Gonzo's Quest Review

How to Play

Gonzo’s Quest is one of NetEnt’s most popular slots. It’s included at all the best Canadian online casinos, and many players have it as their all-time favourite. It’s straightforward to play, with intuitive controls that work well no matter your device. Here’s how you can get started:

1. Load up your favourite online casino and search for Gonzo’s Quest
2. Open the game and choose your stake between $0.20 and $50 per spin
3. Choose the spin button or enter the amount of spins you want to play into autoplay
4. Manage your bankroll carefully, ensuring you’re playing responsibly

Game Interface & Controls

When you load up the game, you’ll find the game controls below the reels, allowing you to spin, change your bet, or use Autoplay. The ‘I’ button gives you access to the paytable and game rules. This is where you’ll find all the information on the different bonus features and payouts.

Game Symbols

The symbols in Gonzo’s Quest perfectly match the theme, giving the impression of a lost city deep in the jungle. Each symbol is carved into a stone block, with different jungle animals and masks appearing across the reels.

There are nine symbols, with seven regular symbols and two bonus symbols. The bird carving pays 2.5x your stake for five on a payline, the snake carving pays 3.75x, and the alligator carving pays 5x. The purple mask pays 10x your stake for five on a payline, the golden mask pays 25x, the green mask pays 50x, and the blue mask pays 125x.

The two bonus symbols are the wild and the scatter. The wild symbol stands in for all other symbols, even the scatter. Meanwhile, the scatter can unlock the free spins bonus round if you land three or more on a single spin.

How to Win

There are twenty paylines in this slot, and all you need to do is land three or more matching symbols along any of them to land a win. Lines only pay from combinations from the leftmost reel to the right, but every time you land a win, a special bonus mechanic activates.

When you land a winning combination of 3 symbols or more, the Avalanche mechanic kicks in, removing the winning combo and allowing more symbols to appear. This can result in lengthy and lucrative chains of wins. The multiplier indicator above the reels increases with each successive Avalanche win, up to a maximum of 5x, and resets to 1x between spins.

Bonus Features

Some excellent bonus features in Gonzo’s Quest have helped make it such a hit with players all over the world. NetEnt slots are often filled with creative features, and this game is no different. On every spin, you could unlock any of the following bonuses.

Every time you land a win in Gonzo’s Quest, the winning symbols explode and disappear from the reels. New ones fall from above to take their place, potentially leading to chain reaction wins. The avalanche continues until no new wins can be formed. After this, the game pays out your total winnings for all won symbols.

Avalanches don’t just trigger new symbols to fall from above. They’ll also increase the win multiplier. Each new win you land from a single spin will increase the multiplier by one, so three successive wins will activate a 3x multiplier. Once no new spins are made, the multiplier will be added to your win total.

The maximum win multiplier you can gain during the base game is 5x from landing four or more successive avalanches. In addition, your multiplier resets at the end of every new spin.

Wild symbols are stone blocks with a gold question mark engraved into them. They show up on any reel and will help you form wins by substituting for other symbols. They substitute for all symbols, including scatters.

If you land 3 of the scatters, also known in this game as “free fall” symbols, the reels will part, and Gonzo will go through to reveal the free spins round. You will receive ten free spins, and the Avalanche multiplier maximum will increase from 5x to 15x.

Moreover, the base multiplier starts at 3x, so all your wins during this bonus are boosted. Naturally, this can result in big wins if you’re lucky enough to hit successive avalanches. In addition, more free falls can be earned during the bonus round by landing additional scatter symbols.

Max Win you Can Expect?

Gonzo’s Quest has a maximum win worth 3,750x your bet. If you’re playing on the maximum bet allowed of $50 per spin, you could potentially win an incredible $187,500. While this would be hard to achieve, it’s possible if you get lucky during the free spins bonus round.

