Deep sea fishing in extreme waters can be full of perils, but navigating the marine dangers is a way of life for the intrepid. Fishing predates agriculture, and the brave fishermen who ventured farther and farther away from the coast got their just rewards. That’s what Extreme Fishing by Lightning Box is all about. Just like the churning seas, Extreme Fishing lives up to its name with its high volatility. It can have your bankroll turning with the tides.
But contrary to reality and common with many marine games, the shark is your best friend in the game, along with the man fishing against the dawn. ‘Jaws’ is the game’s wild symbol, which can fill the gaps on the reels to form win combos just like the joker in card games. However even Jaws cannot replace the fisherman, who is the scatter, which provides free spins and the Fisherman Feature therein. Along with Shark Attack, these comprise the bonus features of the game
The highest paying symbol on the reels is another bearded fisherman. He is accompanied by crabs, starfish, and three other premium fish types. Even the card royals find their way onto the high seas in this 5 reel, 3 row slot armed with 25 paylines. Set against a serene ocean that belies the promised violence of the theme, the overall design is simple, yet elegant, though a trawler effect behind the reels may have added to the visual impact.
You need to land at least 3 identical symbols on adjacent reels from the leftmost reel onwards to make winning combinations on the paylines. The shark wild will also pay for landing on just the first two reels. The lowest paying symbols are the card royals that will land you the most frequent win recipes and pay you between 5 and 70 coins for appearing on 3 to 5 reels. Next up are the starfish and crab that pay 15, 60, and 100 coins for appearing on 3, 4, and 5 reels respectively. The corresponding payouts for the premium fishes are 25, 100, 250 coins.
The highest paying standard symbol is the bearded fisherman. He will cough up 30, 150, and 500 coins for respectively landing on 3, 4, and 5 reels. However, the highest honors of the game are reserved for the Jaws wild, which will pay you 25, 200, 500, and 1,500 coins across 2, 3, 4, and 5 reels. The bonus symbol only pays 2, 50, and 500 coins across the reels, but will also give you free spins, which are the central focus of the game.
Extreme Fishing has a slightly lower than average return to player rate of 95.84%, though the difference is negligible. This is a high variance game, so you should not expect the base game to award high payouts, though the three bonus features can more than compensate for a whittled down bankroll. The maximum potential payout for Extreme Fishing on is 1,500 times your bet, which can only happen when the entire gird is filled with shark wilds.
A shark attack can be one of the most feared specters you can see, but in Extreme Fishing, you should hope it happens very frequently. This is because any of the three fish symbols can turn into wilds for that particular spin. The extra wilds can give you some whopping win combinations.
It’s a standard free spins feature where landing three, four, and five scatter symbols simultaneously anywhere on the reels will give you 10, 20, and 30 free spins respectively. Apart from paying out for landing, they also activate the free games’ Fishing Feature outlined below. You can also retrigger the free games round by landing more scatters within the existing round. You may also have random Shark Attacks during the bonus game.
This is the bonus feature for the free games rounds and has its own scatter symbol, the swordfish. Getting 5 swordfish on the reels at once during the free games will activate the Fishing Feature. A fisherman will then cast his rod 15 times into the sea with a small reel showing the value of his catches. On the right is a meter, which monitors his catches and losses.
When the fisherman makes a catch, the arrow on the meter strikes upwards into the green zone and it comes down into the red zone if the catch is lost. After 15 attempts, all the values of the caught fishes are added to your total winnings from the free games. The fisherman can give you catches worth 1,000 times your bet, and you can activate the Fishing Feature more than once in the same free spins round.
Extreme Fishing is coded with HTML5, which not only supports all smartphones and tablets that run on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, etc., it also restructures the game’s platform to the small screen. This enables you to enjoy the game in original HD quality and sound fidelity.
You’ll be playing online through your phone’s browser, so you will need reliable internet connectivity on the high seas. Most slot games are better played in landscape mode, since they tend to have a horizontal format, and Extreme Fishing is no different.
Though Extreme Fishing can be wildly volatile (pun not intended), the slot is tamer in its graphics, game play and payout potential compared to other marine and fish-themed games. The Shark Attack and Fishing Features can be entertaining and profitable, but players who are drawn to the game, must keep a watch on their play budget, as it can sink like a stone on an unlucky day.