It’s been years since I’ve started doing slot reviews, and I always look with anticipation to November and December, when developers start launching their Christmas slots. Pragmatic Play made a Christmas reskin of its last year’s hit title, Big Bass Splash, called Big Bass Christmas Bash. 

This festive edition, as do all the other titles in the series, revolves around fishing. You will see that on its 5x3 grid with ten paylines, only symbols related to the theme appear. To take you to the biggest catch, however, you have many features and modifiers, if I may add, perfectly suited to the theme, too. Let’s go over them together so that you can see, just as I do, how fun and jolly this slot is. 

To fully enjoy your Big Bass Christmas Bash play, you have to know a bit about its setup. I particularly love the fact that Pragmatic Play has twisted a few details, this time taking us to a snowier and colder environment than before. So, we can see the ice-cold lake on top of the reels as the reels themselves are immersed in the water. The grid is transparent, with the reels divided with water bubbles, so behind them, you can see some Christmas ornaments between the seaweeds. The rooftops of the houses near the lake are covered in snow, so if I may say, the developer did an awesome job depicting the snowy, festive season. 

Now, on the left of the grid, we can see the Ante Bet button first, which increasing the stake by 50%, gives us better chances of naturally triggering the bonus; below it, there’s a Buy Free Spins button, though, which for 100x the stake takes us directly to the bonus.

Below the grid, we see the three-bar button, where additional game settings are, and the Speaker button, where we can adjust the sound. Going right, we see the “i” button that takes us directly to the paytable. The low-paying symbols are the playing card Royals, which give 5x to 10x the stake for the top combo, followed by the high-pays, which are the tackle boxes, the fish, the rods, the bulldozers, and the dragonflies, delivering 20x to 200x the stake for a 5-of-a-kind combo. The Fisherman, of course, is the Wild, but we'll talk about it a bit later. 

Finally, going further right, we see the Credit and Bet displays, followed by the Bet configuration field, where the big Spin button is in the middle of the – and + buttons, where you can place bets from $0.10 to $250 ($375 with Ante Bet) per spin. 

I tried Big Bass Christmas Bash on my iPhone and Samsung tablet; it plays smoothly. So, get any of your tablet or smartphone devices, find a nice Pragmatic Play casino to join, locate Big Bass Christmas Bash, get a free spins bonus, and load the slot right away. You don't need to download it or any other software to play it. 

The base game is not as interesting as the bonus is, so to keep this short and sweet, let me tell you that here, you will only be benefiting from the regular winning combos you form, and you’ll be waiting in anticipation to activate the bonus. 

And to activate it, you know you need at least three scatters. When you land two scatters, you may get a chance to get another scatter if a hook appears on the grid to pull one reel and reveal a scatter. Or, if the scatters go down one position without leaving the grid, and you get a respin where the reels without scatters respin to give you another shot at getting the last scatter, you need to trigger the bonus.

When you land five, four, or three scatters, you trigger 20, 15, or 10 free spins. Any Fish Money symbols that land in the bonus, with values from 2x to 5,000x the stake, can be collected if a Fisherman is in view alongside them. Fishermen, on that note, can only appear in the bonus. 

Before the bonus starts, one of five modifiers can be applied at random. 2+ Spins, meaning you'll start with two extra spins each time you retrigger the bonus. Start From Level 2, More Fish and More Fisherman are pretty self-explanatory, as is the More Dynamite, Bazookas, and Hooks, meaning you get a chance of landing more of these. 

Fishermen are collected during the bonus, and for every four you get, the bonus is retriggered, plus a Multiplier is added to the Money Collection feature, 2x for level 2, 3x for level 3, and 10x for level 4; after that, no more retriggers can happen. 

When no fish but a Fisherman is present on the grid, the Dynamite Spin feature can trigger at random, delivering fish symbols, or the Bazooka can trigger, changing all symbols into other symbols except Fisherman symbols. When no Fishermen but fish symbols are in view, a Hook may appear at random, delivering Fishermen symbols on the grid.

The game also boasts a Buy Bonus slots feature, letting you enter the bonus round for 10x the bet.

From what I could notice, Big Bass Christmas Bash comes with a really similar math model to Big Bass Splash, so expect a nice RTP of 96.71%, high volatility, and a max payout potential of 5,000x the stake. 

The max bet is $375, so the max win you can scoop playing Big Bass Christmas Bash is $1,875,000. Quite the catch, don’t you think?

I believe you’ll like Big Bass Christmas Bash from Pragmatic Play since you have the Fisherman looking like a little elf with his pointy ears, the Christmas ornaments at the bottom of the lake, the lake itself frozen on top of the grid, and the little houses oozing with festive spirit. The max wins potential is certainly not to be taken for granted, so overall, I find the slot compelling and fun to play at top casinos, thanks to all the modifiers, and one deserves your try.