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Grab your thermals and leave the coconut sunscreen at home. Hacksaw Gaming is taking us ice fishing in Marlin Masters: Frozen Frenzy, and the money here lives in Marlin cash symbols and the Fishermen who reel them in.
This is the fifth game in the Marlin Masters series. We’re trading the open water for an ice hole and going back to the 5×3 grid of Marlin Masters OG, but with a few noticeable tweaks under the hood. The most glaring change? The max win has been slashed to 5,000x: the lowest in the series to date. On the other hand, the RTP has gone up to a very respectable 96.37%, the highest in the series. But does the gameplay make up for the lower cap? I took it for a 200-spin session to find out.
Base Game & The Savior of “LootLines”
I’ll be honest from the start: the standard paytable here is pretty stingy. The 9 paylines feel mostly decorative. A five-of-a-kind royal line pays a measly 2x your bet, and premium fish top out at 7.5x. During my session, my best standard hit was 8x from a few stacks of yellow fish.
Fortunately, the real focus is on the LootLines mechanic. If Marlin cash symbols land on adjacent reels along one of the nine paylines, starting from reel 1, they pay their combined cash value as a line win, no Fisherman required. In the base game I had four Marlins line up from the first reel for a quick 7x win. It’s a fantastic little feature that keeps the base game ticking over and stops you from constantly praying for a collector symbol to land.
The Tease of the Ice Marlins
When LootLines don’t connect, you’re back to standard fishing rules. You need a Fisherman to land to reel in the cash Marlins on the grid. He can also carry multipliers ranging from x1 up to x20.
But the real tease of Frozen Frenzy sits right above the reels. There are four frozen “Ice Marlins” with price tags up to 1,000x that reroll on every single spin. The snag? A regular Fisherman can’t touch them. You need the elusive Ice Fisherman to break the ice and collect 1 to 4 of these big prizes alongside the grid fish. The game absolutely loves to dangle 100x or 250x blocks in your face just out of reach. The Ice Fisherman is rare; he only showed up a handful of times for me in the base game, breaking one block each time, and the best of those paid a modest 6x.
If you get impatient, the game offers standing bets. Chill Out (50x) guarantees a Fisherman, while Ice Ice Fishy (75x) guarantees an Ice Fisherman. Just be warned: turning these on completely disables scatter symbols, so you cannot trigger free spins while using them.
Free Spins: A Steep Climb
Hitting the bonus is where things get serious, triggered by landing scatters:
- 3 Scatters (STONE COLD): 8 spins, Ice Marlins have a 5x minimum.
- 4 Scatters (ICE BREAKERS): 10 spins, Ice Marlins have a 10x minimum and stay active for the rest of the bonus once broken.
- 5 Scatters (CATCH AND RELAX): A hidden “super” mode guaranteeing a Fisherman and a Marlin on every spin.
Inside the bonus, the goal is to climb the Ice Bar progression meter above the reels. Every collector that lands moves you one step. Every fourth step adds 5 spins and raises the minimum multiplier on every collector after it, to x2, then x3, then x5.
Sounds great on paper. Well, it’s a very steep climb. In my session, a couple of natural 3-scatter triggers paid 17x and 20x. I never even reached the first level-up. Without those extra spins and minimum multipliers, the bonus plays like the base game with a meter on top.
A solid, if slightly harsh, winter addition to the series. Play it for the LootLines, but keep a strict eye on your bankroll during the bonus chases.
