Fishin’ Frenzy The Big Splash demo: free play, 100x buy, and a six-rung ladder

Fishin’ Frenzy The Big Splash is the Fishin’ Frenzy where the fish change value while you watch. Its information panel, read on 12 September 2026, describes tags that sit on fish, picks that reveal them, and a ladder that steps the round up at two, four, six, eight, ten and twelve fishermen collected. It does not, anywhere on its four pages, print a return figure.

Of the three sequels read that day it has the cheapest buy, at 100x the total bet, and the most moving parts. Those two facts are related, and the second is the one to understand before the first looks like a bargain.

What the panel prints, and the number it leaves out

Four pages. Getting started and line wins on the first, the scatter and the free spins on the second, the pick and the collection ladder on the third, the bonus buy, applicable date and version on the fourth. Page four is the end; scrolling further returns the same page. No line on any of them states a return.

• Not statedRTP
• Not statedVolatility
• Not statedMax win
• 5.5Our score

That puts this game with Even Bigger Catch, which runs on the same Blueprint framework and prints nothing either, and apart from The Big Catch, which runs the older client and prints 95.32% on its paytable. The applicable date on page four reads 30/08/2023 and the version 2.0, so this is a later build than Even Bigger Catch’s 1.0 of January that year, and the omission survived the revision.

Pick a fish, and what a tag does

The mechanic on page three is the one that names the game. Fish on the reels can carry tags. A tag upgrades the fish it is attached to, raising the value the fisherman will collect from it. Fish can be picked, and a pick reveals and applies the tag. The panel describes this as the Pick a Fish feature, and it is the reason the values on the reels are not fixed the way they are on every other game in the line.

On The Big Catch a fish is worth its printed value and the fisherman collects it. On Even Bigger Catch the fish is worth its printed value and a gold fisherman can multiply what he collects. Here the fish itself is the thing that moves. It is the same collect mechanic the original Fishin’ Frenzy introduced, with the variability moved from the collector to the collected.

The ladder: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12

The second thing page three prints is a count. Collecting fishermen during the free spins steps the round through stages at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 fishermen collected. The higher stages carry collection multipliers, printed as x2, x3 and x10. The panel describes stages and multipliers; it does not print how many free spins each stage adds, and it does not print a maximum win.

Even Bigger Catch’s ladder is one rung, every four fishermen, upgrade and five spins. This one is six rungs, and the top of it is a x10 on everything collected. Twelve fishermen in one round is a lot of fishermen. The panel does not say how likely it is, because it does not print a return, a hit rate or a volatility label, and this page cannot say either.

Why 100x is the cheapest buy in the family

Page four prints the buy at 100x the total bet. Even Bigger Catch charges 180x. The Big Catch and the original have no buy at all.

The difference in price is a difference in what is bought. Even Bigger Catch’s 180x buys a round where every fisherman is gold, a rule change. This game’s 100x buys the free spins round as it would have triggered, no rule change, and the ladder and the tags are the same whether you bought in or landed the scatters. So the cheaper buy is cheaper because it purchases less: entry, not an upgraded entry.

Whether 100x is good value is not answerable from the panel. The Pragmatic Play games on this site that print a buy also print the return of a bought round, and on Big Bass Splash it happens to match the base figure. This game prints neither, so the price of the buy is the only number you have, and a price without a return is not a value.

Where the ladder leaves a reader

The Big Splash is the Fishin’ Frenzy to play if the appeal is watching the board change under you. It is not the one to play if you want to know what you are getting back: for that, the original at 96.12% and The Big Catch at 95.32% are the two games in the line that tell you. The cheapest buy is a real difference from Even Bigger Catch, but it buys a plainer round, and neither game will tell you what either round returns.

The rest of the fishing slots we have read are collected by theme, and the Merkur studio page covers the group behind this line.

What to confirm on page four

• Page four of the information panel. Applicable date 30/08/2023, version 2.0. A later date means a revised panel; check whether it now prints a return.
• The buy price. 100x. Operators can configure this; if yours reads differently, the panel figure no longer applies.
• The fisherman’s five-of-a-kind on the paytable. 200 at a 1.00 stake. If it reads 1,000 you are on The Big Catch, a different game with a different page.

Every statement about this game was read off its own paytable and information panel inside the free demo build on 12 September 2026, from a UK connection. The comparisons come from the same reading done on the other two sequels and the original the same day. Nobody staked money to produce it. 18+, and if gambling stops being something you choose freely, support is available through GamCare.