Marlin Masters Demo: Free Play and Review

Marlins carry cash, lines carry Marlins

Marlin values climb from 1x to 10x in single steps, then 15x, 20x, 25x and 50x, and at the top 100x, 250x and 1000x, according to GAME INFO. Hacksaw's web page has one more step, 500x, missing from the in-game list, and the demo server's own symbol table holds a 500x Marlin as well.

A Marlin can pay without any Fisherman. Three or more of them on one of the 14 lines, read from reel 1, form a Lootline and are paid the sum of their values. On those same lines the ordinary symbols pay little: 0.1x to 2x for the five card ranks, 0.5x to 5x for the brown and green fish, and from 1x up to 7.5x for the red fish and the barracuda. The Wild, an anchor and rope marked W, pays only as a five, for 10x.

We caught that 11.1x spin, Fisherman-free, in our on-screen session. Across the 500-spin log, base-game Lootlines turned up 6 times and paid €82.00 between them.

One Fisherman per reel, and each one pays for every Marlin

The Fisherman, a bearded man holding a golden anchor, is the other way to cash a Marlin. A reel holds one at most, so a spin can show five. He gathers every Marlin on the grid once, on a line or not, and multiplies their sum by the value on his tile.

On that frame €18 of Marlins times 3 gives €54.00, or 27x the bet. Our log adds two cases the rules only imply. On spin 455 two Lootlines paid four Marlins, and then the Fisherman collected all four plus a fifth that sat off the lines. Each of the four was paid at least twice; the two on both Lootlines were paid three times. In the second natural bonus three Fishermen landed together and each took the same three Marlins worth €10.00, so they paid €30.00.

Without Marlins he has nothing to multiply. At least one Fisherman landed on 21 of our base spins, and on 14 of them the sea was empty. One was spin 389, with three Fishermen and no catch. Spin 386 was another, although its Fisherman carried x15, the only base-game one above x1.

Twelve squares of Fishermen above Reel It In!

Reel It In! needs three FS scatters and gives 10 free spins under a bar of twelve grey Fisherman squares, set in three groups of four. Every Fisherman that lands lights one square, catch or no catch. Each completed group adds 10 spins and raises the lowest Fisherman multiplier from then on: x2 after the fourth square, x4 after the eighth and x10 after the twelfth, printed on the bar as MIN X2, MIN X4 and MIN X10.

Four FS start Off the Hook! with 15 spins and a stronger bar, on which every Fisherman carries x2 or more from the first spin. Its upgrades add 15 spins each and lift that floor to x4, then x10, then x15.

We bought Reel It In! for €130.00 for the clip below. Its only Fisherman came on the sixth free spin, collected €34.00 from five Marlins, one of them worth 10x, and lit the first of the twelve squares. Three small line wins later the round ended on TOTAL WIN 37.40, 18.7x the bet.

Each of our three natural rounds was a Reel It In! as well. They brought 2, 3 and 2 Fishermen, so across all four rounds no bar got past its third square and no round played an 11th spin. A higher multiplier can still land without an upgrade; in the first natural bonus a x4 Fisherman turned €18.00 of Marlins into €72.00.

Plenty of Fish in the Sea, the round with no card

A badge on the intro screen announces a hidden bonus, and this is it. Five FS symbols in one base spin start Plenty of Fish in the Sea with 10 free spins, each of which brings at least one Marlin and one Fisherman, and no Marlin in the round is worth less than 5x. The rules mention no Progress Bar for it.

Apart from the three bonus triggers, no spin in our log showed more than two FS symbols. The buy menu has no card for this round, so it opens only when five FS land on one spin.

21 Fisherman spins, 7 with a catch

Most base-game wins are small change. 29.6% of our spins paid something and the median hit was 0.2x, while the longest dry spell ran to 13 spins.

Fisherman collections, all 7 of them at x1, paid €138.00 and the Lootlines €82.00, together 62% of the €354.00 the base game returned. Our top base-game result was the double payment on spin 455, worth 26.5x.

Those three rounds paid 47.6x, 54.8x and 46.8x. The biggest of them started on spin 227, and its largest free spin was four Lootlines worth €76.00 with no Fisherman in sight. The balance never stood higher than after the first spin. It finished on its lowest figure, €4,652.40, a return of 65.2% on €1,000.00.

Fishy FeatureSpins against a bought Reel It In!

BonusHunt and Fishy, the two FeatureSpins cards, keep billing each spin until they are switched off. At 3x the bet, €6.00 here, BonusHunt makes each spin five times likelier to start a bonus. Fishy FeatureSpins costs 50x a spin for at least one Fisherman and two Marlins every time, so the sea is never empty, although no FS symbol can land while it runs.

For scale, spin 455, our best base spin with a Fisherman, paid 26.5x in all, about half the cost of one Fishy spin. The two bonus cards sell Reel It In! at 65x and Off the Hook! at 200x. Reel It In! carries the label Medium; the other three cards say High or Very high.

The demo's own GAME INFO states 96.24%. Hacksaw's page for this game has no data block, so the lower versions, 94.39%, 92.35% and 88.35%, come from casino listings, and any of them may be the one a casino has installed. Buying a feature is not allowed in every country either.

Lootlines here, LootLines again in Rome

The word came back two months later. Reign of Rome, released in April 2025, also pays its cash symbols on LootLines, and there the Tributes, counted from reel 1, either add or multiply. Here the Marlins are read on a line as well, but a Fisherman can then take them from any square, on the line or off it.

Le Fisherman leaves the collecting to Buckets on a 6x5 cluster grid, and a Bucket that has collected once never collects again. No such limit applies to the Fishermen in this game, who each collect all the Marlins even when another has just done the same.

Hacksaw has since built three more games on this one, all under the Marlin Masters name: The Big Haul, Atlantis and OG. None has a review here yet.

The money in this game comes through its Marlins, three on a line or a Fisherman's haul, and the plain symbols matter little. In our session a Fisherman found Marlins on 7 of 500 spins, and none of the four Reel It In! rounds we saw gathered the four Fishermen a first upgrade needs.