Gremlins Online Slot (Red7): Overview

Yes, this is the officially branded slot based on the classic 1984 movie Gremlins. It had a sequel and a handful of spin-off products, including a land-based slot made with partners WMS. But this seems to be the first time the little green troublemakers have shown up in a video slot. Why now? Hard to say, but Red7 is the studio to thank for putting Gizmo and the gang on the reels this time. Branded slots can be an emotional tightrope. If you loved the original, you really, really want the game to deliver. When it does, it feels special. When it doesn’t, it can miss badly, and the let-down stings. So where does Gremlins land?

It starts on a positive note. The music is a lightly reworked version of the film’s original soundtrack. The 5 reel, 3 row layout sits in Billy’s bedroom—the spot where he spilled water on Gizmo and created the clones, and where feeding them after midnight led to the nasty Gremlins. For the best presentation, play in landscape mode. The backdrop fits perfectly, with a strong retro 80s atmosphere, and it all looks promising early on. To keep things moving, players can choose stakes from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin and spin away.

The paytable is packed, so starting with the symbols makes sense. Lower-value icons are standard J – A royals, with popcorn and a shake in the middle. The premium symbols are 3D glasses, a microwave, and the game’s Logo. The Logo is the top regular payer, awarding 25 times times the stake for five of a kind. The Gremlin symbol acts as the wild, substituting for all other paying symbols, and it also pays 50 times the stake for five in a row. RTP comes in at a solid 96.47%, and it seems to play with fairly high volatility, though that still needs confirmation. Gremlins can be a stubborn game, with plenty of dead spins and small hits. If you stick with it, though, there are several bonus features to trigger along the way.

Gremlins Online Slot (Red7): Features

The main gateway to the features is the Gizmo Bonus Symbol, which appears on reels 1, 3 and 5—land three to activate the Bonus Selector. The scene moves to a cinema, where a crowd of cheeky gremlins cause chaos in the seats. The display cycles through the bonus names before stopping at random and choosing which one will play out next. There are five bonus games in total:

• Splashing Wild Free Spins: 8 free spins where any wilds dive into the pool to stack the reel. Free spins can be retriggered by landing 3 more Bonus Symbols.
• Gremlin Link Free Spins: This feature starts with three lives. Whenever a spin occurs without a Stripe symbol a life is removed. When Stripe lands, it resets lives back to 3. An extra reel is added during this feature which contains Gizmo multiplier symbols with x2, x3, or x5 values. The feature ends when lives fall to zero.
• Avoid the Sun Free Spins: There is no limit to the number of free spins in this feature. When 8 free spins pass then Persisting Wilds are activated. When one of these wilds lands it remains locked on the reels for the remainder of the feature. One new symbol comes into play – the sun symbol. When 11 sun symbols land in total the feature ends.
• Gizmo Box Hunt: This is a picking game with 4 levels and 9 boxes per level. Players open boxes one at a time to reveal Cash Values, ‘Level Up’, or ‘Collect’. ‘Level Up’ moves players to the next level where the prizes are greater. Pick ‘Collect’ and the feature comes to an end.
• No More Cash After Midnight: A trail of multipliers leads Gizmo to a roast turkey. Players spin a wheel that has numbers 1 – 12. Land a number and move that many spaces forward. Unless that number is 12 (midnight), then the round ends, and whatever multiplier Gizmo is on is applied to the total bet level. Multipliers go as high as x100.

In the base game, water can drip onto a wild and cause it to multiply, just like in the film. Called the Stripe Wilds feature, it randomly adds several extra wilds across the reels. Something similar may occur when one or two Bonus Symbols land, increasing their count (the Freebie Bonus feature). Finally, wilds can also be swapped out at random for Bonus Symbols (the Bonus Entry feature).

Gremlins Online Slot (Red7): Verdict

There are two angles to judge Gremlins from: as a nostalgia hit, and as a straightforward slot. On the nostalgia side, it does a respectable job. The environment feels authentic, the characters are familiar, and the soundtrack is instantly recognisable. As a fun throwback, it works and can be genuinely enjoyable. The second angle is tougher. If you strip away the emotional pull and assess Gremlins purely as a slot, it ends up feeling underwhelming. There’s an initial rush when it loads and you take a few spins, but the pace becomes repetitive fast. The base game is quiet, and even landing a 5-of-a-kind can feel like a major achievement. It also gives the impression that Red7 took inspiration from Blueprint Gaming and their catalogue of branded slots to build something in a similar mould. For players who know those titles, that can make Gremlins feel a little too close to a copy rather than its own thing.

When the Gizmo symbols finally show up—which can take a long time—the bonus rounds are fairly enjoyable. The free spins in particular seem to offer the best chance of stronger returns. Even so, getting into them isn’t easy. In testing, the most frequent bonus was No More Cash After Midnight. But with top wins of 100 times the stake, there isn’t a huge amount on the line in that one. In terms of overall upside, Red7 has set a total win cap per game at 250,000, which feels more like a technical ceiling than a realistic target. A full screen of wilds can pay 1,000 times the stake, although pulling that off is another story.

So, does Gremlins lean too hard on the brand to carry it? Possibly. Still, it has its moments when luck finally cooperates and patience pays off. Our testing leaned more toward boredom and irritation than genuine thrills, though. Maybe we expected too much. Overall, Gremlins is fine, but slightly disappointing. As with most branded slots, if you’re into the source material, it’s still difficult to resist giving it a spin for nostalgia’s sake.