To get in the mood for the scary season, developer Pragmatic Play and associates Reel Kingdom have reskinned their blockbuster fishing slot Big Bass Bonanza and come up with Big Bass Halloween. There were visions of Victor Frankenstein scalpelling off portions of the original game in the highest room of the highest tower of a castle while lightning flashes outside, then grafting on an oh-so-scary, but not really scary at all, outer layer. The result is actually kind of amusing and very in character for Reel Kingdom.
The chuckles started at the home screen, where the usually friendly fisherman guy menacingly brandishes a big pointy hook, accompanied by the words 'Something wicked this way swims!' This line connects to a dark fantasy book by Ray Bradbury called 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' which was later turned into a movie produced by Walt Disney of all companies. The title actually stretches back even further as it appears in Shakespeare's play Macbeth: 'By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes,' as spoken by one of the witches at the approaching of Macbeth. This being a Halloween game, it's darker than the original, the waters a murky grey, the sky grey too, compared to Big Bass Bonanza's bright outdoor presentation.
>The default RTP has taken a drop compared to the original game, though it still comes in at a respectable 96.06% value. This figure applies whether players are betting 10 p/c to $/€240 per spin or when buying the free spins feature, which costs 100 times the stake. Another option is activating the ante bet, increasing the stake by 50% for an extra chance of landing scatters. With a 4 out of 5 rating, Big Bass Halloween is a medium-high volatile slot played on a 5-reel, 3-row gaming matrix with 10 paylines.
Symbols are another place where Big Bass Halloween expresses the season. For lows, it's got 10 to A royals covered in stitches, then fish, a tackle box, a crow, a hook, and a life ring as the higher-paying symbols. Values for a line of 5 matching card ranks is 10 times the bet, rising to 20 to 200x the bet for the rest. The fisherman wielding a hook is the wild, substitutes for all symbols except the scatter. However, wilds are only on the reels during the free spins round.
>The fish symbols in Big Bass Halloween land with random money values, which are collectable only in free spins. The values displayed on fish range from 2x to 2,000x the bet. In the base game, landing 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols awards 10, 15, or 20 free spins. During free spins, when a fisherman symbol lands and there are fish symbols in view, it collects the values displayed on them.
Fisherman symbols are also collected when they hit. For every fourth wild symbol collected, +10 free spins are retriggered. The multiplier for fish money symbols increases to x2 for the first retrigger, x3 for the second retrigger, and x10 for the third retrigger. Retriggered free spins begin when the current batch of free spins ends, and the multiplier applies to the retriggered spins. After the third retrigger, the feature cannot be retriggered anymore.
Lastly, when there is only one wild symbol in view on the screen, at the end of a free spin, fish money symbols may appear in random positions for collection.
>You know what? Big Bass Halloween turned out to be better than expected. The first thoughts were something like, 'Oh, fudge this, another fish slot, another one, and it's a reskin too, a Halloween one…' And on and on went the spiral of negativity and bad thoughts before resting in a pit of despair and mental anguish. But, as can often be the case, the lows aren't as bad as you were expecting, nor the highs as great, and Big Bass Halloween turned out to be a jaunty wee Halloween-ed reskin of a classic fishing slot. The slot's maker has popped in just enough moments of tongue-in-cheek horror, such as the fisherman, who has let slip the cheerful mask to let his inner psycho loose, and the stitched-up zombie card royals, to provide some humorously in theme moments.
As for what Big Bass Halloween can deliver via its active gaming area, this is old news by now. The base game can be pretty slow going, seeing as it is without any sort of extra feature, but the free spins round is as good as ever, provided you're not sick to death of this style of play. Collecting fish money symbols is a tradition that doesn't seem to fade with time. If anything, it's going as strong as ever, and you get plenty of that in Big Bass Halloween. Collect fisherman symbols, and it can get even better when an up to x10 multiplier is on board. Like the original, Big Bass Halloween isn't exactly big game fishing since it is restricted by a 2,100x the bet win cap.
Is it pointless? Kinda. Did we need another fishing clone darting about the place? No. But that doesn't stop Big Bass Halloween from being a somewhat amusing fishing slot with a somewhat amusing Halloween slant, happy to trick-or-treat players interested in trawling through a game offering this particular combo of concepts.
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