Reel 'em In Lobster Potty Slot by Light & Wonder

Watch the reel backgrounds, not the symbols. Sand is what matters here. Patches of sandy backdrop drop in at random behind the reels, doing nothing to your pays, and once all five reels have turned to sand the bonus fires. Which bonus, though, is out of your hands. The sand trigger flips a coin between two completely different rounds.

The Reel 'Em In Bonus is the busier of the two. Between one and five reels go active and spin together, stopping left to right, and they hold only Fishes, Blanks and Boots. Every fish carries a cash award that drops into a small meter under its reel, and one reel can land more than one. A Boot is the killer, landing one closes that reel for good. The round runs until every active reel is shut, then all the meters total up into a single payout. The other result, the Lobster Pots Bonus, is over in a flash. Only the centre reel spins, highlights a lobster, and a set of pointers steers you to one of the three pots sitting above the grid. Those are the Gold, Silver and Bronze pots guarded by cartoon crabs at the top of the screen, worth 500x, 200x and 100x in that order.

Around all this sits a cheerful cartoon seascape from Light & Wonder, a bamboo-framed grid under a sunny sea surface with light rays and bubbles, a fisherman casting from a little red rowboat in the corner, and bright tropical fish premiums next to chunky pink and red card letters. The wood-sign Reel 'Em In! logo is the wild, and it only ever shows on the last three reels, where it stands in for everything.

The blue BB button opens Big Bet, a high-stake block of five linked spins paid out at the end rather than one at a time. Push the entry stake higher and you unlock extras: more wilds landing more often on reels three to five, then Big Bite, where a shark turns a symbol into a wild that doubles its win, and finally Mega Bite, where that shark's wild can carry x2, x3, x4, x5 or x10. It's an old Barcrest fishing slot at heart, but the Big Bite shark is the reason to keep the stake up.