Ever pondered the possibility of reincarnation? Living life, then returning in the future, along a chain of rebirth, growth, and experiencing life's various possibilities. That would be pretty cool in some ways. The thought occurred while reviewing the online slot Wild Bison Charge from software provider Pragmatic Play. Maybe, and this is a big maybe, some of the people who inhabited the North American wilderness back in the day have returned in a later era in the guise of casino game makers. This ingrained focus on bison or buffalo and the wildlife accompanying them might explain why there are so many darn buffalo slots on the market. It is unlikely we are going to solve this existential puzzle by playing Wild Bison Charge, but who knows what we will find?
The first thing to stumble upon is Wild Bison Charge's natural setting. Here, we are out in the wide-open lands of the US of A before malls and highways came to dominate. Fair dues, the USA has some fantastic National Parks, so perhaps Wild Bison Charge is held in one of them? Anyway, it's got rocky outcrops, water features, and skies that stretch across the horizon. A Bon Jovi-ish soundtrack has been provided to add a bit of a rock 'n roll Western feel, and the game, from start to finish, oozes Pragmatic Play's trademarkable slick presentation.
Wild Bison Charge is a scatter-paying online slot played on a game grid with 5 reels and 5 rows of symbols. Landing yourself at least 8 matching pay symbols in any position triggers a payout – the more symbols, the greater the reward will be. Highly volatile, though with a bonus round that felt fairly balanced, when bought at least, Wild Bison Charge has a default RTP of 96.03% when playing normally or 96.04% when buying free spins. Bet levels vary from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin.
The game's got a bit of a stampede thing happening amongst its premium symbols which includes coyotes, eagles, cougars, bears, and bison. Beneath them on the table are low-pay J-A royals. Hit a scatter made up of 8 matching symbols is worth 0.1 to 5 times the bet, or a 25-symbol full-screen win pays 45 to 250 times the bet.
Wild Bison Charge isn't exactly brimming with steaming innovation in the features department, but one or two extras here might be of interest. The features list has wilds with multipliers and free spins.
Wild Bison Charge has 3 wild symbols, each displaying a differently coloured bison and a random multiplier of x2, x3, or x5. The first thing wilds can do is substitute for all symbols in the game except for scatters. The multiplier value on a wild symbol is applied to all winning combinations it is part of. If more than one wild is used in the same winning combination, the wild multipliers are added together. It is possible for the same wild to be part of more than one winning combination.
Scatter symbols appear on all reels, and landing 3, 4, or 5 of them awards 9, 12, or 15 free spins, respectively. What's different in free spins is when wild symbols hit, they still function as laid out in the previous paragraph, but they remain on the grid until the free spins round ends. Landing 2, 3, 4, or 5 scatter during the feature awards an extra 2, 3, 4, or 5 free spins. Lastly, to buy the free spins, the cost is 100x the bet to trigger a spin, where 3 scatters are guaranteed to hit.
Sorry to say, we did not answer the riddle posed during the intro paragraph, so whether someone or someones at Pragmatic Play used to roam the rugged North American lands hunting or admiring buffalo back in the day will have to remain a mystery for now. Less mysterious is Wild Bison Charge's gameplay. It's a fairly straightforward scatter-paying slot most of the time, possessing nothing monstrously extraordinary, yet nothing so horrendous it'll send players running for the hills. Pragmatic Play has popular slots like Sweet Bonanza and Gates of Olympus safely tucked away under its belt already, so the studio knows a thing or two about designing pay-anywhere slots.
This being the case, the team has played it a little safe when creating Wild Bison Charge. For much of the time, there's nothing outstanding that is likely to create frothing levels of excitement amongst experienced pay-anywhere players. The theme is completely old hat, no real need to go into it much. By the same token, it's hard to deny Wild Bison Charge's features are pretty solid, as well. Mixing up wilds with a pay-anywhere mechanic is fairly brave, to begin with, but chucking a multiplier element in there is also an appreciated move. Wild Bison Charge's potential is well respectable as well at 12,000 times the bet, though, for clarity's sake, the paytable mentions this amount is awarded when the whole grid is covered in 25 wild symbols. Outside this occasion, the game's max win is in some ways a little less clear cut.
Well, the buffalo/bison slot stampede just grew by one more, and something tells us that it won't be the last one, either. It's not a game which made a huge impression, but its sticky wild multiplier symbols in a scatter pays slot is quite neat. Wild Bison Charge does what it does, delivering a familiar stomping ground for those keen on some buffalo-themed action in a finely functioning, if a little underwhelming as a whole game.
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