Big Bass Hold & Spinner Slot – Free Demo

A Message From Pragmatic Play

Many game suppliers reach out to me asking me to assess their games. Although many suppliers do in fact value the candid feedback voiced in my reviews, it's a hazardous move; I've got a name for being hard on slots I don't like.

The other day I received a message from Pragmatic Play asking me to check out their games. Initially that didn't spark much enthusiasm, to be very frank, because in my opinion Pragmatic Play has for a long time been a nondescript oddity of a supplier, failing to arouse one's interest. But that might be about to shift, just like is the situation with Red Tiger, or Push Gaming.

A brief introduction might be in place, though, since it's the first time I have covered this one.

Originally the firm was founded in 2007 as TopGame, but it was rebranded, and retitled Pragmatic Play in 2015, to mark a fresh start after having been embroiled in some small disputes. Things have indeed altered. Today I see an expanding firm represented on all the principal online casinos and an EGR Software Rising Star 2017 award winner.

Ten Fixed Lines Under the Waterline

At first look, the game does not seem to stand out in any particular fashion, and it's got the customary traits of a Pragmatic slot and a layout of 5 reels, 3 rows and 10 fixed pay lines. All wins are multiplied by the bet per line, and only the highest win on each line is paid. It accepts bets extending from 0.10 up to a ceiling of 375 credits. There is also an Ante Bet sitting on top of that range: a 15x bet multiplier puts more Scatter symbols on the reels and switches off the Free Spins buy, while 10x is normal play. It is supplied with a 96.07% theoretical return to player, though it should be noted that Pragmatic, just like Play'n GO, Novomatic, and many other suppliers, allow operators (casinos) to pick a different RTP setting. So always make sure to take a look at which version you're playing.

Before anyone responds in fury to this - modifications may sometimes be essential depending on market of operation, and some off-shore casinos might, of course, exploit this. Pragmatic Play (and Play'n GO) are also wholly open about this fact. That is more than what can be said about many other suppliers.

Concerning the theme of the slot, I believe you've seen it before: yes, it's another "Big Bass" angling theme game, this one crafted by Reel Kingdom, a near neighbour of Big Bass Splash 1000 and Big Bass Bonanza Reel Action. But as you will see, it's far from a copy. It has enough substance to stand on its own two feet.

The Float Sits Above the Fish

First of all, a round of praise to Pragmatic Play for crafting an easy to grasp paytable, which not only makes my task more agreeable but also helps to prevent bewilderment for players!

So what you see here are the usual low-value card symbols 10, J, Q, K and A. There are also 5 premiums depicted by fish, tackle boxes, dragonflies, fishing rods, and the main man, the Float, who is, of course, the highest symbol. The fish do double duty as Fish Money symbols, taking a random money value on every spin that can be won during the free spins. Symbols pay left to right from the leftmost reel on neighbouring reels. When more than one pay line wins on the same spin, those wins are added together.

The wild symbol bears a picture of the angler. It only surfaces during the free spins, and substitutes for everything except the Scatter and the Money symbols.

Money Symbols Run Both Rounds

There are 2 bonus features contained in the game, both of them constructed around the Money symbols - the diamond and the coin. These take a random value from 1x the total bet up to 2000x each spin, and the two features have their own triggers:

Hold & Spinner - three Money symbols launch it, all Money symbols hold, everything else vanishes, and you begin with 4 respins. Special reels are in play for the whole of the respin round. Any Money symbol that lands restores the count back to 4 and appends its value. The values of the symbols held at the start are added before the first respin is even taken. When the respins run out the collected total is granted. Each of the two rounds can also be bought outright from the base game for 100x the total bet, with the Free Spins buy landing 3, 4 or 5 Scatters at random and the Hold & Spinner buy landing 3, 4 or 5 Money symbols.

Free Spins - this is the one you will want to trigger, and for good reasons. The fish values are drawn from their own fixed set, starting at 2x the total bet. Land 3, 4 or 5 Scatters and you will profit from 10, 15 or 20 free spins. Retriggered spins are played after the batch in progress has finished, and the multiplier applies to them. Every Wild that lands collects the values of every Fish Money symbol on screen, and every 4th Wild collected retriggers the feature for 10 additional free spins. After the third retrigger the round cannot be retriggered again. The collection multiplier climbs to 2x on the first retrigger, 3x on the second and 10x on the third, and the maximum win is capped at 10,000 times the stake.

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The Minty Take: The 235-spin gap between the second bonus and the third is what a volatility rating of 5 out of 5 buys you here, and it sat in the middle of a run that still closed 84.00 up.

Three Bonuses in 360 Spins

I'm always eager to see high variance and high potential slots of this sort. That was also the reason I wished to give it a review. Although it's far from the poorest design I've seen, visually it didn't do much to dazzle me, and Pragmatic slots, just like Red Tiger, has a reputation of being tough to bonus trigger (free spins). The rules put no trigger frequency on either bonus, so there is nothing to weigh that reputation against. Over 360 spins at a 2-credit stake I received three bonus rounds - two of them inside the first 61 spins and then nothing at all for 235 spins. They landed on spins 33, 61 and 296. It can without a doubt be a bit maddening to sit through a stretch like that. Only 59 of the 360 spins paid anything at all, and 27 of those returned less than the stake. My lengthiest drought without any win at all extended to 23 spins. That run ended on spin 108. To be just, however, this is a very high variance slot, and just like most other slots on the same side of the volatility index, it's merely the nature of the beast. The balance never dropped below 99,979.40 over the whole run.

The free spins mode, I must say, is very entertaining, and I value the fact that Pragmatic avoided going down the same path as most other suppliers have done with their angling slots, and gave their own slant to the bonus. Randomly, with one or more Wilds on screen at the end of a free spin, Fish Money symbols can appear in other positions and replace whatever was sitting there. My three rounds paid 68.00, 202.00 and 194.00. The 202.00 came on spin 61, the one round that retriggered, and it carried the balance to its high of 100,237.80. That is 464.00 of the 804.00 I won in total against 720.00 wagered, and the largest of them was worth 101 times the stake. The 100,000.00 I started with finished at 100,084.00, a session return of 111.7%. That is nowhere near the Fish Money values that climb up to 10,000 times the stake, and the rules attach no odds to those, as in any other high potential slot.