Eric’s Big Catch

Eric's Big Catch: Slot Overview

Hey players, you're no doubt aware of the abundance of fish slots hitting the shelves at the moment, so when digging deep to find something to say about Eric's Big Catch from developer Stakelogic, we stumbled upon the history of the name Eric. Despite Eric being a common name today, it dates back to the time of the Vikings and was possibly popularised by Erik Thorvaldsson, or Erik the Red, a Norse explorer said to have been involved in the first European settlement in Greenland. Back then, the original name in Old Norse was Eiríkr, which had associations with the word 'ruler'. Fast forward to today, where famous Erics include Monty Python's Eric Idle, musician Eric Clapton, and footballer Eric Cantona, as well as others. We can thank Google, Wikipedia, Scandification, and Mama Natural for broadening our knowledge of the name Eric/Erik.

That brings us to today's slot, Eric's Big Catch. As the name suggests, it is a slot based around the popular pastime of fishing. The stab of originality this time is a Viking angle where a longship can be seen bobbing up and down on the water above the playing grid. The rest of the view is completely familiar – bubbles, fish swimming about the place, waving seaweed. If you've seen one fish slot before, you'll very likely know the drill. Good on Stakelogic for coming up with a new slant on the genre by using a Viking, but the slant only goes so deep.

If you're ready to dip your toe in Eric's Big Catch, then the next step is likely to be bet selection. Here the options range from 20 p/c to $/€100, and the Super Stake is something else to consider. When the Super Stake is activated, the stake is doubled for extra features. Quite exactly what happens with Super Stake is not made clear on the paytable other than – 'Double your bet to activate a special Super Stake mode for extra chances of hitting insanely valuable winning combinations.' A bit vague, but anyway, Eric's Big Catch has an RTP of 95.44% and is medium-high volatile.

The gaming area consists of 5 reels, 3 rows of symbols and has 20 fixed paylines. Wins are awarded when matching symbols land from the leftmost reel onwards on at least 3 adjacent reels. For lows, it has 10-A card ranks; then, its highs are a net, a hook, a trap, a suspiciously modern-looking fishing rod, and a spear. When landing winning combinations of 5 low pay symbols, the reward is 10 times the bet, rising to 50 to 200 times the bet for the premium symbols.

Eric's Big Catch: Slot Features

Reaching into the game's bag of tricks, we find fish symbols, free spins, walking wilds, respins, multipliers, and a bonus buy option.

Fish Symbol

On each spin, Fish symbols land with a random value of 0.5 to 12 times the bet. Fish pay up to 20x the bet if they create a winning line of 5 symbols, and their displayed values may be collected by Wild Vikings during free spins.

Free Spins

Hit 3, 4, or 5 scatter symbols to win 6, 8, or 10 free spins. During free spins, our man Eric, who is displayed on the Wild Viking symbol, can appear on all 5 reels. Wild Vikings substitute any pay symbol and are worth up to 200 times the bet for a 5 wild win. Wilds move left by one reel, triggering a respin each time before falling off the edge of the game grid. On each step leftwards, Wild Vikings can collect all fish symbols.

During free spins, there is a chance Wild Viking symbols have a multiplier when they land or walk. The multiplier is collected above the reels and is applied to the total amount collected during respins for that free spin. Multiplier values can be x2-x5, or x10. Multiple wilds may land during respins, and free spins are able to be retriggered.

Buy Bonus

The bonus buy feature provides players with four options. These are 6 free spins for 100x the bet, 8 free spins for 150x the bet, 10 free spins for 200x the bet, and a random option for 170x the bet.

Eric's Big Catch: Slot Verdict

Another slot we reviewed around the time of encountering Eric's Big Catch was, believe it or not, Wild Wild Bass 2, another fish-related slot from Stakelogic. Since Wild Wild Bass 2 was essentially Wild Wild Bass with a bonus buy, we were a little over fish by the time Eric's Big Catch lit up the screen. As predicted, here was another chance to scoop fish money symbols out of the sea, collecting their values in the process. To Eric's Big Catch's credit, the game at least possesses measures of originality, making a back-to-back fish slot review session less gruelling than it might have been.

For starters, it was refreshing to join a Viking warrior in the fish collection action instead of a grizzled, beanie-wearing modern-day angler. Eric's Big Catch doesn't exactly go wild and crazy on the Viking angle, but hey, it's something. The same goes for the money collection feature. Not so unusual to see wild symbols collecting money symbols in free spins, though a tad more unusual to see it happen during respins within the free spins feature, with a walking element and possible multipliers on the side. Much of the core gameplay might not exactly be drenched in exhilarating originality, yet the extra twists Stakelogic has worked into Eric's Big Catch give connoisseurs a relatively newish catch of the day to sample.

So Eric's Big Catch isn't exactly a major breakthrough in fish money retrieval gaming, nor does it offer big potential like games such as 4 Fantastic Fish or Golden Catch. But it's a cheerful slot that deviates from the usual way of doing things, and with a 4,000x the bet win cap (in free spins and the base game), it should satisfy the cravings of fans of mid-level fish slots, for a while.