For those who haven’t yet heard, here’s the good news: Augmented Reality has arrived.
This is particularly exciting news for fans of casino gaming.
Since an industry is overflowing with new titles, there’s more than enough demand to keep business brisk for any designer able to deliver quality games. At the same time, there are only so many different ways one can look at Roulette… at some point, fresh material has to enter the gaming space.
That’s why we’re so excited by what we’re seeing from Evolution Gaming in Gonzo’s Treasure Map.
The character of Gonzo, a small, hirsute conquistador clad in plate armor, will be familiar to fans of this company’s catalogue. He has appeared in a great many slots, as well as plenty of other games – notably, a Live Dealer offering called Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt, which came out in 2021 and never really caught on. Rather than call it quits after that underwhelming outing, the corporate brass has elected to double down, revamping that concept with enhanced gameplay and next-level visuals.
So how is the result?
Complicated, as it turns out! There are a whopping 70 possible betting positions (nearly twice that of a roulette wheel), spread out over a 7 row x 10 column grid. There’s the live dealer to interact with, as well as the 3D rendered Gonzo as well as live chat. There are two ways to win in the Main Game – payouts of 10x or 20x the bet size, depending on which block falls your way – as well as a Bonus Round so rich that the design team needed to cap the payout at $500,000.00!
This adds up to an extremely entertaining game that is also highly volatile.
It’s not only that there are big wins… it’s also that there are many different ways to win big! Bonus round multipliers include 150x, 200x, and even 500x payouts, but when a Ruby block appears, all of these numbers (including their smaller brethren) will double in size. And redouble, should another Ruby appear. And so on! The only limit is that $500K top win size.
The downside, however, as is often the case with high volatility offerings, is comparably low overall RTP. This comes in at a very underwhelming 95.26%.
(It’s especially disappointing because Gonzo’s Treasure Hunt, the under-performing predecessor this release intends to outshine, offered RTP of 96.56%!)
This all skips over the most impressive element: the visuals. The 3D rendering of Gonzo is deeply impressive, and the design team has committed fully to the “explorer” theme. It’s beautiful to see the promise of Augmented (or Virtual) Reality games come to the fore in this way.
Those visuals contribute to a uniformly high-quality release that impresses in just about every way, while also bringing a truly unique gaming perspective to market.
We can’t say we’re surprised by the quality of this game. After all, this company has delivered excellent releases with an out-of-the-box approach before, such as in their big hit Funky Time.
Just watch out for that low RTP.
