x bet
Purple and gold head	0.5x bet	1.25x bet	10x bet
Orange animal	0.25x bet	1x bet	5x bet
Red animal	0.2x bet	0.75x bet	3.75x bet
Gray animal	0.15x bet	0.5x bet	2.5x bet

With the bet range going from $0.20 all the way up to $100 per spin, you have a lot of scope for controlling your experience playing this game, with the maximum win-potential totaling some $12,500.

However, that doesn’t take into account the win-boosting power of those increasing multipliers, which rise from a maximum of 5x in the base game up to 15x in the Free Falls feature!

Gonzo’s Quest RTP and Volatility

How does this slot compare to others in terms of payout volumes and frequencies? The most common measurements used for this purpose is the Return to Player (RTP) and the Volatility.

While the house edge of a game is the percentage of the money paid in that the house keeps, the RTP is the exact opposite, the percentage of the money paid in that players win over the long term. Gonzo’s Quest has an RTP of 95.97%, which is just about average for the industry, making it a fairly generous game to play in terms of payout potential.

Volatility (or Variance), on the other hand, is the balance between small, frequent wins and larger, less frequent wins, and is usually classed as Low, Medium, High, or somewhere between these. Gonzo’s Quest has a Volatility rank of Medium to High, meaning you can expect a fairly wide range of payout values with equally varying frequencies.

Will You Discover El Dorado?

Gonzo’s Quest has become a worldwide slot sensation and one that ranks particularly high in the state of New Jersey. You’ll have a lot of fun watching Gonzo’s various expressions, from beard-scratching to map-consulting, and especially his big win celebrations! The avalanches and increasing multipliers will have you perched on the edge of your seat in your search for that elusive El Dorado.

Being the superstar slot that it is, Gonzo’s Quest can be found at pretty much all of the best New Jersey online casinos including Golden Nugget, Virgin Casino, SugarHouse, and Unibet Casino.

Wondering which online casino is the best choice for you? Simply check out our detailed reviews by clicking any of the links above, then join the one that suits you best. Be sure to grab your welcome bonus then enjoy exploring Gonzo’s Quest!