Reel Kingdom Reel Kingdom

Overview

Reel Kingdom is a slot development studio that began releasing games in early 2020. The studio is based in Wales, UK, and its legal entity is reportedly registered in Gibraltar. Many of the team members came from the UK arcade slot company Astra Games and the pub slot brand Barcrest, so they are people who have been making land-based slots for a long time.

Reel Kingdom does not supply its games directly to casinos. It uses Pragmatic Play as its sole distribution channel. Reel Kingdom designs and develops the game, and Pragmatic Play supplies it to casinos worldwide under its own name and distribution network. That is why players often think of the Big Bass series as “Pragmatic games.”

The success of Big Bass Bonanza

Reel Kingdom’s first six games did not get much attention. Then Big Bass Bonanza, released in December 2020, became a huge hit and changed the studio’s fate. The studio described that moment as “everything changed overnight.”

Big Bass later grew into a series, and today about a quarter of the games the studio has made belong to the Big Bass series. This series is reportedly responsible for about 95% of the studio’s revenue. AI Slot’s free slots also include nearly 40 games with Big Bass in the name.

Shared structure of the Big Bass series

The core is a simple structure of “fish cash values + fisherman collection.” The studio says it builds games on the idea that “one well-polished feature and one small twist is enough.” So every series shares the same basic structure and carries on by adding one change at a time, such as Hold & Spin, Megaways, or multiple fishermen. As this structure gained popularity, the fishing theme became a genre of its own.

Key titles timeline

Beyond these, seasonal versions like Christmas and Halloween, “1000” versions with a much higher max win (Big Bass Bonanza 1000, Big Bass Splash 1000, etc.), and versions for specific country markets keep coming out. Even among Big Bass games, RTP and max win differ by version. For example, based on the AI Slot database, Big Bass Bonanza has an RTP of 96.71% and a max win of 2,100x, while Big Bass Splash 1000 has a max win of 25,000x (RTP and max win slot rankings).

Pragmatic Play partnership structure

The approach where a studio makes games separately and leaves distribution to a big provider, like Reel Kingdom does, is called the “partner studio” model. A small studio doesn’t have to sign contracts with hundreds of casinos one by one, and the distributor gets access to popular games. The exclusive studios of Games Global have a similar structure (Games Global).