Big Bass Amazon Xtreme review
On 19 June 2023 Pragmatic Play sent the favourite fisherman of its Big Bass series into the Amazon jungle. In Big Bass Amazon Xtreme the familiar 5×3 grid and 10 lines are joined by money symbols, a pick of modifiers before the bonus, and a round that can restart up to level eight. The slot is noticeably more complex than the studio’s classic fishing games.
Nine paying symbols on ten lines
Winning combinations form from left to right on the selected lines, and each starts at reel one. A line pays only its largest prize, with sums from separate lines joined together. The payouts come from the demo pay table: raw sums were divided by 10 and the result is expressed as fractions of the total bet.
First — 3 symbols: 5x; 4 symbols: 20x; 5 symbols: 200x.
Second — 3 symbols: 3x; 4 symbols: 15x; 5 symbols: 100x.
Third — 3 symbols: 2x; 4 symbols: 10x; 5 symbols: 50x.
Fourth — 3 symbols: 2x; 4 symbols: 10x; 5 symbols: 50x.
Fifth — 3 symbols: 0.2x; 4 symbols: 2.5x; 5 symbols: 10x.
Sixth — 3 symbols: 0.2x; 4 symbols: 2.5x; 5 symbols: 10x.
Seventh — 3 symbols: 0.2x; 4 symbols: 1x; 5 symbols: 5x.
Eighth — 3 symbols: 0.2x; 4 symbols: 1x; 5 symbols: 5x.
Ninth — 3 symbols: 0.2x; 4 symbols: 1x; 5 symbols: 5x.
The top symbol also pays for two in a row: 0.5x the bet. No symbol names appear in the text data, so tiers carry numbers. Neither scatter nor money symbols can be replaced by the Wild.
The range of line payouts is modest: 200x for five top symbols on a line, while the lower tiers return 0.2x for three icons. Big sums come not from the lines but from the money symbols.
Money fish: seventeen values
The fish-shaped money symbol can land on any reel. On every spin it receives a value that can be won in the free games. The rules give the complete set, from 0.2x to 1,000x: small values from 0.2x up to 5x, then 10x, 15x and 20x, next 25x and 50x, finally 200x, 250x, 333x, 500x and 1,000x.
The set is stretched: twelve values do not exceed 50x, while five lie above 200x. There is a gap between 50x and 200x, and it is telling: the game allows either a middling fish or a very large one, with no intermediate steps. The middle of the line-up is 15x, with eight values below and eight above. The whole set adds up to about 2,419 bets, and the top five values, from 200x to 1,000x, account for more than 2,280 of that, while the other twelve together total only about 136.
How often each value drops is not stated in the rules, so an “average fish” cannot be named from the list alone. What is clear is that in any collection the result is settled by whether at least one of the big fish reached the screen, since ten small values add up to only a fraction of a single large one. Removing small fish through the bonus items is therefore useful, but only slightly: it strips out 2x and 5x while the large values stay in place.
What happens to money in the base game
At random after a base game spin, the values of the money symbols on screen may be collected and paid. A random multiplier then drops and is applied to the sum gathered from the money. Per the rules the possible values are 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, 10x, 20x, 30x, 40x or 50x.
The press release matches the rules on every main point except this one: it names 40x as the multiplier’s upper limit, while the in-game rules add 50x. The in-game text is the source here, because it sits closer to the maths itself.
An example. A spin brought three fish: 5x, 10x and 25x. The collected sum is 40 bets. If the multiplier landed on 3x the payout is 120. At 1x we get 40, and at 50x it comes to 2,000. A fiftyfold gap on the same layout shows where the main source of variety in base game results lies.
Two scatters without a third
When two scatters land in the base game with no third, the game has a chance to trigger one of the random features. The first: if the scatters can be shifted down by one position without leaving the grid, a respin fires in which the scatter reels move down and the rest spin again. The second: a crocodile appears and turns one symbol on screen into a scatter.
Both features work to help gather the missing third scatter. They do not fire every time, and their frequency is not given.
Three scatters, the purchase and the ante
Three or more scatters start the free spins and award ten spins. The way into the free spins can be bought at once for 100 bets; on the triggering spin three, four or five scatters then land at random.
With the ante the bet multiplier climbs from 10x to 15x, half again, and scatters are added to the reels. In exchange, the bonus purchase is disabled. The rules class the slot as highly volatile but publish no bonus frequency, and how much the ante lifts the trigger chance is unknown too. The mode pays for itself through waiting for the bonus only if that chance grows by more than one and a half times, so the ante’s advantage cannot be proved from open data.
RTP per the game data: 96.07% in regular mode and on purchase, 96.06% with the ante. The difference is hundredths of a percent and should not influence the choice.
Picking items before the round
The most unusual part of the slot: the round is preceded by a “choose a pot” mini game. With four or five scatters one or two items are already open, and the player opens the rest until finding the boot. The boot ends the picking and starts the free spins with whatever modifiers have been gathered by then.
- More free spins: items worth +1, +2, +3 spins; at most 6 can be gathered this way.
