Play Demo
Down beneath a frozen lake, past the cracks in the ice and a snowman keeping watch on the bank, the usual Big Bass reels have been dressed for Christmas. Baubles, holly and fairy-lit trees line the lake bed, a present sits sealed inside a block of ice, and fish drift by between spins while sleigh bells give a single bright shake on a win.
This is Big Bass Christmas – Frozen Lake, Pragmatic Play’s festive turn on its long-running fishing slot, and the headline trick is right there in the name, a free-spins mode where the whole grid ices over and the only things left to catch are money and wilds.
The festive fish are the money symbols, each carrying a cash value, but they sit idle until the bonus arrives. Three or more scatters (the fish in a snow-globe), open the free spins, and before the round starts you pick one of twelve cards. The card decides which bonus you get, the regular Free Spins or the colder Frozen Lake Free Spins.
There is a helping hand on the way in too, since two scatters can pull a third onto the grid by a respin or a stray extra, nudging more triggers than the count alone would give.
The Santa fisherman is the wild, and he only turns up in the free spins, where his job is collection. In either round, regular or Frozen Lake, every fisherman that lands sweeps up the value of every money fish on the grid and adds it to your total, taking a whole screen of fish in one go.
A trail along the top tracks your catch through the round, and every fourth fisherman collected hands over another ten spins and lifts the collection multiplier, to 2x, then 3x, then a closing 10x. Reach that fourth level and the round cannot retrigger again, but by then each fish is worth ten times its face value.
The multiplier trail ticks up each time the round retriggers, and by the fourth level every fish is worth ten times its value.
Both free spin rounds share three random helpers that can step in when a spin would otherwise stall:
No helpers are guaranteed, but together they stop a quiet spin from going to waste.
The Frozen Lake free spins are the colder, purer version. The normal symbols vanish and the reels are stripped back to nothing but money fish, fisherman wilds and blanks, so almost every position on the board is worth collecting.
The fisherman collection and the rising multiplier trail run just as they do in the regular round, only here there are no low symbols clogging the reels. It is the mode you hope the card hands you, and the one you can buy into directly.
The reels themselves play it straight, five reels, three rows and ten fixed paylines paying left to right, with the sleigh the symbol to chase at 200x the bet for five. The catch, and it is the whole point of a Big Bass game, is that the money fish do nothing in normal play; they only pay once a fisherman wild can collect them, and the fisherman only turns up in the free spins. So the base reels are really a waiting room for the bonus, and landing the scatters is what the spins are about.
Volatility runs high here, with an RTP of 96.07% across every mode including the buys, leaner 95.07% and 94.07% builds out there for some operators, and a top win capped at 5,000x the bet, a round ending the moment it gets there.
Bets run from $0.10 to $375 a spin. An Ante Bet adds 50% to your stake for a better feature chance and more scatters on the reels, though switching it on disables the buys. If you would rather skip the wait entirely, the buy menu offers two routes, 100x your bet for the Free Spins with a card pick, or 270x to drop straight into the Frozen Lake round with no card and no guesswork.
Line wins are multiples of the bet, paying left to right from reel one; the sleigh also pays 0.50x for two.
| Symbol | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sleigh | 5x | 20x | 200x |
| Robin | 3x | 15x | 100x |
| Fishing rod | 2x | 10x | 50x |
| Tackle box | 2x | 10x | 50x |
| Christmas tackle | 1x | 5x | 20x |
| A, K | 0.20x | 2.50x | 10x |
| Q, J, 10 | 0.20x | 1x | 5x |
| Fisherman Wild | Free spins only; substitutes for all but scatter and money fish | ||
| Symbol | Possible values (x bet) |
|---|---|
| Money fish | 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 100x, 200x, 500x, 1,666x, 2,500x, 5,000x |
Each money fish takes one of these values at random. A fisherman wild collects every value on screen, multiplied by the trail level, which climbs to 10x.
Big Bass Christmas, Frozen Lake is made for two kinds of player, the Big Bass regular who knows this song by heart and wants a festive verse of it, and the seasonal player who just likes a Christmas slot. Both are well served. The fishing formula is untouched and as moreish as ever, and the collection chases satisfy. The Frozen Lake free spins are the highlight, stripping the reels back to money symbols and wilds so every spin is working toward a collect. The base game is the usual quiet wait for the bonus, and a Big Bass veteran will have seen the shape of all this before, but the Christmas dressing is lovely and the frozen-over reels are the best new idea on offer.
Pragmatic and Reel Kingdom have always dressed the Big Bass games well, and the Christmas edition might be the prettiest yet. The action sits under a frozen lake, light filtering down through cracked ice, a snowman watching from the bank and fairy-lit trees lining the shore. Down on the lake bed there are baubles and holly, a present sealed inside a clear block of ice, and fish that wander across the screen between spins. The letters wear icy crusts, the tackle and robin symbols are trimmed for the season, and a sleigh bell gives one bright shake to mark a win. It is unmistakably Big Bass, just wrapped for December.
For all that polish, the early going asks for patience. This is classic Big Bass, which means the money fish you can see on the reels are worth nothing until the free spins, when the fisherman wild arrives to collect them. So those spins are really about one thing, landing the scatters, and the festive reskin does not change that. We waited a few minutes for our first sniff, two scatters landing before a fishing-rod symbol hooked a third onto the board to start the round, and a twelve-card pick handed us the regular Free Spins.
What follows depends on the card (or your buy in), and our two rounds showed the gap. The regular free spins were a slow ten, nothing stirring until a Santa fisherman froze the reels on the sixth spin and a thaw revealed four money fish for a $29 collect; two more fishermen followed, but we finished one short of the next retrigger, and its multiplier, and the round closed on a thin $55.
The Frozen Lake round was the better draw. Stripped to money and wilds, it found a fisherman early, kept adding to the trail, and rolled through two retriggers to 2x and then 3x, a $90 collect at the higher level helping it close at $457 over thirty spins.
We sat down to review this one in the middle of summer, which, whilst an odd thing to do out of season, was a reminder with the sun out that the countdown to December is shorter than it feels. That is the quiet strength of a game like this; the Christmas warmth lands whatever the month, and the fishing underneath is the same dependable hook it has always been. It does not reinvent anything, and the slow base will test the patient, but the Frozen Lake mode is the part worth turning up for, and the whole thing is put together with care. As one of a long line of Big Bass games, it is the one wearing tinsel; the free play demo lets you try both bonus types first, and it is a good one to reel in when the festive mood takes you.
