Fish and Spins

Fish and Spins Slot Review

A rowboat tilts at its mooring, rods reach in over the water, and a small blue bird watches from the rocks of a tropical lagoon. Fish and Spins uses all of that prettiness to sell one narrow idea: nearly everything it pays runs through a single doubling rule on the side of the reels, and the rest of the build is scaffold around it. Plenty of slots spread their payoff across five systems; this one puts it in a single symbol and doesn’t apologise for the simplicity.

ELA Games run the game on a 5×4 grid with mid-low volatility and a 95.6% RTP, and wins in any round stop at a 5,000x ceiling that also caps the bonus. The studio’s Odysseus Wild Journey and Piggy Brew Bonanza are both worth a look as well, but neither of them brings a rod.

Fishing the Base Game

The lagoon sits behind five reels and four rows, framed in carved wood with rope lashings and topped by the title sign. Palms lean in from both banks, and a green cliff closes off the far side. It’s painted, cartoonish and lush, and it doesn’t get in the way of the reels.

There’s no published payline count for this one, so the grid and the paytable are what you have to go on. Wins come through cascading reels, which clear the way for fresh symbols to fall in, with a multiplier bar climbing the left side as sequences run on. That bar is where the money lives, and it gets a section of its own below.

A round starts with the spin button, or the spacebar if you prefer the keyboard. The stop button skips the round animations where possible, and Autoplay runs through rounds on its own at the current bet value. Standard controls, all of them doing exactly what you’d expect.

The paytable is all fish above the card suits, and the gaps between tiers are wide:

• Orange Fish – the richest symbol in the game, and the benchmark for everything below it
• Purple Fish – worth exactly half the Orange Fish at every match count
• Green Fish – a mid-tier payer, identical to the Blue Fish
• Blue Fish – matches the Green Fish coin for coin at three, four and five of a kind
• Heart, Club, Diamond and Spade – the bottom tier, four suits sharing one set of values
• The card suits pay a tenth of the top fish for five of a kind, and a tenth of it for three

One premium fish, one runner-up, a matching pair in the middle and a shared floor at the bottom, with each tier paying for three, four or five of a kind. Every tier also jumps hardest between four and five of a kind: the Orange Fish, for instance, pays five times more for a full line than for four. Nothing here is doing anything unusual, which is fine: the interesting parts of this game live elsewhere.

The wild pays at the top rate, matching the Orange Fish, and substitutes for every symbol except the Bonus. That’s the whole arrangement, and it’s a clean one.

What the wild doesn’t cover, the Bonus symbol does. Three of them on reels one, three and five trigger the Fishing Bonus, and the float-icon symbol only ever lands on those three reels. It’s a narrow target, and the game doesn’t dress it up as anything else.

Wild X2 and the Multiplier Bar

Down the left side of the reels runs a ladder, and it doubles at every step:

• 1x – the resting rung, where every spin starts
• 2x and 4x – the early steps of a winning sequence
• 8x and 16x – where a long cascade starts to matter
• 32x – the top of the ladder, and the highest the bar reaches on its own

Every winning sequence in the base game is measured against that ladder, and the longer a cascade runs, the higher the rung the payout lands on. Water splashes across the reels as the bar climbs, which is a nice touch. A sequence that ends early leaves most of the ladder untouched, so the climb only pays off when the falling symbols keep connecting.

The Wild X2 is the symbol that makes the ladder interesting. It acts as a regular wild in every respect, but when it takes part in a winning line it applies X2 to all multiplier bar values, and that doubling holds until the end of the winning sequence.

On a ladder that tops out at 32x, that doubling matters. A wild landing late in a long cascade lifts the rung the payout lands on, and the lift holds for as long as the sequence keeps paying. It’s a simple rule with a sharp edge to it.

The Fishing Bonus

Three Bonus symbols, on reels one, three and five only, trigger the Fishing Bonus. That’s the whole trigger. The symbol substitutes for nothing and nothing substitutes for it, so it stands alone on the grid.

The round plays out as free spins, with the same reels, the same fish, and the same multiplier ladder working underneath. The symbol set doesn’t change for the round, so the Orange Fish remains the one to watch and the card suits still carry the floor. Wins in the round run up against the game-wide 5,000x ceiling like everything else, and the free spins round carries the same cap as the base game.

What the Fishing Bonus amounts to is the multiplier bar with room to run. The base game gives the ladder a few rungs at a time; the bonus is where the Wild X2 and a long cascade can genuinely stack up. The maths underneath stays put, at 95.6% over a billion simulated rounds, so the round is a change of pace rather than a different game.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7/10

A session here is a calm afternoon by the water: cascades roll, the ladder climbs a rung or two, and the wins arrive in modest, regular amounts. The one thing that lifts it above any other mid-low cascader is that doubling symbol, and watching a late wild reprice an entire run never quite stops being fun, however small the rung it lands on.

That rule is the strength, because it’s the only genuinely clever piece of design on screen. The weakness is what sits above it: a 5,000x cap over mid-low volatility makes the top of the ladder a distant prospect rather than a live one, so the game promises less drama than its artwork suggests.

Anyone after a steady, good-looking session with one smart rule to watch will enjoy their time on this lagoon, and the Fishing Bonus gives the calm a focal point when it finally arrives. Hunters of the huge hit will want deeper water. For everyone else, this is a pleasant place to drop a line.

Fish and Spins FAQs

• What is the RTP of Fish and Spins?

  The RTP is 95.6%, determined by mathematical calculation across a billion simulated rounds.
• Is Fish and Spins high volatility?

  No. Fish and Spins runs at mid-low volatility, so wins tend to come in smaller, steadier increments rather than rare large payouts.
• What is the grid size of Fish and Spins?

  The game plays on a 5×4 grid, with five columns and four rows of symbols.
• What triggers the Fishing Bonus in Fish and Spins?

  Three Bonus symbols trigger the Fishing Bonus. The Bonus symbol only appears on reels 1, 3 and 5.
• What does the Wild X2 symbol do in Fish and Spins?

  The Wild X2 acts as a regular wild, substituting for all symbols except the Bonus. When it takes part in a winning line, it applies X2 to all multiplier bar values until the end of the winning sequence.
• What is the maximum win on Fish and Spins?

  The maximum win in a single game round is limited to 5,000x the bet, and wins during the free spins round are capped at the same 5,000x.
• Who makes Fish and Spins?

  Fish and Spins is made by ELA Games.
• When is Fish and Spins released?

  Fish and Spins’ release date is 25 January 2024.