Mega Fire Blaze: Lucky Bass Slot by Playtech

The screen splits along the waterline. Above sit green forested hills under a bright sky. Below runs a clear turquoise underwater world, weeds swaying and bubbles drifting up past the reels. The paying symbols are cartoon fishing kit: a rod and reel, an angler's hat strung with lures, a tackle box, a can of worms, a pair of green wellington boots. Bright, relaxed, a bit of a Sunday-by-the-lake mood.

The green bass coins do the heavy lifting. Each one, a Fish Fire Blaze coin, carries a cash value anywhere from 0.2x up to 15x your bet, and it can pay out at random on any base-game spin with no combination behind it. Land six or more Fire Blaze symbols and the Mega Fire Blaze hold-and-respin begins.

It starts with five rows locked and only the top open, plus a Trail of ten positions running alongside the grid. You get three respins, and every new Fire Blaze that lands in an open spot holds and resets the count back to three. A Scatter climbs you up the Trail, and that Trail is the piece the plainer respins across the rest of the Mega Fire Blaze family don't have. Each step turns over one of four icons. A Key permanently unlocks a row, always the lowest still-closed one. A Multiplier stamps a x2 or x3 watermark on random Fish coins, and those stack to a x5 cap. A Fish refills the empty coin spots. And a Grand icon hands over the 2000x Grand outright, which can land as many as twice in one feature. There's a second route to unlocking too: fill every open position and a locked row drops open. Clear the whole board, every row unlocked and every spot filled, and the Grand pays.

Three or more Scatters send you to eight free games, and there's no retrigger, so eight is all you get. A Collector symbol turns up here, and inside the hold-and-respin, to sweep every Fish coin on screen into a single payout. A fisherman's boat can also drift in at random to drop up to eight extra Fire Blaze symbols, or up to two Collectors, onto the reels. It's a decent round, but pinned to a fixed eight spins it can end before the coins really get going.

Four fixed jackpots sit on top: Grand at 2000x, Major at 500x, Minor at 100x, Mini at 20x. None of them are progressive. The Major, Minor and Mini come off a Star Fire Blaze symbol, while the Grand only ever arrives from the Trail. The Wild covers everything except the Scatter and those special Fire Blaze coins, which keep to their own rules.