- Guaranteed fish: up to three items with +1 fish, and every spin has 1, 2 or 3 money symbols guaranteed on screen.
- Remove lesser fish: up to twice; the first item removes 2x from the possible values, the second removes 5x.
- Already collected Fisherman Wilds: up to three Wilds at the start of the round and up to three counted toward the restart progress.
The later the boot is found, the stronger the round, but the rules text gives neither the odds of it appearing nor the number of items on the board. Extra scatters give an advantage not in spins but in the start of the pick: the more items are already open, the closer the player is to the desired modifiers and the less risk of hitting the boot too early. A buyer, whose scatter count also varies at random from three to five, gets the same reward. Judging by the list, the best modifiers are the guaranteed fish and the starting Wilds, because they work directly on money collection.
The fisherman collects the money
The core of the free spins: every Fisherman Wild collects the values of all money symbols on screen. It appears on every reel during the round, and collected Wilds do not vanish until the bonus ends. The effect therefore compounds: the more fish and Wilds stand on the field at once, the higher the collection.
An example. Three fish show on screen: 10x, 25x and 200x, plus one Wild. The Wild takes everything: 235 bets. With two Wilds, by the description each would gather the values of all fish, and the payout for the spin would grow in proportion to the number of Wilds.
Every fourth Wild: a ladder of eight levels
Collected Wilds are counted over the whole round. Every fourth one restarts the feature: it adds ten free spins and lifts the multiplier on collected money. Extra spins wait until the present batch is done, and the raised multiplier covers them as well.
Per the rules the fourth Wild switches on level 2 with x2, the eighth level 3 with x3, the twelfth level 4 with x10, and every further four Wilds bring x20, x30 and x40 until the 28th opens level eight with x50. The jump from x3 to x10 is the steepest: a 100-bet haul becomes 1,000 rather than 300, and 5,000 at level eight. The twelfth collected Wild thus sits on a border past which the round changes value sharply. Up to that mark the bonus is modest; after it the round can reach the ceiling quickly.
After level eight the feature does not restart. The maximum for a round is therefore ten starting spins plus seven restarts of ten, which is 80, or 86 with six spins from the items. This is possible only by collecting 28 Wilds. In practice most rounds end far sooner: four Wilds within ten spins is already a good outcome, and only then does the game launch a second batch at a x2 multiplier.
Hook, waterfall and appearing money
While there are no Wilds, money is not collected, and spins pass with no payouts or with small line wins. When a free spin finishes, the game sometimes triggers random features that restore the balance between fish and Wilds.
- If the screen holds only money symbols and no Wild, a hook appears and drags a random reel upward, bringing a Fisherman Wild.
- If the screen holds only Wilds and no money symbols, money symbols may appear in random positions.
- If a Wild is present but no money, a waterfall animation can fire and every symbol except the Wild changes.
- The hook may also pull the reels upward and bring both money and Wilds to the screen at once.
The rules give no frequency for these events. The point of the features is that they cut down the number of empty spins that hold only one of the two needed components. The main value of a round builds later, when fish and Wilds stand on the field together and collected Wilds keep counting on later spins.
A round spin by spin: an imagined scenario
The figures are made up. Three scatters gave 10 spins, and +1 fish was chosen from the items. In the first four spins there are fish worth 1 to 5x on screen, no Wilds, and payouts are minimal. Spin 5: a Wild takes three fish, 50x, 10x and 5x, 65 bets in all. Spin 7: a second Wild with a 200x, and the payout is 200. By the end of the round four Wilds are collected, level 2 switches on with an x2 multiplier, and ten new spins run with doubled collection.
In the next batch two Wilds take four fish apiece, and the x2 multiplier doubles the result: one batch brings about 800 bets. The round total is around 1,100 bets, and almost all of it was gathered thanks to the restart; without it the round would have ended at 300 to 350.
The 10,000x ceiling
If the total result of the free spins reaches 10,000 bets, the round ends immediately, the payout is credited and the remaining spins are cancelled. The data block of the demo version, which runs on the studio’s own server with no sign-up, puts this at one round in 14,321,518. In ante play the limit is expressed as 6,666 of the raised stake, roughly equal to 10,000 base bets, and that mode is listed at one round in 8,097,166.
The Big Bass family
Big Bass Bonanza — Release: 14.12.2020; RTP: 96.71%; Cap: 2,100x.
Bigger Bass Bonanza — Release: 17.09.2021; RTP: 96.71%; Cap: 4,000x.
Big Bass Splash — Release: 23.06.2022; RTP: 96.71%; Cap: 5,000x.
Big Bass Amazon Xtreme — Release: 19.06.2023; RTP: 96.07%; Cap: 10,000x.
The figures show a change of course: the return is cut by 0.64 points, while the ceiling doubled against Splash and nearly quintupled against the original. The series classic is on the page for Big Bass Bonanza. Its two nearest relatives are set against each other in Big Bass Bonanza versus Splash. The festive edition of the same line, Big Bass Xmas Xtreme, came out in November 2024 with the same 96.07% RTP and 10,000x cap.
