Big Bad Buffalo Slot Review
Red sandstone pillars frame both edges of the screen, a stream glints below the reels, and sun pours in from the upper right of a deep blue desert sky. Big Bad Buffalo is proof that a slot doesn’t need a single new idea to justify itself – it puts a fat, old-fashioned paytable and stacked wilds on a 5×4 grid, and lets the arithmetic do the talking.
That’s a rarer bet than it sounds in a market drowning in feature ladders and modifier stacks. High 5 Games have built it with 20 fixed paylines and a 96% RTP, a Buffalo symbol towering over the pays, and one scatter-driven Free Games Bonus carrying all the feature weight. It sits alongside 88 Drums, Nordic Kings and Striking Tiger in the studio’s catalogue, though this one keeps things more traditional than any of them.
Symbols and Pays on 20 Lines
The game plays out across 20 fixed paylines on the 5×4 grid. The paytable splits cleanly into three tiers: the animal symbols at the top, the card royals at the bottom, and the two wilds, which sit above everything.
Values are credit figures, shown without any bet modifiers applied.
- Buffalo: 20 for three, 100 for four, 2,000 for five
- Eagle: 15 for three, 60 for four, 300 for five
- Cougar / Wolf: 10 for three, 40 for four, 200 for five
- A, K, Q, J and 5: 5 for three, 10 for four, 50 for five
That Buffalo row is the shape of the whole game. Five-of-a-kind Buffalo pays twenty times what the Eagle does and a hundred times the royals, so the animals carry the top end while the cards do the grinding.
The royals are where most of the line wins will come from, and they’re priced accordingly: a five-card royal line returns 50 credits against 2,000 for the Buffalo. It’s an old-school spread, wide at the top and flat at the bottom.
The middle tier tells its own story. Eagle, Cougar and Wolf all pay the same within their rows, so the choice of animal on the middle reels never matters to the payout – only the count does. A five-Eagle line and a five-Cougar line are separated by a clean 100 credits, and the Wolf and Cougar are identical.
There are two wilds, which is the one genuinely non-standard touch in the base game. The Canyon wild stands in for everything except the Buffalo wild, while the Buffalo wild covers every symbol on the paytable. Both can land stacked, and a full stack across a payline or two is where the base game’s biggest wins come from.
- Canyon wild: 50 for three, 250 for four, 5,000 for five – the richest symbol on the grid
- Buffalo wild: substitutes for every symbol, including the Buffalo itself
That dual-wild setup does quiet work on the paytable’s reachability. Because the Buffalo wild stands in for the Buffalo symbol, the 2,000-credit top line is easier to complete than the raw symbol count suggests, and the Canyon wild’s own 5,000-credit five-of-a-kind actually out-pays it.
The game sets no stated ceiling on what a spin can pay. What the top combinations and the bonus round can build is the practical limit, and the stacked wilds are the main builder.
Free Games Bonus
The Bonus symbol is a scatter, and it’s the only route out of the base game. It appears on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5 only, which rules out the first reel entirely and caps the possible scatter count in one spin at four.
- 3 Bonus symbols: awards 12 free games
- 4 Bonus symbols: awards 25 free games
That’s the entire feature: no pick’em, no wheel, no multiplier ladder bolted on top. The round plays as free spins on the same grid with the same paytable, so everything the base game offers – the stacked wilds especially – stays in play throughout.
The two award sizes sit further apart than the scatter counts suggest. Twenty-five free games is more than double the three-scatter award from a single extra symbol, so the difference between a good trigger and a great one is one reel’s worth of luck.
The value scales with the scatter count. Twenty-five free games with stacked wilds in play is a long enough run that several full paylines can land inside it, and the four-scatter trigger is the one worth waiting for.
The 96% RTP is the total expected return across base game and feature combined. There’s no separate jackpot contribution and no alternate RTP configuration to weigh up.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7/10
This is a slot you can play with half your attention and still know exactly where you stand, which is precisely why somebody would choose it. The canyon looks good enough that the waiting never feels like a chore, and the reason to sit down at all is that 5,000-credit Canyon wild sitting at the top of a paytable you’ll have memorised by your third spin.
The best thing here is the dual wild setup: because the Buffalo wild covers everything, the top line is genuinely reachable rather than theoretical, and stacked wilds give every spin a live ceiling. The worst thing is the narrowness – one scatter, one round, nothing else, so the gaps between bonuses are just reels turning. There’s no filler feature pretending otherwise.
It suits players who like their slots plain and well made, where the paytable does the work and the artwork does the scenery. Anyone who wants layered features and constant motion will find this canyon too quiet. For everyone else, it’s a handsome take on a very old formula.
Big Bad Buffalo FAQs
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How do you trigger the Free Games Bonus in Big Bad Buffalo?
Land 3 or 4 Bonus scatter symbols anywhere on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5. The first reel never carries a Bonus symbol. Three scatters award 12 free games, and four award 25 free games. -
What does the wild do in Big Bad Buffalo?
There are two wilds, and both can land stacked. The Buffalo wild substitutes for every symbol on the paytable, while the Canyon wild covers everything except the Buffalo wild – and pays 5,000 credits for five of a kind, making it the richest symbol in the game. -
Which reels can the Bonus symbol land on?
The Bonus scatter appears only on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5. Because reel 1 never carries it, the maximum possible scatter count in one spin is four, which is the trigger for the 25 free games award. -
What is the RTP of Big Bad Buffalo?
The RTP is 96%, and that figure covers the base game and the Free Games Bonus together. No jackpot contribution is taken out of it. -
How many paylines does Big Bad Buffalo have?
The game has 20 fixed paylines on a 5×4 grid. -
What is the highest-paying symbol in Big Bad Buffalo?
It’s the Canyon wild, at 5,000 credits for five of a kind. The Buffalo symbol comes next at 2,000, though the Buffalo wild’s blanket substitution makes that top Buffalo line easier to complete than it first appears. -
Who makes Big Bad Buffalo?
Big Bad Buffalo is made by High 5 Games, a studio with a large catalogue of wildlife and nature-themed slots. This one sits squarely in their traditional line-based lane. -
When is Big Bad Buffalo released?
Big Bad Buffalo’s release date is 20 July 2023.
