In the Catfish Hunters slot, a fish only pays when an Electrical Frame drops on top of it, and every catch doubles the fish still waiting, so the Fish multiplier can build faster than you would think. The turn is what the bonus does with it. There the same meter runs backwards, halving on every spin, so a Water Spins round only pays when Nolimit City’s swamp of Impostor Wilds keeps coming to feed a number that is always draining away. When they do, it snowballs. When they do not, you watch it melt.
The catch works like this. Every spin begins with one or more Electrical Frames lighting up random tiles on the reels. A Fish symbol carries its own cash value, one of 0.25x, 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x, 20x or 100x the bet, and it only pays when a frame lands on top of it.
The clever part is what a catch does to the rest. Every time a fish pays, the fish still on the grid double their value, and the global Fish multiplier that tracks it climbs with them, from x1 up to x1024 at the top. Land 3 catches in a row and a 2x fish has quietly become a 16x one before the frames have finished falling.
The one lever that changes a spin is the Impostor Wild, and no two land alike. When one shows up, it becomes one of the swamp’s cast, each with a different trick.
Stacy is the only one that moves the meter on her own, so a run without her leaves the doubling to carry the round. Granny and Cletus are the pair that can flip a dead-looking grid into a payday. Any Impostor Wild also stands in for the ordinary symbols, though not the Bonus, and if wilds ever fill the grid the spin pays nothing.
The reels also carry Nolimit City’s xWays tiles. When one lands, it bursts into a stack of 2, 3 or 4 of one symbol, or shows a lone wild or fish, and any others on the reels copy that pick. Because the grid pays on 243 ways to start, turning one tile into 3 matching symbols can multiply the ways a win pays in a drop.
Collect Bonus symbols, and the swamp opens into free spins at 3 depths. Every round carries in the Fish multiplier you built in regular play, then halves it on each new spin down to a floor of x1, so the meter needs feeding to stay useful. The deeper the tier, the more upgrades come with it, drawn from a longer bonus, xWays set to reveal only a fish or an Impostor Wild, and a sticky frame pinned to the middle of the grid.
Each further Bonus symbol adds a spin on top.
The Nolimit Booster menu sells a way in without the wait, spin by spin.
The Water Spins can also be bought outright, 8 Dark Water Spins at 70x or 12 Overcharged Spins at 600x, with a Lucky Draw at 235x to gamble between them.
After a winning round, the game may offer an Extra Spin, a one-off that keeps the frames and the Fish multiplier you finished on instead of starting over. It only shows up when its price is no higher than the win you have just landed, no Bonus symbols come up during it, and the only new frames it can bring are those Karen or Granny drop.
The Final Discharge is the hard cap. The most any round can pay is 20,000x the bet, and the moment a total hits it the round ends and pays out. It is the swamp’s version of the 25,000x wall the wider Hunters series runs into.
On the Catfish Hunters reels the tackle and card ranks pay the ordinary way, on 243 ways from reel 1, though they pay so little that the paytable reads far gentler than the wins the game produces. The fish are the difference. They sit outside that table carrying their own cash values and only pay when an Electrical Frame lands on them, and the Fish multiplier stacked on top is what turns a 20x fish into something worth watching. xWays stretch the ways well past 243 whenever they split, which is why the counter over the reels keeps ticking whenever they do.
The rod and reel lead the set, then the landing net, the worm tin, the fishing fly, and a can of Beefy Brew, with the card ranks under them. Figures below are shown at a €1 spin, before any frame or multiplier gets involved.
| Symbol | 5 of a kind (€) | 4 of a kind (€) | 3 of a kind (€) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rod & Reel | 5.00 | 2.50 | 1.00 |
| Landing Net | 3.00 | 1.20 | 0.60 |
| Worm Tin | 2.50 | 1.00 | 0.50 |
| Fishing Fly | 2.00 | 0.80 | 0.40 |
| Beefy Brew | 1.50 | 0.60 | 0.30 |
| A | 0.45 | 0.35 | 0.15 |
| K | 0.40 | 0.30 | 0.15 |
| Q | 0.35 | 0.25 | 0.10 |
| J | 0.30 | 0.20 | 0.10 |
| 10 | 0.25 | 0.20 | 0.10 |
A spin runs between €0.20 and €24 in free play. Anything you buy on top of that is charged separately. The default build returns 96.03%, and an operator can also load a 94.03% or 92.06% version, so the return is worth a glance at the paytable wherever you play.
Catfish Hunters is the most inventive thing on the Nolimit Hunters line, and when the Impostor Wilds cooperate it is a real pleasure to watch the meter take off. The catch is how much rides on those wilds. They are the only counter to a bonus that halves its own multiplier, so a 2000x Legend Catch can hand you two wilds and a dead round just as easily as a four-figure one. That dependency, more than the theme or the top end, is what holds it back, a fresh and funny game you are always one cold streak from wasting.
Catfish Hunters has a sense of humour, and it lives in what the game hooks onto the end of your line. A catch reels up a cigar-smoking fish with a revolver, then an electrified crate the game calls Old Sparky, then a redneck dangling by his belt as an Ugly Catch, and, on the big wins, a Where Is The Fish reveal that turns out to be anything but. The best of them is the FISHCAT, a cat welded to a fish body, and the studio sells every catch with the straight-faced daftness that runs through its swamp.
Behind the win screens, the catch loop is doing real work. A frame lights a fish, the fish pays, and the rest all rise with it, so a good spin gathers pace on its own. The trouble is that standard play rarely lets it. Our fish kept stalling under a x5 meter, the Electrical Frames landed on empty net tiles more often than on anything worth catching, and long runs went by with the counter barely leaving the bottom of the meter.
The feast comes in the Water Spins, and so does the reversal that gives the game its character. Every bonus round takes your multiplier in, then halves it as each new spin begins. Catches and Stacy can still drive it back up within a spin, so the meter becomes something you fight to hold, not a number you grow. In our review, a bought round of Dark Water Spins showed the good version, the xWays upgrade landing so every split revealed a fish or a wild, ducks in goggles drifting past a murkier river as €100.50 and change stacked up to €139.70. That round only paid because the Impostor Wilds kept landing to outrun the halving.
A Legend Catch at 2000x a spin sounds like a surer thing, but across 3 of them, one gave nothing, one a €5,600 return off a board of 100x fish, and one just €1,200. The 2000x buys the pair of guaranteed wilds it promises, but it cannot buy the run of catches that builds them into a meter, and the difference between those 3 spins was luck, not spend.
Our two overcharged buys at 600x went in opposite ways. One snowballed the meter to x64, good for a €704 catch inside a €1,018.10 round. The other limped out at €104.50, the multiplier never past x4, at the same price. That is the swamp, loud and daft and at the mercy of which wilds break the surface.
