Buffalo King

Where does a 93,750x ceiling come from on a fixed 6×4 grid?

That is the question worth settling before the demo loads, because Buffalo King has no cascades, no expanding reels and no changing row counts. Every spin uses the same six reels, four rows high, with 4,096 ways to win.

The answer sits in the free spins. Wilds that land there carry a multiplier of 2x, 3x or 5x, and when more than one wild is part of the same win, those values are multiplied together rather than added. Two 5x wilds added would come to 10x. Multiplied, they come to 25x. Another wild in the same win multiplies the total again.

That one rule is what the game hangs on. The top figure of 93,750x, which comes from third-party listings rather than from Pragmatic Play, only makes sense because of that compounding.

A note on identity before the numbers. This page covers Pragmatic Play’s original Buffalo King. The studio also makes Buffalo King Megaways, at 96.52%, and Buffalo King Untamed Megaways, at 96.02%. They are different games with different grids, and nothing below applies to them.

Buffalo King spec sheet

Pragmatic Play’s own page supplies the RTP, the layout and the feature list. It does not state a volatility rating, a maximum win or a release date. Trade press reported the launch in early January 2020.

Ranking the features by weight

Buffalo King has a short feature list, and the pieces are not equal. Here they are in order of how much they shape what the game can do.

• Wild multipliers that compound. In free spins each wild shows 2x, 3x or 5x. One wild in a win simply applies its own value. Two or more multiply each other: 2x and 3x give 6x, 3x and 5x give 15x, and two 5x wilds with a 3x give 75x. Without this rule the bonus round would be an ordinary run of free spins.
• The retrigger threshold. Starting free spins needs at least three bonus symbols, but adding to them needs only two. Two to six bonus symbols during the round award between 5 and 100 extra spins. Each extra spin is another chance for several multiplied wilds to sit in the same win, though nothing guarantees that they will.
• The opening free spins award. Three to six bonus symbols start the round with anything from 8 to 100 spins. That is a very wide range, so one bonus round can be a brief affair and the next can run for a long time.
• Stacked buffalo symbols. The buffalo arrives in stacks, taking up more than one position on a reel. On a ways grid, extra copies of a symbol on a reel can add to the number of combinations a win counts, so stacks are the main thing that gives ordinary spins some substance.

Pragmatic Play’s page lists no feature buy, and UK versions of slots cannot offer one in any case. Free spins here come only from landing bonus symbols.

Reading the return, the swings and the ceiling

Return to player. The 96.06% figure is a theoretical average across an enormous number of spins. Put simply, over that very long run the game is designed to pay back about 96.06 units for every 100 staked, with the remaining 3.94 kept by the game. It says nothing about any single session, which can land well above or well below that line.

Volatility. Pragmatic Play does not publish a rating for Buffalo King, so we list it as not published. Third-party sites have filled the gap with their own labels, but they disagree, ranging from medium-high to very high. The honest reading is that no one rating is official. What can be said is that a game whose biggest results depend on several multiplied wilds meeting in the same free spins win is built around uneven outcomes.

Maximum win. The 93,750x figure appears on several listing sites, which agree on it, but it is not on Pragmatic Play’s page. On a stake of one virtual coin it would be 93,750 coins. It is a ceiling, not an expectation, and it relies on the compounding multipliers lining up in a way most free spins rounds will never approach.

Ways to win. The 4,096 figure is four rows multiplied across six reels: 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x 4. There are no paylines to follow. The grid size is constant from spin to spin, so the number of ways never changes.

How it sits beside Gates, Gonzo and the Big Bass games

The closest point of comparison on SlotSpecs is Gates of Olympus 1000. Both games are about multipliers, but they combine them in opposite ways. Gates of Olympus 1000 adds its multiplier values together; Buffalo King multiplies its wild values by each other. That is the single most useful contrast for understanding either game.

Gonzo’s Quest is a different kind of slot altogether: five reels, three rows, 20 lines and an Avalanche that keeps a spin going after a win. Buffalo King has none of that. A spin resolves once across a fixed 6×4 grid, and the extended play comes from free spins rather than from chains within a spin.

Big Bass Bonanza and Big Bass Halloween share Buffalo King’s studio and its publishing habit. In each case Pragmatic Play’s page gives an RTP and very little else, so the other headline numbers come from elsewhere. Eye of Horus Megaways is another game whose studio leaves volatility blank, though its Megaways reels change shape from spin to spin, which Buffalo King’s fixed four rows never do.

Our call on the original Buffalo King

Buffalo King is simple to read. The grid is fixed, the ways count is fixed, and the feature list is short. Almost all of its character comes from one rule in the free spins: wild multipliers that multiply together.

On the plus side, the studio-published 96.06% RTP is clear, the retrigger needs only two bonus symbols, and the compounding wilds give the round a real range of outcomes. On the minus side, Pragmatic Play publishes no volatility rating and no maximum win, so two of the numbers players most often look for rest on third-party listings. Outside free spins, stacked buffalo symbols are the main thing going on.

It suits someone who wants to understand how multiplied wilds behave on a ways grid without other mechanics getting in the way. It will feel thin to anyone who wants a busy base game. The demo on virtual coins is the sensible way to judge it: watch how often more than one wild shares a win in free spins, and how long the rounds tend to run.