Wild Catch Stormcraft Studios Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Wild Catch (Stormcraft Studios) Review

When we saw the idyllic forest river with the mountain in the background, we were immediately reminded of Robert Redford’s classic, A River Runs Through It (1992), starring a young Brad Pitt in the lead role as a highly gifted fly fisherman and a gambling daredevil. This movie is a must-see for any angler out there (and anyone else for that matter), just like Wild Catch is a must-try slot for anyone with a romantic relationship to the art of fly fishing.

Stormcraft Studios have really hit a home run with this game, although it’s nothing “new” or innovative to see here. Still, everything has been put together nicely, and there are enough features to keep the base game interesting while you wait to trigger the choice of 3 different bonus rounds. The volatility might be a bit high for some casual players, but catching the big fish has never been easy now, has it.

You can also randomly win 1 of 3 different fixed jackpots here, and the biggest one - the Gold Jackpot - is worth 2,000x your stake. This might be considered a consolation prize compared to the 9,000x you can win in the most volatile free spins feature option, but it still adds to the layer of excitement and the feeling that anything can happen. This is the same feeling you have when you try your luck with a new fly in a mountain stream, and this game will probably inspire certain people to get out in nature and forget about slot games for a while.

What are the bonus features?

The fly fishing theme might be idyllic and simple, but this is not really a simple slot when it comes to bonus features. In addition to the 3 different bonus rounds, you’ll also find a lot of different base game features. We’ll start with the most basic stuff, and work our way up to the game’s highlight.

There is a Rolling Reels feature active at all times in this game, and it works similar to the cascading or avalanche feature you probably know from many other games. Whenever you land a winning combo, the winning symbols will be removed, and potential new winning symbols will drop down from above. This process goes on as long as you keep winning.

You can also trigger a random feature called Splashing Wilds on any given spin in Wild Catch slot, and these can turn reels 2, 3 and/or 4 into fully stacked wild reels. Any of the reels that turn wild will remain so for as long as the Rolling Reels feature goes on, but when you land a non-winning spin the feature is finished.

In addition, you can also win 3 different fixed jackpot prizes in this game, and you increase your chances of winning a jackpot by landing wilds. The wild symbols are collected in the form of coins by the jackpots you’ll see on the left-hand side, and here is how much each jackpot is worth:

• Bronze Jackpot equals 10x your stake
• Silver Jackpot equals 100x your stake
• Gold/Wild Jackpot equals 2,000x your stake

You can win the jackpots at any time, by the way (both in the base game and during the bonus rounds), and when the jackpot feature is triggered you’ll get to open a treasure chest which reveals which of the 3 jackpots you landed.

The golden trout is the scatter symbol in this game, and you need to land at least 3 of it anywhere on the same spin to trigger the free spins bonus round.

Wild Catch comes with 3 different bonus rounds you can choose from, but only the low volatility option is available at first. The 2 other free spins options will be unlocked once you have triggered the bonus round 5 and 10 times, respectively. The difference is in the number of spins, volatility, consecutive win multiplier range and expanding growing wild stacks.

Here is a summary of what you can look forward too in the Wild Catch bonus rounds, and each feature comes with its own idyllic fishing location:

• Crystal Lake (low volatility) - gives you 15 spins with a multiplier meter of 1x, 2x, 3x, 5x and 10x. The growing wild stacks increase by 1 here, and the potential max win is 3,600x your stake.
• Emerald Creek (medium volatility, available after 5 fs triggers) - gives you 10 spins with a multiplier meter of 3x, 5x, 10x and 15x. The growing wild stacks increase by 2 here, and the max win is 5,400x your stake.
• Golden Rapids (high volatility, available after 10 fs triggers) - gives you 5 spins and a multiplier meter of 5x, 10x, 15x and 25x. The growing wild stacks increase by 3 here, and the max win is 9,000x your stake.

How to play

The interface on Wild Catch slot is very easy to overview, and you’ll find everything you need on the right-hand side. We will walk you through everything you need to know about how to play this game here, but experienced players might wanna skim through this, as it’s mostly aimed at new players and beginners.

You can start by clicking the hamburger menu at the bottom of the icon stack on the right, and this gives you 2 options.

The music and sound effects are soothing and pleasing for the ears, so we see no reason to turn off the sound here. Next, you can check out the paytable, where each of the features are described in detail. You can scroll down a bit to see the symbol values, and the male fly angler is the highest paying regular symbol here.

The 3 jackpots you can win are on display on the left-hand side, and we also like how the max win potential of 9,000x is displayed above the reels at all times. It’s a motivating reminder of what this game is capable of, and you can now click the coin stack icon to set your bet level between 20p and £20 per spin. This is a somewhat slim and narrow bet range, not really catering to high rollers.

