Buffalo Pokie Review
Buffalo came straight from land-based casinos where it was a very popular entertainment. The online version is also a hit with gamblers because it copycats its outstanding features and even a “Buffalo!” cry heard when five buffalos arrange in a combination. The pokie has a bit unusual design, which is natural to the Xtra Reel Power family of pokies from Aristocrat. Its key features to be described hereunder are deactivatable reels and huge wild multipliers of up to x27 during free spins. Just give a shot at this legendary game and you will love it from the first spin.
Design and symbols in Buffalo
The theme of the pokie revolves around North American animals and the reels are set against a prairie land where herds of untamed buffalos live. The gaming field consists of 5 reels and 4 rows, which gives players unique opportunities to create payable combinations. Besides, the pokie is based on a 1024-ways-to-win model, whereby matching symbols must fall on the reels that border each other, and their position on these reels is immaterial. For example, you get a buffalo symbol at the center of reel 1, at the top of reel 2 and at the bottom of reel 3, and win 50 coins. Playing a 1024-ways pokie is actually the same as betting on 1024 paylines.
A bundle of symbols used in the game falls under two subgroups: playing cards and animals. 9-A playing cards pay out 2 to 100 coins and they occur quite frequently on screen. In fact, almost every spin ends in a winning combo of whatever value. Animals that you are going to see on the gaming board are a deer (120 coins), a wolf (120 coins), a tiger (150 coins), a bald eagle (150 coins) and a buffalo (300 coins).
Bet options and payouts
How much you can bet is determined by two options: Reel Cost and Bet per Reel. A reel cost is an Aristocrat’s branded option that stems from the Xtra Reel Power feature. The essence of that feature is that a player pays for a reel, not for a win line. The maximum possible stake is 40 coins for five reels. Besides, a bet per each reel may vary between $0.01 and $5, thus a total bet can be as low as $0.40 and as high as $200 per spin. That said, the top three awards that everyone can grab are $1500, $750 and $600. The pokie certainly has a low-volatility gaming algorithm that delivers frequent but small wins and a player has to wait for some time before hooking some valuable assets.
Stacked Buffalo symbol
The term “stacked” as used in pokie reviews denotes a manner in which a symbol appears on a single reel. Normally, each particular reel shows different symbols on it, but a stacked picture lands multiple times on a single reel. There is a probability that the entire 20 positions will be covered by buffalos, in which case you are guaranteed to have a huge win. A more realistic scenario is that one or two reels are covered by buffalos completely or just partially, and this is an excellent outcome, too.
Wild Sunset
Sunset is a wild symbol that can make your game far more interesting when you get one or more wilds in view. It lands only on reels 2, 3 and 4, but this does not affect their performance because they substitute for all symbols in the game. Not only playing cards and medium-paying symbols are replaced by wilds but also buffalos, and this will help you get better money prizes.
Free spins with wild multipliers
Scatters in the pokie are introduced by gold coins. They will not be on the reels very often because they are special symbols but when 3 to 5 of them appear, you will obtain a number of free spins. Gold coins do not need to appear in a particular winning formation to trigger free spins because they are scatters and count in absolutely any place. You get 8, 15 or 20 bonus free games for 3, 4 or 5 scatters.
During the bonus feature, the wild sunset behaves differently from what it does in the normal game. When Sunset appears on reels 2, 3 or 4 and becomes engaged in a winning combination, it multiplies a win by x2 or x3. A good thing about the feature is that multipliers are multiplied together, not added, when two or three wilds land. For example, a winning payline with three wilds, each having a multiplier of x2, produces a total multiplier of x8. If three wild multipliers of x3 are achieved on a spin, the resulting win will be 27 times as high. Assuming that an active payline contains two buffalos and three x3 wilds in any free spin, the total win will be an astonishing $40,500 ($1500×27), which is the highest potential return from the pokie.
Gamble feature
The pokie is furnished with a standard gamble feature that may be activated after a profitable spin by clicking the Gamble button. Guessing correctly a color or suit of the facedown playing card, you increase your last win by x2 or x4. The feature is skipped automatically, unless the Gamble button is hit.
Summary
Buffalo is a 5×4 video pokie based on an animal theme and featuring 1024 possible ways to win, free spins and a wild symbol that gives an enormous multiplier in free spins. Bets allowed in the pokie are from $0.40 to $200.