Fish Eye (Pragmatic Play) Slot Review

Fish Eye: Slot Overview

Since Pragmatic Play started the Bigger Bass series the „fish collecting games“ became quite popular among players. Originally invented by Reel Time Gaming / Merkur with Fishin’ Frenzy, this kind of slots came a long way. While the original had no max win cap, the potential was not really huge. Wins around 300 times the bet were rare and modern slot machines usually have much higher potential and volatility. With the Big Bass series Pragmatic Play improved the potential over time, with a 2100 times the bet max win cap on the first Big Bass Bonanza to a 20.000 times the bet max win cap on Floating Dragon Megaways (which is a side series of those kinda games).

Fish Eye is the next entry in the fish collecting slot series by Pragmatic Play. Releasing on the 23^rd January 2023 it comes with a 10.000 times max win cap and the gameplay of this release is pretty unique compared to the predecessors of the fish collecting slots. For whichever reason Fish Eye takes place on the beloved ancient egyptian theme. The widely recognized eye of horus symbol (wedjat eye) is not only there as a winning symbol on the paytable, they also put it on the golden prize fish, which is the biggest fish, instead of a usual fish eye. So without further ado let’s check out what makes Fish Eye by Pragmatic Play so unique compared to other fish collecting games, and get a brief glimpse of the mechanics and stats of this slot machine.

Fish Eye: Stats and Special Symbols

Pragmatic Play’s Fish Eye slot machine has a 5 Reels 3 Rows layout and is played on 10 fixed paylines. There is a freespins feature that can be triggered by landing 3 or more scatters. Landing 3, 4 or 5 Scatters will achieve 10, 15 or 20 freespins respectively. Payline symbols range from classic royals to iconic golden ancient egypt symbols. Payouts from 10’s to Q’s are 5 times the bet for 5 of a kind on a payline, K’s and A’s are sharing with 10 times the bet per payline for a full five of a kind a payout twice as much. The two lowest premium symbols are a golden eye of horus and a golden leopard symbol, both comming with a 50 times the bet payout for a full 5 of a kind line of them. Second best premium symbol is a golden hawk symbol with a 100 times the bet payout per five of a kind. And as the best payline symbol there is a golden scarabaeus symbol with the highest possible line win of 200 times the bet for a full line.

Beside of the payline symbols there are also fish symbols on the reels, those fish symbols carry random cash values. While being in the basegame, the random cash values are ranging between 0.1-, 0.2-, 0.3-, 0.4-, 0.5-, 1-, 2-, 5-, 10-, 50- to 100-times the bet.

Only during the basegame landing 4 or more fish symbols on the reels will award the prizes that are carried by the fishes. The awarded money prize will also get multiplied wit ha multiplier that depends on the amount of fishes landed. The multipliers and requirements are as followed:

4 fishes – 1x multiplier, 5 fishes – 2x multiplier, 6 fishes – 5x multiplier, 7 fishes – 10x multiplier, 8 fishes – 20x multiplier, 9 fishes – 30x multiplier, 10 fishes – 50x multiplier, 11 fishes – 100x multiplier, 12 fishes – 500x multiplier, 13 fishes – 1000x multiplier, 14 fishes – 1500x multiplier and 15 fishes – 2000x multiplier.

Be informed that those massive multiplier wins are only possible during the basegame, as in the bonus the fishes work differently. The scatter symbol is also a golden horus eye symbol but with a pyramid behind it and spelling the word scatter, beside of triggering freespins you won’t receive a payout for landing scatters.

The player can play the basegame normally, place an ante bet to increase the chance of scatter symbols, or buy the bonus with the bonus buy function. When placing the ante bet, the initial bet is increased by 50% which does not increase the fish money values since those are based on the base bet. The bonus buy function allowes the player to pay a 100 times the bet fee to buy a spin that will guarantee to land 3, 4 or 5 scatters.

The freespins hit frequency for basegame spins is 1 in 132. The max win cap of 10.000 times the bet comes with a hit frequency of 1 in 3.750.000 spins. The overall hit frequency of a spin that carries return is 1 in 6.2 spins in average. Wins of 1.000 times the bet or higher have a fair frequency of 1 in 31.518 spins.

Fish Eye comes in 3 different RTP models for the casino to choose from. The RTP can be 94.10%, 95.07% or 96.07% as the best RTP model Pragmatic Play has to offer for Fish Eye. Bonus buys and playing with the ante bet unusually have exactly the same RTP as the basegame in Fish Eye.

Fish Eye: Free Spins Bonus Feature

The freespins bonus gets triggered if the player lands at least 3 scatters on the reels. Depending if the bonus got triggered with 3, 4 or 5 scatters, the player will achieve 10, 15 or 20 spins respectively when the bonus starts. While in the freespins feature, there are no scatters on the reels. Other then in the basegame, the fish symbols will carry bigger money values compared to the basegame. The possible money values in the freespins are 2-, 5-, 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-, 50-, 100-, 200-, 500- or 1000- times the base betsize. While playing through freespins, the player won’t collect any fish money values just for landing 4 or more fish money symbols. To collect the fish money prizes on the reels, the player needs to land at least one pharao symbol (collector).

The pharao symbol can only land in freespins and if landed, it will not only collect any fish money prizes on the screen, it will also be collected to make progress on a meter. The meter has 4 empty spots on it and for every pharao symbol landed, one empty spot will fill out. If the meter is filled up successfully, the player is awarded an additional 10 freespins and the meter will be emptied for the player to fill it up again. There is also a cleopatra symbol (remover) that only occurs during freespins. If landed, the cleopatra symbol will remove the lowest possible fish money value for the rest of the freespins and award 1 addition freespin. Landing two cleopatra symbols will award 3 additional freespins and remove the 2 lowest fish money values as a possibility for the rest of the freespins.

Randomly when there is a pharao symbol landed but no fish money symbols are landed on the same spin, a boat can appear and throw a net over the reels to remove some symbols and uncover fish money symbols on those positions.

Freespins will end if all freespins are played through or the max win of 10.000 times the base betsize is awarded.

Fish Eye: Conclusion

We believe that Fish Eye is a great release that brings some fresh mechanics into the „fish collecting“ slot machines. The theme and sounds work hand in hand on this slot and due to the basegame fish catch multipliers, we got a slot here that not only relys on the freespins bonus but can make fun and bring surprises in the basegame. If Pragmatic Play keeps bringing new mechanics to this franchise, we don’t mind to get a hundred different „fish collecting“ based games. We strongly recommend everyone who likes the Bigger Bass series to try out the Fish Eye slot machine.