Big Bad Bison: Slot Overview

If anything deserves the “big bad” tag, it’s surely an angry bison thundering forward—at least that’s how it plays out in the imagination. I’ve never actually seen one roaming the American plains, so who can say? In photos, these huge animals look fairly calm, content to graze and hang out with their buffalo buddies. Still, “Rather Large Placid Bison” doesn’t quite hit like Big Bad Bison, the online slot from Australian software designer Big Time Gaming. And if anyone can bring out a mean streak in a bison herd, it’s the Aussie heavyweight—so let’s see how the game performs.

Choose bison as your slot theme and the visual direction is more or less decided. A North American landscape is basically mandatory, and Big Bad Bison delivers that via a looming rocky cliff face… and not a whole lot else. It’s not the most striking backdrop a buffalo slot has ever had, although the drifting birds and their eerie calls do help set the mood. The same scene returns in free spins, only the bonus plays out at night, with a star-filled sky slowly sliding across the top of the screen. With light pollution washing out the night sky in cities, you can imagine how incredible it must look out on a desert or prairie with no artificial glow for miles and miles and miles—just you and the universe…

Back to Big Bad Bison itself: it runs on a highly volatile math model and offers a return to player of 96.58% to 96.59%, depending on how you choose to play. Either way, players select a base bet from 20 p/c, and can then purchase the free spins round for 50 times the stake or trigger the Win Exchange once a win of a certain value lands. The action takes place on a 6-reel grid, with each reel able to show between 2 to 7 symbols, creating up to 117,649 ways to win.

Big Bad Bison comes with 10 standard pay symbols, plus a wild and a scatter. The paytable includes 9 to A low-paying card ranks in a familiar BTG style, paying 0.7x-0.8x for a 6oak hit, alongside higher-paying deer, wolf, eagle, and bison symbols worth 1.5x to 25x for 60ak. Wild symbols not only assist in forming wins by substituting for any regular pay symbol, but they may also appear with multipliers of up to x5, while also increasing the number of Megaways.

Big Bad Bison: Slot Features

Alongside the wild multipliers, there are a few more additions, including free spins with an increasing minimum ways-to-win level, plus the Win Exchange.

Free Spins

Hitting at least 3 scatter symbols in the base game grants 12 free spins. During the bonus, one of the key things to aim for is landing 2 or more scatters to retrigger the feature. This not only adds 4 more free spins, but also boosts the minimum number of ways to win increases. It begins at the usual 64 ways; then the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth retriggers raise the minimum ways to 729, 4,096, 15,625, 46,656, and finally the maximum, 117,649 ways on every free spin from that point onward.

Win Exchange

When a win worth between 25 to 50 times the stake lands, players can choose to exchanging the entire amount for a shot at 12 free spins. If you take the offer, the Win Exchange spins a wheel split into red and green sections. Stop on green and you receive 12 free spins; stop on red and you get 0 free spins.

Big Bad Bison: Slot Verdict

After a bit of imaginary stampeding across the plains with the buffalo, the strengths and weaker points of Big Bad Bison start to stand out. On the plus side, Big Bad Bison is about as dependable a bison slot as you could ask for. That said, the scenery isn’t exactly the most inspiring slice of nature we’ve seen in this type of game—it’s largely just a rock wall, although the starry free spins sky did spark a few wandering thoughts. As you’d expect from a Big Time Gaming title, the numbers are as reliable as they come. From the RTP range to a base game max win of 30,395 times the bet, climbing to a bonus round max win of 67,640x, Big Bad Bison delivers where it counts.

The feature set is solid too, even if it’s not extensive. Wild multipliers can be a great fit on a Megaways layout, and the increasing minimum ways mechanic worked nicely in a game like Morgana Megaways, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t work here as well. Everything functions smoothly and the stats are spot on. Even so, Big Bad Bison felt a little underpowered for a Big Time Gaming release. The theme itself is fine, but it’s also unusually common, and the execution feels a bit light when you consider the creativity BTG is known for bringing to the table.

In the end, there isn’t much more to add beyond what’s already been covered. Overall, Big Bad Bison offers players who enjoy North American/buffalo-themed slots a well-built option to take for a spin. It’s certainly a polished gambling engine, but Big Bad Bison doesn’t quite reach the level of those standout Big Time Gaming slots that make you sit up and say “wo”.