Buffalo Slot Games 2021

From a gameplay standpoint, the most interesting thing about the Buffalo slot is that it makes use of Aristocrat’s Xtra Reel Power design. This feature is Aristocrat’s take on ways to win slots; instead of needing to spin symbols on certain paylines, wins register no matter where on a reel a symbol lands, so long as they are successive.

What makes Xtra Reel Power stand out among other ways to win slots is that players can decide how many reels they’d like to have in play, depending on how much they want to bet. The lowest available reel cost for Buffalo gives players access to one horizontal and one vertical reel, while the highest lets them play across all of the reels like a more typical ways to win pokie.

While this is an interesting way to let players control how much they’d like to wager, the drawback is that having fewer reels makes it significantly more difficult to earn winning combinations. More than other pokies, the Buffalo slot becomes something of a balancing act between betting enough to get ahead, but not so much that you’ll fall behind.

While Aristocrat has implemented this unique gameplay mechanic, in many ways Buffalo is a fairly normal slot machine. It has a series of lower-value symbols, which are represented by playing card icons. These exact symbols appear on most Aristocrat games, so there is a bit of a missed opportunity to better theme them to the slot.

The higher-value symbols are animals that you might find on in the plains, including elk, wolves, and of course, buffalo. The buffalo symbols are particularly interesting because - while they aren’t special symbols - they have a unique animation, and even a voice line plays when you match them, which is a rarity in slot machine games. Also, they only require two symbols for a winning combination, while all other symbols except for the 9 playing card icon require three.

Lastly, the Buffalo slot has two symbols with special properties:

The sunset is the Wild symbol, and can substitute for any other symbol in a winning combination, with the exception of the Scatter symbol. Wild symbols only appear on the three middle reels, and they also have a unique function during the free slots bonus game.

The coin is the Scatter symbol, and spinning at least three of them anywhere on the reels activates Buffalo’s free slots feature. Depending on the amount of Scatter symbols you get on the reels, you’ll be able to earn more free spins, up to a maximum of 20 games for five Scatters.

These same symbols all appear on Buffalo Gold, though most of the animal icons are updated from the original version.

While there are a few spots where Aristocrat could have taken the design further, Buffalo is still a gorgeous slot machine. The sunset background, with purples and oranges, is attractive without pulling too much attention away from the reels. It is a little disappointing that the buffalo is the only animated symbol, but all of the animal symbols are eye-catching and realistic.

It is a bit of a strange decision that the slot has no background music like most other nature or animal slots, instead using the ambient noises of a crowd playing at a casino. Given its roots as a real-world slot machine, it does make sense to recreate that atmosphere for Buffalo’s online version, and so it does stand out from other slots in that respect.