Fat Panda: Slot Overview

If there’s one region Pragmatic Play keeps circling back to, it’s Asia. No matter how far the developer wanders, it tends to drift back here sooner or later, as if pulled in by gravity. That brings us to Fat Panda, a slot where a feature reel drops different modifier symbols onto the grid, plus a bonus round in which wild panda symbols turn sticky. If that sounds pretty hǎo, it’s worth a closer look.

With plenty of experience building this style of game, Pragmatic Play has clearly refined its visual craft, and Fat Panda is a strong example of an Asian-themed slot done well. The main reels sit inside a pagoda-style frame, while the backdrop is a richly detailed Asian scene filled with abundant flowers and classically styled buildings. According to World Atlas, panda bears now live only in the bamboo forests of Gansu, Shaanxi, and Sichuan provinces of China, and there are only around 1,864 (WWF’s figure) remaining in the wild. Hopefully they endure, because losing these lovable animals from their natural habitat would be genuinely depressing.

Staying upbeat, and if pandas ever do vanish from the wild, at least zoos and online slots will keep their memory alive for future generations. In Fat Panda, the panda appears on the wild symbol, which can land on every reel of this 5×3 arranged slot and substitutes for any standard pay symbol. To get them rolling, you’ll need to choose a stake of 20 p/c to $/€100, and there are two bonus buy options available for anyone who wants them. The RTP doesn’t change based on how you play Fat Panda, topping out at 96.07%, though two lower return models exist too. With highly volatile gameplay, Fat Panda uses 20 fixed paylines to calculate wins.

As for the symbols, the paytable starts with 10-A card ranks, then moves up to premium icons: coins, a fan, a drum, a lantern, and a pair of sycees. A 5-of-a-kind low symbol win returns 0.5 to 1 times the bet, while a 5-of-a-kind premium win pays 1 to 5 times the bet. Any winning wild combinations pay the same as the sycees symbol, btw.

Fat Panda: Slot Features

Fat Panda packs in a handful of key mechanics – the Top Reel with modifiers, free spins, and the bonus buy.

Top Reel With Modifiers

Above the main 5×3 reel set sits a horizontal reel that can land blanks or modifiers which work as follows:

• Add Wild – places a wild symbol into a random position on the reel directly below.
• Expand Wild – if at least one wild is present beneath it, that reel becomes a full reel wild for the current spin.
• Add Wild Multiplier – lands with a multiplier value of x2 to x10 and applies that value to all wilds on the reel beneath it. Multipliers apply to all wins passing through them.
• Add Multiplier to all Wilds – lands with a multiplier value of x2 to 20, which is applied to every wild on screen. Multipliers apply to all wins running through them. If a wild already has a multiplier from another modifier, the values multiply between themselves.

Free Spins

Scatter symbols can appear on every reel. Landing 3, 4, or 5 triggers 10, 12, or 15 free spins, respectively. The Top Reel continues to operate during free spins, and any wild symbols that land remain locked in place until the feature ends. If the Additional scatter symbol appears, it awards an extra 1 – 10 free spins.

Buy Free Spins

You can purchase free spins directly from the base game whenever you like. The first option is a standard free spins trigger for 70 times the bet, while the second costs 300x the bet and starts free spins with 5 wild symbols land on the first free spin.

Fat Panda: Slot Verdict

The title may sound familiar, but Fat Panda is clearly nothing like Fat Rabbit, so it’s difficult to argue Pragmatic Play was trying to ride on Push Gaming’s well-known hit. After giving Fat Panda a proper run, it also felt unlikely to build the same kind of cult following as its rabbit rival. There’s a fun Kung Fu Panda vibe to the presentation, and with Pragmatic Play’s long track record in Asian-themed slots, they’ve put together another entry that looks and sounds the part. At times, Fat Panda can be a little sluggish, but it undeniably has the ingredients to go wild when everything lines up.

One of the best ways for that to happen is getting sticky wilds onto the reels in useful spots as early in the bonus as possible. That’s what makes the pricier of the two bonus buys tempting, since it drops a solid batch (5) on the very first spin. Even so, starting with 5 sticky wilds doesn’t automatically mean a huge outcome, even with the Top Reel modifiers helping out. One snag was seeing wilds land in awkward places where they simply didn’t want to connect across the fixed pay ways. Not trying to be negative—just flagging a few realities. Naturally, if luck turns your way, Fat Panda can smash in the other direction for up to 20,000x the bet. With piles of sticky wilds and the Add Multiplier to all Wilds modifier in play, who knows—things could get very interesting.

Still, maybe not interesting enough to push Fat Panda into the same bracket as its cuddly rabbit competitor. But if you enjoy Asian-inspired slot action with a panda bear thrown in for extra charm, then trying to sync up Fat Panda’s features can feel a bit like cracking a particularly stubborn sudoku.