White Buffalo Pokie
‘Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play’, goes the traditional song, and with the White Buffalo pokie from Microgaming we have most of these creatures across 5 reels and 25 paylines and there are even rams and a moose thrown in for good measure.
Set in the freezing environment of a North American winter, this game not only sees some of the local wildlife, but also the high value playing card symbols alongside a couple of others that will trigger bonuses, with random free spins, wild substitutions and scatter payouts all being featured.
Stampeding to the Reels
A realistic background of hills and trees sets the reels off nicely, with the game title above them and indicators to either side showing how many of the 25 paylines have been activated. Underneath this, players will see the control buttons that are used to decide how much to stake on each spin, with the options ranging from just 0.01 to 150.00.
A nice touch is the cow skull next to the + and – buttons that are used to adjust coin values, with the maximum amount of a coin being 0.20 and up to 30 coins possible per line for a good bet range that will suit just about everyone.
To see what potential wins can be had when landing 2, 3 or more of the same type of symbol across an active line, on adjacent reels running from the left, players should check out the paytable. Here, they will see that just 2 examples of the ‘9’ playing card symbol are needed to get a 2-coin win, while landing a full row of 5 equals a prize of 100 coins.
The 10, J, Q, and K are worth progressively more, while the A pays 15, 75 or 250 when 3, 4 or 5 land across an active line.
The ram, deer and moose are worth more, with our friendly buffalo being the most rewarding of the regular symbols, treating players to wins of up to 1000x the coin value when he turns up.
White Buffalo
Unable to connect to MySQL: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory
Bovine Bonuses
A nice image of a buffalo silhouetted against a mountain and trees acts as a wild symbol. So it will act as all bar the scatter symbol to help players complete winning lines, with the added benefit that landing complete lines of the wild will pay up to 1000 coins.
The skull turns up again, where it acts as a scatter symbol, paying 2x the total bet per spin when landing in any 2 spots on the reels, while getting 3, 4 or 5 of them will result in multiples of 5x, 10x or 50x the bet being returned to players. Unusually, it doesn’t trigger any bonus rounds, as the main feature is completely random.
There’s no danger of not noticing when this is triggered, as players are treated to a herd of buffalo stampeding across the reels. They are then awarded 6 free spins and although that may not sound like many, during these any of the animal symbols will be transformed into the buffalo. So multiple buffaloes will appear and as this is the most valuable animal, players stand a good chance of getting some big wins.
The free spins can be randomly re-triggered during the round, with a further 6 added on to the end of any still left to play out.
Give it a Home, or Let it Roam?
This is a pretty good all-rounder, although it’s got a theme that some players will like and others won’t. North American wildlife turns up in lots of different games for some reason and while this means there is a keen audience for it, it could also mean some people are tired of seeing very similar pokies.
But they should perhaps give this one a go, as it has some interesting features, notably the random free spins which can lead to big rewards. Outside of this round however, it’s fairly standard stuff, with wild substitutions and scatter rewards being typical features in most games, and even the playing card symbols being familiar from numerous other pokies.
These are popular features and symbols though, so they are included for a reason and players should find White Buffalo a perfectly good pokie to try out.