There’s nothing better than a lazy summer morning in the countryside, where you can find lots of lakes, rivers and streams to spend a whole day fishing and enjoying time with your friends, right? If this is your cup of tea, and you also like multi-player online slots, then there’s a perfect combination for you embodied in Playtech’s new release – “Fishing with Buddies”.

The five-reel, 20-payline title has been off to a shaky start, as many Playtech casinos that offer it have a technical glitch in the game, but after those errors are ironed out, we hope to see the game appear in its best light. And it’s truly a cute game, which involves five bears, fishing buddies who have gone to their favorite spot to spend some quality time together and engage in their favorite pastime. They’re lazy and may occasionally fall asleep, so you need to wake them up by spinning the reels which shake their fishing pole. Speaking of the reels, you’ll find lots of hooks, buckets, crabs, as well as some poker symbols; apart from these, there are special features to keep you entertained: wilds, scatters, and two bonus rounds, all of which may bring you some nice prizes, with a bit of luck.

As for the size of bet you can choose, it’s another aspect that has not been quite clarified and needs Playtech’s attention. Namely, some casinos only offer two coin sizes – 1 cent and 5 cents. Others offer a bigger range, from 1 cent to 20 cents (but the game is often unavailable in those places), so it remains to be seen what the final bet range will be. One thing’s for sure – it’s gonna be affordable, especially having in mind that five wilds on a line can bring you a massive payout of 5000x line bet.

Special Features:

As mentioned before, the slot’s special features are one of its strong points. To start with, its Wild symbol is there to replace all other symbols except the scatter and the crab, in order to make an additional winner. They also pay out separately when two or more of them appear on an active payline, so if the win amount from Wilds is larger than the win from the regular symbols, it will be the one to be paid.

Then, we have a super cute Fish a Crab feature, activated when the Crab symbol appears on the top row of the reels and directly below your bear avatar (which you choose at the beginning of the game). Here you can win 5x the total bet with the help of your selected bear, who will cast his fishing line and pull up the crab, bringing you the cash prize.

Then, there’s the Scatter symbol which awards a bet multiplication when two or more of them appear anywhere. Finally, we have a lucrative two-stage bonus feature which is awarded randomly and is triggered at the same time for all qualified players (the way to qualify is to play as fast as you can - the faster you play, the deeper your bear’s line goes in the bonus screen above the reels; and if you stop spinning, the line will go up and once it’s at the top, your bear will fall asleep and won’t be able to qualify if someone hits the bonus round).

Now, at the beginning of the bonus round, fish start swimming in all directions at the different levels of water – so they get caught by the bears’ lure and the corresponding player gets a cash prize. Also, it’s worth keeping in mind that the deeper the fishing line in the bonus round, the bigger the cash prize. 1 to 3 of the fish that appear in the first bonus round stage are goldfish and each player can only catch one goldfish. If any of the players’ bears have caught a goldfish by the end of the first stage, the second bonus stage will begin. Then, each of the bears with a goldfish will release the goldfish back to the water and get an additional cash prize in return. All in all, a great amount of money’s to be won if you get lucky and activate the feature!

The general impression left by “Fishing with Buddies” is a good one, if you get to play it. It covers all the important aspects of multi-player slots, including socialization through chat and joint bonus round with big prizes. It just needs the glitches to be dealt with, and it’ll be the game to enjoy and turn to whenever you get the sudden urge to enjoy nature.

- reviewed by Latest Casino Bonuses, last updated 2012-08-14