Every week, slot game developers will deliver brand new slots to the thousands of online casino platforms available around the world. Each new release tries to tap into a new trend, be it a popular theme or feature, while trying to put a more appealing spin on that trend.
It’s this continual run of updates, new games, and new features that has empowered online casino gaming globally. Being the most popular segment of the iGaming market, this state of play for slots is largely what’s propelling the industry’s 11.9 percent compound annual growth rate reported by Grand View Research.
With this being the case, it’s very difficult for a slot to find a consistent audience, let alone remain a perpetual favorite. So few have achieved this, but one that has done so and continues to do so through very well-received sequels and spin-offs is Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom’s Big Bass series.
Landing a catch like the original Big Bass game is a rarity in the grand scheme of just how many slots are released online. So, its developer and provider have run away with the formula, making it so that sites are teeming with the games. Here’s how the Big Bass fishing slots became so popular and prevalent in the modern slots space.
The biggest selling point of the Big Bass series is its free spins feature. However, it wasn’t the game to introduce this to the slot gaming audience. Instead, credit for laying the foundations of the wildly popular fishing feature goes to a slot game that came six years before the first Big Bass game.
A low-to-medium volatility slot, Fishin’ Frenzy launched in 2014. It featured ten paylines and what we could probably now call an old school aesthetic. Created by Reel Time Gaming and Blueprint, it certainly looks like a slot game that was made in the early 2010s. The core feature, however, is now one of the most popular going.
In Fishin’ Frenzy, the player needs to land at least three scatters to get to the Free Spins feature. From here, players spin the reels to try to land the many fish of different sizes along with a Fisherman Wild. Doing this will trigger the Wild to reel in the fish symbols, delivering an instant win payment during the feature.
Being a low-medium volatility slot, the feature triggers more often, on average, than in high volatility slots, but the fish values were held to 50x the bet. Still a strong sum, but it’s not exactly an eye-catching jackpot. Even so, it’s likely that the general design and friendly-looking fish on the tile held back the slot.
At the end of 2022, Reel Kingdom let loose its take on the fishing feature with Big Bass Bonanza. Launched on Pragmatic Play-linked casinos, it quickly became a hit. The core gameplay experience of Big Bass Bonanza emphasises the feature even further, with its action-oriented graphic design also upping the ante.
Within the feature, players also need to get fish symbols with the Fisherman Wild. Doing so collects the cash values that they carry, and it advances the upgrade track. With every four Fisherman Wilds collected, more free spins are added and a new Multiplier is triggered. It can be reactivated three times to hit a Multiplier of up to 10x.
Being a medium-to-high volatility slot, triggering the feature becomes much more impactful, on average. The first Big Bass Bonanza enhanced the aesthetics of the game and the core feature, while retaining the theme and ten paylines. Its near-instant success had the developers quickly build more for the series.
By the middle of 2023, there were already ten Big Bass games, including Bigger Bass Bonanza, a Megaways version, Keeping it Reel, Big Bass Splash, two Christmas slots, Hold & Spinner, Amazon Xtreme, and Hold & Spinner Megaways.
The team behind the hit slot series hasn’t run out of steam yet, either. With over 30 games – some of which aren’t strictly slots – in the series, Pragmatic Play introduced a new futuristic sci-fi addition. In Reel Repeat, the default “fishing” aesthetic is layered with neon outlines, glowing symbols, and stylized patterns that evoke a more synthetic, tech‑infused underwater environment.
With Big Bass still riding high, it’s anyone’s guess what additional features or themes the developers will explore next.
Online casinos are now teeming with Big Bass games because they’re so popular and their providers have made so many of them. Being such a rare and colossal hit in the slot world, Pragmatic Play will undoubtedly continue to release more Big Bass games in the months ahead.
