Former Patriots star joins iCasino library with All Gronk All Gold, a tough game to tackle
Apparently, it was time to make former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski’s partnership with FanDuel memorable for something other than missed 25-yard field goals during live Super Bowl commercials.
So this month, FanDuel Casino introduced All Gronk All Gold, a Gronkowski-branded slot that dropped with perfect timing — on the eve of the Pats returning to the Super Bowl this year for the first time in the post-Gronk era.
Appropriately for a game built around the personality of a Hall-of-Fame-bound tight end, All Gronk All Gold is a little tight in the end. The slot has a listed return to player (RTP) of 94% and, like all volatile iCasino games, it can vary wildly between fun and frustrating.
At the time of this review, the game is available for spins as cheap as 10 cents and as expensive as $50, plus another 11 price points in between.
Hut, hut, hike!
The game works off a 3×5 reel, with wins activated from left to right, needing matching symbols in the first three reels (and in specific payline patterns) to lock in at least a minimum payout.
In the basic game, the All Gronk All Gold logo is the highest-paying symbol, and accordingly, you should not get your hopes up when you see that symbol in the first two columns, as its high value means it rarely hits. The next best symbol is the MVP crown, followed by either the American flag sunglasses or the cleats, then either the 8 or the 7 (Gronk wore number 87 in the pros), and lastly the standard playing-card symbols Q or J.
The “Spike” symbol, which can appear in reels 2, 3, 4, or 5, acts as a wild.
But standard payline payouts are not what you’re after. As with most modern iSlots, the real action is in the scatter symbols and the bonus riches they can produce.
Some of those big hits, including jackpots of varying size, come thanks to a “Cash Collect” system found in many games. In this case, footballs with assorted cash values can appear anywhere on the first four reels and to gather them, you need to hit a Gronk “Bank It” symbol in the fifth reel.
There are five different types of Bank It symbols:
- Bank It: Collects the cash values
- Lock & Bank It: Triggers re-spins where you can add more cash symbols
- Boost And Bank It: Elevates all cash values, then collects them
- Max Bank It: All values are boosted to equal the highest among them
- Bazooka Bank It: All cash values are collected multiple times (at least twice, often more)
When you first begin playing All Gronk All Gold, only the standard Bank It is available, but you’ll unlock the rest fairly quickly as you fill out a progress bar on the top of the screen, and once you’ve unlocked all five forms of the Bank It, they remain unlocked any time you return to the game.
It’s an unusual incentive-based feature, as the incentive to keep playing is there initially, but never repeats. Most slots with similar progress meters reset when bonuses are hit, but not this one.
Bonus, baby!
All Gronk All Gold features two bonus games: the standard Bonus Spins and a Super Bonus (which you need to unlock initially, but like the various Bank Its, once you unlock it once, it remains unlocked forever).
The Bonus scatter symbols (Gronk in a tux, based on his attire at the 2024 Tom Brady roast) can appear only in the second, third, and fourth reels, and you need one in each of those reels to trigger the bonus game. The last of those — in the fourth reel — can be a Super Bonus symbol (a Super Bowl ring).
There is a significant difference in how much you are likely to win — and particularly how little you can possibly win if the bonus game goes poorly — between the Bonus and Super Bonus.
The standard Bonus gets you 10 free spins, with the opportunity to unlock more free spins, at multiplied values, if you accumulate enough Bank It symbols. It’s not unusual to earn 50 times your wager, or 100 times, or even 150 times by the end of the Bonus game. However, just as it’s possible in the main game to crank out 10 losing spins in a row, so too is it possible to whiff entirely in the Bonus game.
Not so with the Super Bonus. This one only gets you five spins, but you’re guaranteed to have one of those spins produce a Bank It, one a Lock & Bank It, one a Boost And Bank It, one a Max Bank It, and one Bazooka Bank It. The worst-case scenario for a Super Bonus seems to be around 50 times your wager, with about 120-150 times the average return in our experience.
The ‘Go Bazooka!’ tease
There’s one additional twist. At random, the board will display a “Go Bazooka!” declaration and produce one of two reel modifiers: either a “Bonus Boost” or a “Gronk Spike Wilds.”
The latter promises a preponderance of wild symbols in Reels 2-5, sometimes resulting in a big win on an otherwise standard board, and sometimes resulting in a very modest win.
The Bonus Boost, meanwhile, focuses in on Reels 2-4 and theoretically sets you up for a higher chance at landing a bonus game. Reel 2 always gets a Bonus symbol, as does Reel 3. But then Reel 4 remains a crapshoot. Sometimes there’s a Bonus. Sometimes there’s a Super Bonus. But all too frequently, there’s no Bonus symbol of any kind in Reel 4 and all that “Go Bazooka!” excitement adds up to a lost wager.
The verdict
You get Gronk’s voice narrating, you get a football theme, you get cute cartoon graphics and bright, appealing colors — All Gronk All Gold is entertaining, as online slots go, and the bonus games are well-conceived and deliver an engaging sweat.
But the unlock-it-once-and-you-never-have-to-again progression is a curious one (albeit a player-friendly twist), and the “Go Bazooka!” graphic that frequently adds up to nothing is equally curious (and not at all player-friendly).
The Pats are slight underdogs against the Seahawks in Super Bowl LX, just as FanDuel Casino customers are slight underdogs in every spin of All Gronk All Gold. Much like Gronk attempting the “Kick of Destiny,” this game is lined up for success, but it could use a little straightening out on one or two features.
All Gronk? Clearly. All Gold? No, but we suppose All Gronk Some Gold wouldn’t make for a very marketable slot title.
Category: General Sports
