Greatest Catch: Ice Wheel
Evoplay Slot Review
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Greatest Catch: Ice Wheel: Slot Overview
Greatest Catch: Ice Wheel sets its 5-reel, 4-row grid on a coral-lined seabed beneath a thick shelf of cracked blue ice. Due out on 26 November 2026, this winter entry in Evoplay’s long-running fishing series pairs medium-high volatility with a 96.02% base game RTP, a 10,000x maximum win, and a wide bet range running from 0.10 to 7,500 per spin.
Across the water, wins form over 15 fixed paylines paying left to right, though you would not know that from reading Evoplay’s own help file. The in-game rulebook claims the slot runs on 12 paylines, a copy-paste leftover lifted straight from the studio’s 12-line Mega Greatest Catch games. That is only the first of several places where the documentation and the actual game client disagree.
On the intro card and along the upper edge of the screen, Evoplay’s white-bearded angler sits fast asleep in a folding chair on the pack ice, one boot propped up on an overturned bucket while the Northern Lights ripple behind his Arctic research station. It is a funny bit of character art that also explains how the base game plays: the Fisherman Wild does not appear in the main game at all.
Greatest Catch: Ice Wheel: Slot Features
With the angler snoring in his chair, there is no Wild symbol to bridge gaps across the 15 paylines. Five-of-a-kind hits on the top premiums, 200x the bet for the sticker-covered Tackle Box, 100x for the fur-lined Hat, and 50x for the Seal or the Boot, have to line up naturally from the leftmost reel. At the bottom of the paytable, the five card ranks (10 through A) pay 0.5x the bet for three of a kind, 2.5x for four, and 10x for five.
Fish Values and the Ice Breaker Wheel
Fish symbols swim across the base-game reels carrying cash tags between 1x and 50x the bet, joined by a Golden Fish worth 500x. Because the Fisherman isn’t on the reels to catch them, those cash tags normally go unpaid, leaving the Fish to act as regular line symbols that pay 1x, 5x, or 20x for three, four, or five on a payline.
The only way to bank those Fish values in the base game is through the Bonus Wheel, which can trigger randomly before any spin stops. Evoplay splits this wheel into two different sets of wedges depending on whether you are in the base game or Free Spins. In the main game, landing on the cash-collect wedge, which the rules text calls Ice Breaker and the paytable calls Ice Crack, breaks through the surface to pay the combined cash value of every Fish on the board at once.
Bobber Scatters and the Missing Bonus Chance Switch
Waking the Fisherman up requires 3, 4, or 5 red-and-white Bonus bobber scatters anywhere in view, which awards 10, 15, or 20 Free Spins. The bobbers carry no cash payout of their own, so two scatters leave you with nothing unless the pre-spin Bonus Wheel steps in. Alongside the Ice Breaker wedge, the base-game wheel has two scatter wedges: Extra Bonus, which drops 1 to 3 regular bobbers onto the grid, and Super Bonus, which drops a large golden bobber.
That golden Super Bonus bobber can also land naturally on the reels (limited to one per spin). It counts toward the three-scatter minimum while upgrading the entire round into Super Free Spins, which likewise starts with 10, 15, or 20 spins depending on whether 3, 4, or 5 total scatters triggered the round.
According to the rules and the underlying game config, Greatest Catch: Ice Wheel also has a Bonus Chance mode that increases the bet by 1.5x (at a 96.16% RTP) to add more Bonus symbols to the reels and double the chance of triggering Free Spins naturally. However, this game client has no switch or button on the interface to turn it on.
Free Spins and the Progression Trail
Once Free Spins begin, the bobber scatters leave the reels, the Fish freeze solid inside blocks of cracked ice, and the Fisherman finally wakes up to join the reel strips. He acts as both a substituting Wild (paying 200x for five Wilds on a line) and the cash collector. Whenever he lands, he reels in the cash tags of every ice-encased Fish on the screen regardless of paylines. If two or more Fishermen land on the same free spin, each Wild collects the full total of all visible Fish separately.