How RTP Affects Payouts

Because this is a medium to high-variance game, smaller wins will land pretty frequently, but you can also expect larger prizes to appear less regularly. The 95.97% RTP is just below the average for online slots, so your chances of getting a decent return on your bets are still statistically fair. However, it’s important to remember that the RTP rate isn’t a clear indicator of how much you’ll win. During my spins, I lost money, but on another day, I could have made money. It’s still completely random, and the RTP rate is measured over an extremely long period.

When I tested the game out for this review, I landed many exciting avalanche wins. However, I was unlucky in not hitting any multipliers or bonus features. Ultimately, my playing session didn’t result in a profit, though I still had a lot of fun. Despite the medium variance, I was unlucky not to hit any consecutive avalanche wins, preventing me from landing bigger wins.

Visual & Sound Experience

As soon as you load up Gonzo’s Quest, you’ll be transported to the lost world of El Dorado. This city was claimed to have been made entirely of gold but was lost to the jungle when the civilization was destroyed. The Spanish conquistadors spent many centuries taking gold from the New World, and you’ll now be able to join Gonzo in his quest to find El Dorado. The graphics look fantastic despite the fact that the game is now more than ten years old.

As soon as you load up the game, a cinematic cutscene sets the scene and brings you to the mysterious South American jungles. Here, you’ll discover an ancient city with stone carvings and, hopefully, lots of gold. The graphics help to add to the exciting theme, and the sounds and music create a thrilling atmosphere as you spin the reels.

Try a Free Slot Demo

Reviews are great, but you can only fully explore an online slot by playing it. You can experience all the elements of Gonzo’s Quest without spending a cent by playing our free demo, which gives you a significant balance of free credits for some risk-free fun. The gameplay and features such as cascades and free fall free spins work the same in the demo as when you play with real money, giving you an excellent opportunity to test it out.

We recommend trying out slots in free-play mode before committing real money. This way, you minimize your risk, learn the basics of the game and get a feel for it. You can decide for yourself whether it’s worth playing Gonzo’s Quest for real money and then choose a real online casino.

How does Gonzo’s Quest Compare?

Throughout the years, Gonzo’s Quest has remained the gold standard for exciting slots. Its excellent features and engaging visuals make it one of the most popular options at Canadian online casinos even today. However, many other games have come out with similar features and themes. Let’s see how they compare to the original:

My Gonzo’s Quest 25 Spins Experience

Visually, the game looks great, with fresh ancient civilization talisman symbols and rocky sound effects as the reels cascade. I was eager to get started. I decided to use a low-betting strategy to allow the cascading reels to pick up some of the slack to gain some decent wins. I started with an easy €2 bet. As I spun the reels, a few small wins came in, and I decided to change the bet size to €1 to minimize losses. This had much of the same result. Although there were constant wins, I couldn’t hit consecutive cascading reels. So I decided to up the bet to €5 and see if I could regain some of the losses I endured. Although I got one €6 win in the last few spins, I wasn’t winning enough to get into a profit for this challenge.

Even though I didn’t end in a profit, I had a positive experience with this game. The mechanics, visuals, and gameplay were smooth, and the sound effects were significant. With a bit more luck next time, it will be an even better experience.

Pros and Cons

Our Verdict

Gonzo’s Quest slot was an instant hit when it was first released, and I can understand why. The entertaining graphics and animation rival the most extravagant modern slots, and the pairing of the Avalanche mechanic with an increasing multiplier provides a thrilling gameplay experience. Triggering the Free Falls feature is the way to snag the game’s top prize, a respectable 3750x.

Other Slots You Might Like

If this game makes you hungry to explore more ancient treasures, give Azteca from Playtech or El Dorado: The City of Gold by Pragmatic Play a go. They both feature big winning potential and lots of fun features, with the same exciting lost civilization theme. There’s also Gonzo’s Quest Megaways, and a live casino version of Gonzo’s Quest, so you can return to the lost city of gold with Gonzo himself and bring back untold treasures.