All About the Bass

All About the Bass: Slot Overview

Sorry, Meghan Trainor fans, not a typo; the name of the game is All About the Bass, not 'All About That Bass', maybe another time. It was made by Games Global partner Crazy Tooth Studio, so maybe someone at the Nevada HQ had the track stuck on repeat at the time of development? Just as likely, if not more so, the studio decided to leap full force onto the bass fish slot bandwagon that has been going absolutely bananas for a while now. This is partly due to the explosive success of Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom's smash hit Big Bass Bonanza, partly due to the love for fish slots in general. Since All About the Bass is a Crazy Tooth Studios show, you know it is unlikely to be a standard Fishin' Frenzy simp, but something a darn sight, well, crazier.

From the very start, All About the Bass feels like it's going to be a bit different. The purple-hatted fisherman looks somewhat crazed, while another angler appears to be a female character. Yes, some anglers are indeed ladies; it might be easy to forget that if the only contact with fishing is through slots. A gentle guitar background piece of music is offset by a frantic fishing rod reel sound the grid makes as it spins, merging soothing relaxation with maniacal symbol action.

Just below the life ring on the menu bar, one more down, is the coins icon where players can choose to stake 25 c to $/€25 per spin. Clicking the actual life ring sets the game's 5 reels into motion with 3 rows on each reel. Above the reels, boats may appear, while below them, fish symbols float past. Dive even deeper, and you'll find a medium volatile math model with a default RTP of 96.17%.

All About the Bass is able to land winning combinations of 3 to 5-of-a-kind along its 21 paylines. The lows are a basket, a can of worms, a float, a net, a hat, and a box, while the highs are 4 angling characters. Hitting a line of 5 winning low symbols pays 0.4 times the bet, or 0.8x the bet is paid when landing a line of 5 matching high pays. Three wild symbols appear on the reels – a regular, a x2 wild multiplier, and a x3 wild multiplier. All can substitute for any regular pay symbol. The x2 appears on reels 1, 3, and 5, while the x3 lands on reels 2 and 4. When wild multipliers are used in a win, the pay for that win is multiplied by its value.

All About the Bass: Slot Features

Surprise, surprise, All About the Bass does have a fish money symbol collection feature, but it is more evolved than they sometimes are. It also has a bonus game, cunningly titled All About The Bonus.

All About the Bass Feature

This feature is triggered when you land a boat symbol above a reel and a hook symbol on the reel directly below the boat. When triggered, the All About the Bass feature awards the fish prize that is directly below the hook. Fish prizes are worth between 4 and 960 times the bet, depending on the size of the fish – small, medium, large, and mega. There is also a special fish which, when it triggers the All About the Bass feature, awards:

• Collect All – awards the total of the 4 other fish prizes.
• Instant Bonus – awards the All About the Bonus.
• Activating an x2, x3, x4, x5, or x10 multiplier multiplies another fish prize by the respective multiplier and awards the multiplied amount. Each time an x2, x3, x4, or x5 special fish moves under the next reel along the bottom of the grid, its value is increased.

If a small, medium, large, or mega fish prize is awarded and an x2 or x3 wild multiplier symbol is one the reel above the awarded fish, then the fish prize value is multiplied by 2 or 3. Fish prizes may move on any base game spin, and once a fish prize is awarded, the awarded fish prize is repopulated at the same or higher value. Once the fish prize has been awarded, the feature is complete.

All About The Bonus

Landing 3 scatter symbols on the gameboard awards 5 spins in the All About The Bonus. The grid is populated with credit values and special bonus symbols. On each spin, fish multiplier symbols with values of x2, x3, x4, or x5 land. Each multiplier that lands activates the credit value (multiplying its value) or the special bonus symbol it lands on; these are:

• Retrigger symbol – when activated, the total number of bonus spins increases by the activating multiplier value, and the retrigger symbol transforms into an active credit value equal to the minimum initial credit value.
• Credit boost – when activated, all activated credit values on the grid are increased by the credit boost value times the activating multiplier value.
• Row symbol – when activated, all positions on the same row are activated with the activating multiplier value.
• Column symbol – when activated, all positions on the same column are activated with the activating multiplier value.
• Orthogonal symbol – when activated, any available grid position directly to the right, left, top, and bottom of that symbol are activated with the activating multiplier value.

All About the Bass: Slot Verdict

The world might need love, sweet love, according to that song, but one thing it does not need is another gosh darned bass slot. Never mind, here we are with another one, and it's a pretty safe bet that this won't be the last one either. Guess the good news is All About the Bass is from Crazy Tooth Studios, which is not an outfit keen on simply copying what's hot or riding anyone's coattails. As a result, bass fans get to experience something a little bit out there, not quite so out there as they can be from this software provider, yet at least All About the Bass isn't Fishin' Frenzy or Big Bass Bonanza wannabe number one thousand, million.

You still get to collect fish money symbols, though, don't worry about that. Now you need a boat up top, a hook in the middle, and the prize down below is all yours. A bit like Big Time Gaming's Golden Catch or Play'n GO's Boat Bonanza Colossal Catch in some ways. As can be the case from Crazy Tooth, some of the prize values here feel a tad on the small side, but at least the studio is upfront about them, plus max exposure is 9,009.2x the max bet, so sizable hauls are a technical possibility. Yet, peering over prize values on the paytable is hardly an encouraging exercise, though the chunkier fish rewards aren't shabby.

Following on, All About the Bass feels about as likely to knock the big dogs such as the Fishin' Frenzies or the Big Bass Bonanzas off the top spot as it is to fire off a full-blown cash prize meltdown, but to Crazy Tooth's credit, the studio has designed a fish slot thrashing about its own distinctive personality, which should go down a treat with gamblers who have a soft spot for the studio's particular way of doing things.