Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox: Slot Overview

Fixed in the public consciousness thanks in no small part to Victor Hugo and his notorious bell ringer, Notre-Dame de Paris (Our Lady of Paris) has stood in the 4th arrondissement since its first stone was laid in 1163. As one of Paris’ essential sights, it welcomed roughly 12 million visitors a year until 2019, when a fire led to its closure for restoration, with hopes it will be ready for the Summer Olympics in 2024. Stepping inside, and with a little imagination, visitors can feel as if they’ve travelled back a thousand years, wandering through the middle ages amid the sights, sounds, and smells that would have come with it.

If your imagination could use a small nudge, this might do the trick. Called Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox, it’s an online slot from Yggdrasil Gaming set in a much earlier Paris—long before cars, the internet, or mobile devices. That idea may sound unsettling to some, but as a bit of escapism it’s great fun. Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox certainly leans into that, showing Notre-Dame in a romantic bygone era under pink-purple skies, surrounded by pointy-towered buildings, pennants, market stalls, and a horse ‘n cart, while a jaunty medieval melody plays along. It’s a welcoming backdrop.

The active reels scroll vertically across Notre-Dame’s walls. In the base game, there are 6 reels, 4 rows of symbols, and 25 paylines, with the layout able to expand during the free spins round. It’s not a gigantic setup, and the overall win potential is fairly restrained; Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox uses a medium-high volatile math model and comes in four RTP versions, with 96% as the highest. Stakes range from 25 p/c to $/€100 per spin, and there’s also a Golden Bet plus two feature buys available.

Gigablox show up constantly—actually, they are guaranteed to appear on every spin. In the base game, reels link together to form blocks of symbols sized from 2×2 to 4×4, increasing to as large as 6×6 in free spins. Any symbol can become a Gigablox, including the wild, Treasure Chest, or free spins symbol. For standard pay symbols, Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox includes 8 in total: 4 low-paying card suits—diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades—plus four character high pays—Captain Phoebus, Claude Frollo, Esmeralda, and Quasimodo. A 6 OAK low-pay hit returns 2x the bet, while a 6-premium symbol win pays 6 to 12 times the bet. Wilds can land on all reels, substituting for any regular pay symbol, or paying up to 20 times the bet for a 6-wild winning line.

Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox: Slot Features

On top of the features already touched on (and covered in more detail below), Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox also includes Treasure Chest instant prizes and free spins, with a pick-me element that happens before the round starts.

Treasure Chests

The Treasure Chest appears on the rightmost reel in both the base game and free spins. In the base game, it can award a cash win of 2 to 500 times the bet or 5, 9, or 16 free spins. During free spins, Treasure Chests pay 2-500x the bet or grant 1, 2, 3, or 5 extra free spins. Chests can also land as Gigablox (counting as 1 symbol), which improves the average prize value.

Free Spins

The free spins round activates when at least 5 scatter symbols land. The amount of free spins granted matches the number of scatter symbols that triggered the feature. Players also receive 3 to 7 feature picks. Selecting items can reveal:

• Wild High – 1 high pay symbol is replaced with wilds.
• x2 Multiplier – all wins are multiplied by 2.
• Expanded Reels – reels are expanded to 6×6 with 40 paylines active.
• Extra Wild – 1 to 2 wilds are added randomly to each free spin.
• High Stacks – 1 high symbol becomes super stacked on the reels.
• Extra Free Spins – 1 to 5 extra free spins.

Before the free spins begin, players may choose to gamble to gain one more feature pick for the free spins round. If the gamble is lost, the entire FS session is forfeited.

Golden Bet

Turning on the Golden Bet increases the stake by 20%. If free spins are triggered with Golden Bet enabled, players receive +1 feature pick.

Buy Bonus

The bonus buy offers 2 choices. One is a standard bonus round trigger for 60x the bet; the other is free spins with a Golden Bet for 100x the bet.

Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox: Slot Verdict

Yggdrasil Gaming’s Gigablox mechanic has been reworked in plenty of ways since Lucky Neko Gigablox arrived in 2020. And it’s not only Yggdrasil Gaming—several partner studios have also taken their shot at the system. If you’ve tracked how the mechanic has developed, you may notice that Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox shares a lot with Golden Fish Tank 2 Gigablox. In fact, it’s more than a few familiar touches, because under the surface the two games are essentially the same in terms of stats and features.

That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since Golden Fish Tank 2 was a fun slot, and Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox is enjoyable for the same reasons. The studio deserves credit for the reskin, as Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox looks great and is packed with atmosphere. Perhaps extra effort went into the presentation to help mask the reskin nature—perhaps not—but the result works either way, because it’s easy to get absorbed in Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox. The location and characters can feel, in certain respects, even more immersive than Golden Fish Tank 2. It likely helps if players enjoy history or Victor Hugo’s novels. Feature-wise, everything performs just as effectively here as it did in the earlier game. Treasure Chests and Gigablox keep the base game ticking over, and free spins can deliver when the right feature set locks in. As before, extra free spins often took over the feature picks, although strong combinations of stacked symbols, expanded reels, multipliers, and so on are still possible in theory.

Even with the most favourable feature mix, Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox doesn’t really stand out for big payouts, with a maximum win of 3,730x the bet. That, along with the reskin angle, may cost it a few points. Still, if those drawbacks don’t bother you, Notre-Dame Tales Gigablox is a well-crafted slot that gives literary and/or historically inclined players an engaging theme to explore.