Bison Blocks

Bison Blocks: Slot Overview

Bison, you gotta feel sorry for these guys sometimes. In the late 1800s, the poor beasts were nearly hunted into extinction, their population hitting a low of just a few hundred. Their numbers have bounced back, but now, for some reason, bison or buffalo, as they are also known, are regularly recruited by online slot developers for use in their games. How bison got to be so popular in slots is almost as puzzling as why there's less antimatter in the universe than there is matter. Instead of going on a mental bender, let's accept the scenario and take a look at Bison Blocks, an online slot from software developer Stakelogic.

If you expected to be running across the prairie with the wind in your hair while chasing buffalo, you better extinguish those thoughts right now. For Bison Blocks, Stakelogic has forgone the North American wilderness usually found in a buffalo game for something a lot more mysterious. In look and feel, Bison Blocks was closer to previous Stakelogic games like Devil's Trap or Jaguar Strike than a regular bison game. Take your pick as a comparison; there are many to choose from - Bison Rising Megaways, Buffalo Rising Megaways, or Big Bad Bison Megaways, to name but three pretty much at random. Daring to be different, Bison Blocks stampedes away from open country to somewhere woodier, murkier, and less obvious. Good if you're interested in seeing bison in a different setting, maybe not so good if you're in the mood for some wide-open American skies.

One of the first things greeting players who load Bison Blocks is a prompt asking whether or not they would like to use the Super Stake betting feature. Without it, bet levels are 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin; with Super Stake, the bet is doubled, but symbol values remain unchanged. What changes is extra scatter symbols are placed on the reels, theoretically increasing the chance of triggering free spins. Alternatively, free spins can also be bought from the bonus buy menu, where the choices are 10, 12, 14, 16, or a random option for 100x, 150x, 200x, 250x, or 175x the bet, respectively. With an RTP value of 95.25%, which seems to apply no matter how Bison Blocks is played, the game is powered by a highly volatile math model.

Bison Blocks uses a ways-to-win pay system rather than fixed bet lines, so its 6-reel, 4-row gaming grid possesses 4,096 ways to win. It also has 8 regular paying symbols. The 4 low-value ones are diamonds, spades, clubs, and hearts, while the 4 high pays are different coloured bison symbols. When a 6 symbol win hits, players collect 0.7 to 1 times their stake for the low pays or 1.5 to 10 times their stake for the highs. Wilds help link winning symbols by substituting for anything except scatters.

Bison Blocks: Slot Features

When winning ways hit in Bison Blocks, one of its main features springs into action. This is the cascade mechanic, which does not remove winning symbols as per usual. Instead, it removes all of the losing symbols, letting winning symbols drop to the bottom of the grid where they stick. After the drop, the empty parts of the screen are refilled with symbols. If the cascade lands any new winning symbols, the process repeats until no new winning symbols cascade into view. Then a win is calculated. Crucially, after 3 consecutive cascades, the grid expands to 6 rows high, with 46,656 ways to win. At the end of the spin, the grid resets to its default size.

Free Spins

Scatters are removed by the cascade features and are collected. Collecting 3, 4, 5, or 6 or more scatter symbols triggers 10, 12, 14, or 16 free spins, respectively. In free spins, a win multiplier is active. It starts on x1, and each cascade increases it by +1. The win multiplier applies to all wins and does not reset until free spins end. Retriggers are possible in the round, too. When 3 or more scatters are collected during cascades, +5 free spins are awarded.

Bison Blocks: Slot Verdict

It took a few spins to open up to Bison Block, as it wasn't totally clear what the story was. Maybe because it's a buffalo slot that does its best not to look like a buffalo slot, that made finding familiar footing slightly trickier. If the bison in the game were presented as zombie versions, Bison Blocks actually might have made more sense. It's funny; it's so easy to be critical about the repetitive nature of online slots – recycled features, recycled themes, and so on. Yet, something unusual like Bison Blocks can feel oddly unsettling. Perhaps this is due to being so conditioned by a certain way of doing things that stepping outside the box is unsettling, or there is a tangible reason why cliches become cliches. A puzzle for another day, perhaps.

It does mean Bison Blocks could have used bison, boars, bones, books, biostatisticians, it really wouldn't have made much difference, really. In saying that, maybe there's some link from the game to the flaming-eyed buffalo in the forest from the Amazon Prime series American Gods? Too much overthinking probably, which is funny because Bison Blocks is a pretty straightforward game, rules-wise. All you've got to do is hit a combo, clear the screen, and cross your fingers that the win is improved after the symbol cascade. Better yet, get at least 3 consecutive cascades to balloon the game grid out to its full size. Then, what was already a lot of winning ways becomes a shedload of winning ways. The win cap is fairly commensurate, at 15,000x the bet in the base or bonus game, but don't want to sound greedy; it wouldn't hurt to have been higher.

A real mind-bending max win figure might have meant more eyeballs pointed at Bison Blocks, but there are no real complaints. Bison Blocks is kinda weird for a buffalo slot, but not in a deal-breakingly offensive way, and the features have promise, so bison-philes, or players looking for a cascading wins alternative, might be down with Bison Block's particular mannerisms.