Big Bass Hold and Spinner Megaways — Free Demo & Game Details

The Fisherman round is the game, and the rest is frame

I read this game as one good Free Spins round inside a frame that adds little to it, and the 20,000x cap is the cleanest way to show it. The paytable needs 400 six-Float ways in one tumble chain to reach that number. A bought Hold & Spin round needs at least ten later money symbols, every one of them a 2000x Diamond. Free Spins at the x10 step need one fish. Every section below follows from that gap.

The Fisherman loop itself is borrowed. Big Bass Bonanza is the original version: Fishermen collect Fish Money values, and every fourth one retriggers the round. Big Bass Bonanza Megaways runs it on Megaways reels with a higher multiplier at each retrigger, and Fishin’ Frenzy Megaways puts its own Fisherman collector on the same kind of reels. This game joins a crowded format rather than opening one, so it has to win on what it builds around a known loop. Inside the round it puts a tumble chain that Fish Money survives and a ladder that jumps to x10 on the third retrigger, and those two choices are the best things here. Outside the round it puts locking top rows and a Hold & Spin bonus, and neither pulls its weight.

The paytable is filler with one exception

Six Fishing Floats on one way pay 50x total bet, ten times the best pay of any other symbol. The Fishing Rod tops out at 5x for six. Below it I count eight symbols that pay 2.5x or less for a full six-reel way, and the Queen, Jack and Ten return exactly the stake. Against the cap, a six-Float way is one four-hundredth of 20,000x and a six-Rod way is one four-thousandth. The paytable reaches large numbers only by adding many ways together, up to 147,456 on a spin, and every locked position in the top rows cuts that count. With 20% of base spins returning a win, four in five return none. The Wild, confined to the topmost extra row and paying nothing itself, can only complete ways from this table.

The telling detail is Fish Money. On base spins the symbol that holds cash values up to 5000x is worth 1.5x for six of a kind, level with the Ace and the King, because its cash value is never paid outside Free Spins. Free Spins trigger once in 319 base spins on average, which is 319x total bet staked on this table per natural round.

Twelve Fishermen turn one fish into the cap

Fish Money runs 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x and 50x total bet, then jumps to 5000x. The top value is a hundred times the next one down, so the round works on two scales and the ladder decides which one counts. Collected before any raised multiplier applies, a 5000x fish is a quarter of the cap. At x2 it is half, and at x3 it is three quarters. At x10 it is 50,000x, two and a half times the cap, so the round ends at 20,000x and any spins still queued are forfeited. Each later retrigger adds another x10, so from the x10 batch onward one 5000x fish reaches the cap on its own.

The ordinary fish are where the ladder earns its keep. A 50x fish collected at x10 pays 500x, the value of ten six-Float ways from one symbol and one Fisherman. At x10, collections worth 2,000x at face value are enough for the cap on their own, and at x20, the fourth retrigger, 1,000x is enough. The multiplier has no ceiling of its own and the round does, so a deep ladder turns into the cap rather than into anything past it.

The price is the climb. The x10 step needs twelve Fishermen in one round, the first eight buy only x2 and x3, and each raised multiplier waits until the current batch of spins has finished, so the Fisherman who completes a step collects at the old one. Three details keep the climb honest. Every Fisherman counts toward the ladder until the round ends, including one that lands with nothing to collect. The empty Fisherman, the round's standard dead spin, has two answers: Dynamite can add Fish Money at random after such a spin, and Free Spins Mystery symbols can follow it and turn into random symbols for another chance at fish. And Fish Money survives every tumble of its spin and sinks to the bottom of the screen, so it waits for a Fisherman instead of tumbling away. Late Fishermen matter in this round, and it is the part of the game I rate highly.

Hold & Spin is settled on its first screen

A bought Hold & Spin round opens with three to six Coin Money symbols worth 1x to 30x total bet each, so the opening pays between 3x and 180x. Those starting coins are the only ones held for the whole round, and each later coin pays its own value plus the held set again. That held part of every later payout is fixed before the first respin, and it is sixty times larger from the best bought opening than from the worst.

From the worst opening, 3x, one later Coin Money adds at most 33x. Recovering the 120x price therefore takes at least four later coins even if all of them land at the 30x top value: the round stands at 102x after three and 135x after four. A 100x Diamond as the only later symbol leaves that round short of the price too. The 20x minimum guards the floor, and it is a sixth of the cost. From the best opening the round stands at 1.5 times its price before the first respin.

From a 180x opening, each later symbol adds at most 2,180x, which is a 2000x Diamond even if the held set pays again with it. Nine of those stop at 19,800x, so the cap takes at least ten. Free Spins at x10 need one fish. Hold & Spin reaches the cap on paper and stays the weaker half of the game, because nothing after the opening changes what the held set is worth.

Both buys are fair, and the cheaper one is the game

Both purchases return 96.70% at the default setting, the same as the base game, so neither charges a premium for skipping the wait. At that return the long-run cost is 3.30x total bet per Free Spins buy and 3.96x per Hold & Spin buy. Buying changes where the stake goes, not what it returns.

Buy Free Spins costs 100x and places 3 to 6 Scatters at random, so the round opens with 10 to 25 spins, a price of 10x down to 4x per opening spin. Its best case is the cap, 200 times the price, and it is the only buy in which a single symbol can reach the cap on its own. Against the natural route, 100x is under a third of the 319x staked on average between natural triggers.

Buy Hold & Spin's best case is about 167 times its 120x price. The extra 20x over the Free Spins price buys a floor, not a better ceiling, and the ceiling is what this game is for.

At the 240 top stake the two buys cost 24,000 and 28,800, both far above the largest single spin, and the cap pays 4,800,000. Casinos can run the game at 95.69% or 94.62%, and at the lowest setting the house edge is 5.38% against 3.30%, more than half as large again. The rules screen shows the setting in use.

It is a Free Spins game and should be chosen as one

Capped rounds come once in 1,496,522 spins on average, so the 20,000x cap supplies about 1.34 points of the 96.70% return, and the other 95.36 points come from rounds that stop short of it. At volatility 5 of 5 that return arrives unevenly, and the Fisherman round is where the game is decided.

It suits a player who wants the Big Bass Fisherman round with a deeper ladder and treats the base game as the cost of waiting, or skips it with the buy. A player who wants base spins with weight of their own should look elsewhere, and so should one who wants a coin round that grows as it goes, because this one's held set never grows after the opening. One well-built round in a thin frame earns a score in the competent band, just short of good, and that is where it sits.