4 Fantastic Fish Gold: Slot Overview
Fish slots, brah, there are a lot of them, bobbing around the online gambling ocean like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, getting ever larger, threatening to take over everything if left unchecked. Okay, that was ever so slightly exaggeratedly dramatic, but the point is there are a lot of fish slots, and their growth shows no signs of slowing. One studio with a regular focus on this popular gambling genre is 4ThePlayer via its 4 Fantastic Fish series. Looping back, the studio has released 4 Fantastic Fish Gold, a slot which revisits the original title while altering the way players are technically able to win its main prizes.
4 Fantastic Fish (2022) was an eye-catching game the first time around, and the Gold version is just as optically loud. What grabbed the eye this time was the addition of a ‘look at me’ prize wheel that wasn’t there before. It lazily spins, tempting players with four prize values, which are also displayed above the reels. These can grow when Coins land atop symbols. The rest of the scene is about the same as it was before – beams of light shine across a bright blue sky, and the water has a purple tinge; it’s like mind-altering chemicals turning life’s contrast setting up to 11.
Statistically minded gamblers who liked the first 4 Fantastic Fish may not be overly thrilled to see the maximum RTP has decreased a few points to now top out at 94%. The bet range has slightly decreased, too, but 10 c to $/€60 should cover a good chunk of gambling requirements. Played on a 6×4 gaming grid, 4 Fantastic Fish Gold provides 4,096 ways to win, where winning symbols must land on adjacent reels, starting from the leftmost side of the grid onwards.
Ten to Ace card royals with little hooks on them make up the lower paying symbols before getting to the boxes, reels, crabs, birds, and anglers, making up the high pays. A 6 OAK royal win pays 1.5x-2.5x while 6 matching premiums award 3 to 10 times the bet. The boat symbol is wild, so it helps form wins by replacing everything except scatters. Wilds hit on all reels except the leftmost.
4 Fantastic Fish Gold: Slot Features
4 Fantastic Fish Gold functions very closely to the original slot, triggering Money Ways, a Respins Bonus, Giant Squids, and so forth, except the top prizes are winnable from a Boosting Fortunes prize wheel.
Money Ways
Fish symbols can land on any reel with a cash prize attached. When they create a winning way, left to right from the leftmost reel, their displayed values are awarded to the player.
Respin Bonus
Hitting 3 or more Respin scatters awards the Respin Bonus. All reels that landed a scatter become open, while the rest remain closed. Any landed Fish symbols on the triggering spin are locked to the reel if they are on one of the open reels. When new Fish symbols land on open reels during the feature, they lock in place and reset the respin counter back to 3. If a Respin scatter lands on a closed reel, it opens it for the rest of the feature, and the respin count is reset. Respin scatter cannot land on open reels. When respins run out, players win the total value of all Fish symbols locked on the reels. If an open reel is completely filled with locked Fish symbols, a Shark collects them, multiplies the total by x2 and holds it at the top position, opening up the other positions for new symbols to land.
Giant Squid Bonus
A Giant Squid may appear on any spin and rearrange Fish symbols. In the main game, it can create or improve a win. During the Respin Bonus, the Squid can move Fish symbols from closed reels to open reels.
Boosting Fortunes
There are four dynamic Fortune prizes in the game. There are the 10x-100x Big, 25x-250x Super, 200x-1,000x Mega, and the 10,000x-15,000x Ultra, sitting above a reel. Landing a Coin on a symbol increases the value of the Fortune Prize above its reel. On any base game spin, when one or more Coins land, the Fortune Wheel may trigger and spin to award a Fortune Prize.
Feature Buy
The feature buy menu has two options. They are a Respin Bonus round trigger for 75x the bet or a spin with a guaranteed Giant Squid for 30x the bet.
4 Fantastic Fish Gold: Slot Verdict
As far as fish slots that go toe to toe with the likes of the Fishin’ Frenzy or Big Bass Bonanza series, 4ThePlayer’s 4 Fantastic Fish range has put up a decent fight. The series kicked off in 2022 and has gone through various iterations, including Egyptian, Viking, and GigaBlox versions before 4 Fantastic Fish Gold circles back to the beginning. Why? It’s hard to say, but there isn’t a huge amount here which separates it from the first 4 Fantastic Fish. Stretching the imagination, mega fans might get a nostalgia kick, or Boosting Fortunes enthusiasts may prefer a wheel to potentially win the big prizes. However, other than that, there’s nothing majorly new to experience.
The reduced RTP does the game no favours either, and had another one of its key stats, winning potential, been greater, then perhaps 4 Fantastic Fish Gold might have generated more excitement. As it stands, the theoretical max win of 15,070.6x is all well and good, no complaining, but it’s just a titch higher than the 15,000x of the non-Gold version. It all feels like a rearranging of the furniture rather than an unmissable, bona fide Gold update. Exceptions might be gamblers who just can’t get enough fishy prize wheel action in their lives or would prefer less volatility.
All well and good, but prize wheels are pretty common, so the singular way 4 Fantastic Fish awarded its Big Game Jackpots (when the respective jackpot symbol was part of a ways win) has been erased. In its place is a more conventional jackpot game, with a reduced RTP and not much else to compel a fish slot fan to choose 4 Fantastic Fish Gold over the original.
Write a comment