Every Fisherman that lands also fills one spot on the progression meter above the reels:
| Wild collected | Extra Free Spins | Fish collect multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| 4th | +10 | x2 from the next spin |
| 8th | +10 | x3 |
| 12th | +10 | x5, the ceiling |
The progression multiplier applies strictly to Fish cash collects, and capping the top stage at x5 puts more pressure on landing multiple Wilds at once or hooking the 500x Golden Fish.
When a Fisherman lands on a board with no Fish at all, the Dynamite Feature tosses sticks of dynamite onto the grid to blast 3 to 6 regular symbols into frozen Fish for the waiting Wild to collect. Separately, the Free Spins Bonus Wheel can fire at random to award Extra Wild, Extra Fish, or Fish Respin, which locks all visible Fish in place for one respin, and the wheel can fire again during that respin.
Bonus Buys and Rulebook Contradictions
Opening the Bonus Buy shop exposes the biggest mismatch between Evoplay’s documentation and the actual game. Both the rules file and the in-game paytable state that the Bonus Buy options cost 68x and 312x the bet. In the actual buy menu, standard Free Spins cost 100x the bet and Super Free Spins cost 250x the bet.
Comparing the two real prices makes the Super tier a tough sell:
- Free Spins buy (100x the bet, 96.27% RTP): Drops 3, 4, or 5 regular bobbers at random to start you with 10, 15, or 20 Free Spins, bumping the theoretical return 0.25% above the base game.
- Super Free Spins buy (250x the bet, 96.08% RTP): Also rolls 3, 4, or 5 scatters (including the golden bobber) for a random 10, 15, or 20 starting spins, while charging 2.5 times the price and trimming the RTP down to 96.08%.
Super Free Spins follow the same rules as regular Free Spins, with the same meter and the same x5 cap. The only advantage listed in the rules for paying an extra 150x the bet is a higher chance of seeing the 500x Golden Fish. Both modes end immediately if a round hits the 10,000x maximum win.
Where Ice Wheel Sits in the Greatest Catch Series
Evoplay’s earlier Greatest Catch games run on a 5×3, 10-line grid in The Greatest Catch (96.09% RTP) and The Greatest Catch Bonus Buy (95.98% RTP), and on a 5×4, 12-line frame in Mega Greatest Catch, Mega Greatest Catch Bonus Buy (96.03% RTP), and Mega Greatest Catch: Blue Marlin (96.02% RTP). Every title in the family shares the 10,000x win cap.
Greatest Catch: Ice Wheel keeps the 96.02% RTP and 5×4 layout of Blue Marlin and expands the paylines from 12 to 15. The x5 multiplier ceiling is noticeably tighter than Evoplay’s hunting game Mega Duck Hunt (95.98% RTP, 10,000x max win), which takes its 5×3 collector trail all the way to x10 and prices its three bonus buys between 50x and 140x. On buy prices, Ice Wheel (100x and 250x) sits closer to Pragmatic Play’s Big Bass Boxing Bonus Round (100x and 300x), and it joins Evoplay’s late-November 2026 lineup alongside another 5×4 line slot, High Voltage Fruits, and Elf Coin Hunt.
The Arctic setting, the snoozing angler on the ice, and the pre-spin Bonus Wheel give Greatest Catch: Ice Wheel a look of its own inside the Greatest Catch family, and bumping the 5×4 grid from 12 to 15 paylines helps when high-paying Tackle Boxes or Hats line up without a base-game Wild. Still, the sloppy leftovers in the rulebook, claiming 12 paylines, arguing with the paytable over whether the wheel wedge is called Ice Breaker or Ice Crack, describing a 1.5x Bonus Chance mode with no button to turn it on, and listing phantom buy prices of 68x and 312x, suggest that parts of the rulebook were carried over from the studio’s earlier fishing games. With the bonus trail capped at x5 in both modes, the 100x Free Spins buy holds the sharpest math in the game at 96.27% RTP, whereas the 250x Super buy asks far too much just to boost the odds of spotting a 500x Golden Fish.