Finally, you can set up the autoplay feature with between 10 to 100 autospins, and you can also set a win and loss limit to make the autospins stop.

Where to play Wild Catch?

Now that you have become an expert on how to play this game, we thought it would be a good time to introduce you to some options as to where you can play Wild Catch slot. New games published by Microgaming are high on the priority list of most operators in the market, and you will therefore have no problem finding a casino where you can play this game. You will still have to decide if you want to play for real money right away, or check out the demo game first. We can help you out here either way.

This is not a very complicated game, even though it comes with many different features. If you have some experience from online slots, you should have no trouble getting started for real right away. It’s important to know what you’re up against though, but you get that from the math model overview and our “200 spins experience” below.

If you have any kind of doubt about this game, it’s a good idea to try the free demo game first. In fact, this can be a good idea anyway, as you will get a feel of the gameplay and know for sure if this is worth your time and money. It’s better to be safe than sorry they say, and the good news is that we have the free game installed right at the very top of this review page. Simply follow the link up there, and you can check out Wild Catch demo game for free right away.

The 200 Spins Wild Catch Experience

Having done some river and lake fly fishing in our younger years, Wild Catch certainly struck a chord with us when we first loaded in the game. The sense of peace and calm has been captured beautifully in this game, although it would have been even better if the river was animated with a few trouts leaping now and then.

Still, we really looked forward to taking this beauty for our usual 200 spin test run, and we loaded up the autoplay feature with our first 100 spins. With the quick spin feature on, the pace of this game has that “oddly satisfying” feeling that almost makes you indifferent to winning and losing. This is a feat in and off itself, and something developers should pay more attention to.

We had plenty of dead spins before we landed a bigger base game win of 24x, and this was due to the Splashing Wild feature which can sometimes be helpful. Far from always though, as we triggered it plenty of times without winning a single dime. We got lucky, and landed 3 golden trouts after only 40 spins, and we had no choice but to go for the low volatility free spins option.

It’s somewhat annoying that the 2 other options have to be unlocked, and you’ll probably have to play for quite a while before you have the 10 bonus rounds under your belt that’s required to unlock the high volatility option. Anyway, we got a few decent wins in the bonus round, and it all amounted to a total win of 51.6x our stake.

The game can easily take you for a long journey of dead spins and smaller wins, as this is the nature of a highly volatile game. This happened to us for more or less the rest of our 200 spins session, but we triggered the bonus round one more time at the very end. This time we triggered the jackpot feature on the second free spin, which naturally got our hopes up. However, we landed only the 10x Bronze Jackpot, which was a bit disappointing.

We maxed out the multiplier meter at the end of the bonus round, but still won only 39.4x our stake all in all from this one. Not exactly a massive win, and we saw mostly dead spins before the sudden burst of cascading wins gave us this “consolation prize”. Even though we ended up in the red from our session, we still enjoyed this game a lot, and we’ll definitely be back for another go at the big catch.

Review Summary

We can’t see any reason why people interested in fly fishing - or fishing in general - would not enjoy this game. Wild Catch does not invent the wheel (or the reel) in any way, but it comes with a very nice and balanced combination of features, stunning visuals and an atmosphere of nostalgic peace and tranquility that really makes you wanna dust of the old fly rod, chest wader and tackle box, and head for the nearest river far away from our polluted civilization. To quote from the movie we mentioned in the intro of this review: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”

Pros

• The 3 middle reels can turn into wild reels
• 3 different free spins feature can be unlocked
• High volatility and 9,000x max win potential
• 3 different fixed jackpots up to 2,000x

Cons

• Max bet is only £20, which is a bit low for high rollers

If you love Wild Catch you should also try:

The fishing theme is not extremely common, but there are still quite few games you can find that centers around this archetypal activity. We have hand-selected some fishing games here for you, and these are quite varied slots when it comes to features and atmosphere, but they all have the passion for angling in common.

The Angler Slot - takes you on a fun fishing expedition with Otis, the likeable 3D character that will stand by your side all the way. There are plenty of features to enjoy here too, Betsoft’s Slots3™ engine makes sure of that. You can look forward to Octopus sticky wilds, and a bonus round where wins up to 1,300x your stake is possible.

Reel Catch - comes with the happiest fisherman we’ve ever seen, as he’s basically power posing on every occasion with his fist in the air and his mouth wide open with a triumphant roar. Perhaps the lady in the yellow bikini is the big catch he’s celebrating, who knows, but the game comes with a very fun Reel Slide™ feature and up to 20 free spins in the bonus round.

Fishin’ Frenzy Megaways - is a must try for any fishing fans out there, as this megaways version is the original game on steroids. It comes with up to 15,625 ways to win, and you can now pocket up to 10,000x your stake when you angle for the cash prize fish in the game’s very exciting bonus round. While the original game was good, this version is one of the best fishing slots out there, if not the best.

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