Big Bass – Hold & Spinner

How does grabbing a rod & reel one more time to come for a spot of fishing with Pragmatic Play and fellow studio Reel Kingdom sound? Overkill, incredible, or are you vacillating between those two extremes? Fair enough, who would have thought the series would be going great guns several slots in, and it doesn’t appear to be losing any steam either. Today’s entry is Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner, which combines the old and the new. Older elements include the infamous retriggerable Money symbol collection free spins, while the newer part goes by the name of the Hold & Spinner.

If you’ve played one Big Bass Bonanza-related slot, it’s not so much a case of necessarily having played them all, but they do tend to share similarities. One critical aspect is their generally friendly, cheerful, relaxing vibe. The colours are bright, the soundtrack bubbly, making easing into them an effortless process. Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner looks like it might be played in a lake or river, as the frog, dragonflies, and foliage up top would suggest. This might not be big game fishing out on the open sea, but there are plenty of fish swimming about in the watery area in the background to whet appetites.

Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner is available on tablet, mobile, or desktop devices and has bet levels of 10 p/c to £/€250 per spin. When betting regularly in this mode, the game has a default RTP of 96.07%, rising to 96.09% when activating the Ante Bet. The Ante Bet increases the stake by 50% for an extra chance of Scatter symbols. The other way of possibly playing Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner is buying free spins or the Hold & Spinner. In both cases, the RTP is 96.07%, keeping in mind lower return models are available, though all info is displayed on the paytable.

Played on a 5-reel, 3-row game board, 10 fixed paylines are provided to land winning symbol combinations across. This being a fishing game, line wins often find themselves fading in importance compared to collecting Fish Money symbols or here hitting Money symbols, yet their values aren’t shabby. For instance, hitting a five-of-a-kind line of Fish Money symbols, tackle boxes, dragonflies, reels, or floats pays 20 to 200 times the bet. Not so impressive but not bad either; a 5 OAK 10-A card symbol win is worth 5 to 10 times the stake. Also, wilds can replace all other pay symbols, too, though they only appear during free spins.

Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner: Slot Features

This section is partly a trip down memory lane, part discovery. Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner has not one but two bonus rounds to offer, free spins and the Hold & Spinner.

Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 Scatter symbols in the base game awards 10, 15, or 20 free spins, respectively. During free spins, each wild symbol that lands collects the values of all Fish Money symbols in view. Fish Money symbols have random values of 2x to 10,000x the bet. Moreover, each landed wild is collected by the meter above the reels. The first four collected wilds increase the multiplier for Fish Money symbols to x2, the next four collected increase it to x3, while the third set of four collected wilds maxes it out at x10. Each time this occurs, +10 free spins are awarded. When the current batch of free spins ends, the retriggered free spins play at the new multiplier level. Free spins cannot be retriggered again after the third retrigger.

At random, if there is a wild symbol on the grid but no Fish Money symbols, Fish Money symbols may appear in random positions, added by a bazooka no less.

Hold & Spinner

Money symbols land with values of 1x to 2,000x the bet in the form of coins or diamonds. When 3 Money symbols hit, they trigger the Hold & Spinner feature. Here, 4 respins are awarded on a reel that lands only blank spaces or Money symbols. The triggering Money symbols are carried over to the round, where they pay, then remain locked in position until it ends. When new Money symbols land, their values plus the values of the sticky Money symbols are awarded, plus the respin count is reset. New Money symbols are not sticky.

Feature Buys

Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner gives players the chance to buy either bonus round. Both cost 100x the bet and, depending on the feature chosen, land 3, 4, or 5 Scatters or 3, 4, or 5 Money symbols.

Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner: Slot Verdict

Who would have thought from seemingly modest beginnings, Big Bass Bonanza would become the unstoppable juggernaut of a series it’s morphed into? Land Fish Money symbols and collect their values when the fisherman hits. It all sounded so simple back then, though the wild symbol collection leading to retriggers and multipliers in free spins raised an eyebrow. Whatever, if ever a game had that hard-to-define x-factor, the star quality just roaring to shine, it turned out to be Big Bass Bonanza, which has been followed up now on numerous occasions. Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner is the latest to date, and it keeps many of the things which made the original special while adding its own particular ingredients to the pot.

By now, there isn’t much else to add about the free spins bonus round. It’s got everything a slot-playing fishing fan could ever want – Fish Money collects, retriggers, multipliers, fisherman wilds, bazookas, the works. Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom have wisely left that part of the game alone to do its thing. The atmosphere’s more or less the same, too, so players enamoured with the range’s laid-back attitude can rest easy knowing Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner is as laid back as the others. And so on to the Hold & Spinner, Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner’s most original part. It’s decent, nothing special, while also operating slightly differently from how these sorts of hold ‘n win features often go. Quite cleverly, the makers have stuck to the Big Bass Bonanza Spirit by keeping the Hold & Spinner simple yet potentially fun. Money symbols have the ability to hit with big values, and the way the sticky Money symbols repay when new Money symbols hit is an interesting development. As far as winning potential goes, Big Bass Bonanza Hold & Spinner is one of the biggest in the series so far, with a win cap of 10,000 times the stake.

There you have it, another tidy addition to the swiftly expanding Big Bass Bonanza line-up. A pretty successful addition, too, it’s hard not to say, due to the cosy familiarity of its fish, fisherman, and return features, with the added intrigue of something new. The tremendously greater winning potential probably won’t hurt its appeal either.