3021 AD The Bounty Hunter Gigablox: Slot Overview

Trying to forecast the future is a task that’s notoriously risky. Even if the brightest thinkers and the most powerful supercomputers could account for every variable, truly accurate predictions would still be out of reach. And besides, a future that’s totally knowable would be deeply unsettling. If everything is predetermined, life becomes nothing more than a script we’re forced to follow. It’s far better to do what Yggdrasil partner Reflex Gaming has done with 3021 AD The Bounty Hunter Gigablox and have some fun imagining what the world could look like a century from now.

In 3021 AD The Bounty Hunter Gigablox, that vision is grim: after multiple nuclear wars, the air has become poisonous, pushing most of humanity underground. The few who remain on the surface are lawless types doing whatever they want, as long as they avoid bounty hunters. The bounty hunter here is SK-1000, and he assists players in hunting down rewards throughout both the base game and the bonus.

Driven by Yggdrasil’s Gigablox mechanic, 3021 AD The Bounty Hunter runs on a 6×6 sized game grid with 40 fixed lines for landing wins. Reflex has opted for a video game-style look, with SK-1000 hovering on the left of the display and a barren view of earth as the backdrop. It begins with a decent first impression, but then a few “what the…?” moments appear, and the game never really recovers from them.

The first issue is bet selection, with stakes running from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin. If you intend to buy the feature, note that it’s only offered up to a base bet level of 10 credits. The RTP is also available in two versions: it defaults to 96.03%, though a 94.02% option exists, so it’s worth checking you’re getting the better figure. In the default RTP setup, the remaining stats list medium-high volatility and a hit rate of 16.05%, and these are broadly similar in the lower RTP version too.

Winning combinations land when three or more identical symbols connect from left to right, using any of the eight standard pay symbols. Four are low-value card suits, while the others are character icons like a futuristic blue-haired woman, a cyborg-style figure, a large purple brute, and a red skull character you definitely wouldn’t want to meet on the surface. A six of a kind made up of character symbols pays 4 to 8 times the stake.

3021 AD The Bounty Hunter Gigablox: Slot Features

Gigablox is the main mechanic and it’s in play on every spin. Essentially, symbols may appear in blocks of up to 5×5 in size, which changes how many reels are effectively active. You could end up with a reel made of 2×2 blocks, a 1×1, and another 2×2, for instance. Each block counts as the total number of 1×1 tiles it contains. Everything lands completely randomly, so there’s no way to predict what will show up next.

A second feature that can trigger randomly on any spin is the Wild Reel Bonus. When it hits, SK-1000 shoots the reels, converting the struck symbols into wild ones, allowing them to substitute for any pay symbol. The Wild Reel Bonus is more common during free spins.

If 5 or more scatter symbols land, Bounty Hunter Free Spins are awarded – 1 spin per triggering scatter. Just like the Giga-sized pay symbols, scatter blocks award free spins equal to the number of tiles they contain. So, a 2×2 scatter block counts as 4 free spins. Before the free spins start, a small wheeled gadget rolls in and projects a list of 10 multiplier values. After each winning free spin, SK-1000 shoots one of these numbers, and it’s then applied to multiplier the payout. The multipliers run from x1 up to x25.

Where the option exists, players can buy free spins instead of waiting for them to trigger naturally – in theory, once every 321 spins. This costs 100x the total stake and can award up to 25 free spins.

3021 AD The Bounty Hunter Gigablox: Slot Verdict

From the game sheet and an initial glance, 3021 AD The Bounty Hunter Gigablox looked like it had potential, helped by its inventive lore and the dystopian setting Reflex clearly spent time building. At first, it brought to mind Relax Gaming’s Multiplier Odyssey or Pragmatic’s Star Bounty – at least until the cracks began to appear. There’s definitely some imagination on display, but the presence of a Thanos lookalike and a Terminator-style wannabe among the symbols undermines the atmosphere. Considering how iconic and powerful Thanos is in the Marvel universe, would the comic company really be happy to see The Mad Titan’s image echoed in a slot that isn’t especially strong?

In terms of gameplay, 3021 AD The Bounty Hunter isn’t a disaster, largely because Gigablox still delivers its trademark unpredictability on the reels. A couple of earlier Gigablox releases have felt like credible Megaways alternatives, but the comparatively low paylines count and limited potential don’t do 3021 AD The Bounty Hunter any favours. The fresh twist it adds to the Gigablox formula is multipliers on every free spin win; that’s something we haven’t had before, and during testing they sometimes landed nicely. It’s therefore a let-down that the top payout in 3021 AD The Bounty Hunter is only 3,714 times the base stake – among the smallest Gigablox maximums so far. Max win isn’t everything, but here the modest cap is just another layer on a game that already struggles to impress.

It’s clear what the studio was trying to achieve, yet the ambition outpaces the delivery, leaving a slot with too many odd or rough moments for the strengths to carry it. And if we set Suncatcher aside for a second, it once again shows that features like Gigablox tend to shine most when they’re in the hands of their original creator.