Bigger Bass Blizzard: Slot Overview

In today’s rapid-fire, constantly shifting world, it can feel like there aren’t many sure things left to rely on. Taxes are one, and another is the almost inevitable arrival of yet another fishing slot sooner or later. We’re half-joking, but here’s the latest catch: Bigger Bass Blizzard from Big/Bigger Bass series creators Pragmatic Play alongside Reel Kingdom. Is there anything fresh here for Bass devotees to get excited about, or is it mainly familiar waters?

On the visual side, it does stand apart—at least somewhat—since the setting swaps the warm, tropical vibe of Bigger Bass Bonanza for a much colder location. How much fishing you’d realistically do in a blizzard (or how safe it would be) is debatable. Still, in Bigger Bass Blizzard there isn’t a ton of snow whipping around or winds raging; it simply looks frosty. The studio has added snow-dusted trees and topped the grid with hanging icicles to sell the chill. Thankfully, the soundtrack remains as cheerfully bouncy as ever, keeping the overall mood as upbeat as series fans would expect.

Fundamentally, and for most practical purposes, Bigger Bass Blizzard is essentially a Bigger Bass Bonanza reskin—though there are a couple of small tweaks if you look closely. One is the RTP reduction, dropping from the top value of 96.71% in ‘Bonanza’ to 96.08% here. That applies when playing normally with stakes of 12 p/c to $/€240 per spin. If you enable the Ante Bet, wagers increase by 50%. In exchange, more scatter symbols are added to boost your odds of reaching the bonus. The RTP stays the same, although it dips slightly to 96.07% when purchasing free spins. As with earlier entries, Bigger Bass Blizzard is highly volatile, though it’s not as punishing as some of the most extreme titles out there.

The oddly precise stake range is due to the game running on 12 fixed paylines across a 5-reel, 4-row layout. Along those lines, you can land wins with three to five matching symbols, except for the top-paying symbol, which pays from two of a kind and up. The snowmobile leads the premiums, followed by fishing rods, floats, and tackle boxes, with five-of-a-kind returning 20 to 50x the bet. The lower-paying symbols are 10-A card ranks, paying 10x the bet for five-of-a-kind. Another symbol type to note at this stage is the fish money symbols, which can display values of 2x to 4,000x the bet. If you hit a full line of five, they award the combined total of their money values.

Bigger Bass Blizzard: Slot Features

As with its predecessor, the base game in Bigger Bass Blizzard doesn’t offer a huge amount in terms of features. However, landing 3, 4, or 5 scatters activates 10, 15, or 20 free spins, respectively. There’s also a possibility that when 2 scatters are showing, a hook appears to bring the third scatter symbol onto the screen.

Free Spins

The wild symbol only shows up once free spins are underway. Beyond acting as a standard wild, if fish money symbols appear on the grid at the same time as wilds, each wild symbol collects their values. It doesn’t stop there: every time a wild lands, it is collected. The first 4 collected wilds grant +10 extra free spins with an x2 multiplier active; the next set of 4 collected wilds awards another +10 free spins with an x3 multiplier active; and collecting a further 4 wilds adds yet another +10 free spins with an x10 multiplier active. The multiplier applies to money symbol collections, not line wins. After the third retrigger, free spins can’t be retriggered again.

In addition, during free spins and at random, if 1 or 2 wild symbols are visible, then at the end of the spin, fish money symbols are placed onto the grid in random positions. Also, 1 or 2 hooks may randomly appear at the end of a spin, dragging reels to reveal wilds and money symbols.

Bonus Buy

Waiting may be part of the fishing experience, but if you don’t have the patience in Bigger Bass Blizzard, eligible players can purchase free spins for 100x the bet. When the bonus round is bought, 3, 4, or 5 scatters will drop in at random.

Bigger Bass Blizzard: Slot Verdict

The World Economic Forum reports that 90% of global marine fish stocks are ‘fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted.’ Meanwhile, Science magazine noted back in 2006 that every seafood species could fall below commercial viability by 2048. In other words, fish populations are declining. On the upside, fishing-themed online slots are booming, with new titles surfacing from the brine on a regular schedule. It may even be that, in the future, one of the main ways people learn about the old pastime of ‘fishing’ is by encountering it in online slots.

That said, while we mentioned ‘new’ fishing slots arriving often, there isn’t much that’s truly new about Bigger Bass Blizzard beyond the cosmetic shift. There are a few small changes; two of the clearest are the lower RTP and the addition of bonus buy functionality for players who can access it. So, unless you’re completely taken with icy themes or you’ve specifically been waiting for Bigger Bass Bonanza with a bonus buy, there’s little reason to choose this over the earlier release. The maximum potential remains 4,000x the bet, and the core gameplay is largely the same too.

Even so, the Bass series has shown itself to be hugely popular, and Pragmatic Play are both savvy operators and extremely prolific slot makers. Maybe their research pointed to a gap in the market for fishing slots set in colder environments. Beyond that—or simply for convenience—it’s difficult to say why the studio changed the backdrop while leaving most other elements as they were. Still, that doesn’t mean fishing fans won’t have a good time giving Bigger Bass Blizzard a go. It retains the series’ characteristically upbeat feel, plus the familiar free spins mix of money collection and wild collection mechanics that has performed well before.