Buffalo Blow

Buffalo Blow: Slot Overview

The time and location is 1980s Miami; think pastels, suits, and sockless shoes. The occasion; the Golden Claws gang is planning a heist targeting bullion from the SS Central America, known as the 'Ship of Gold', which sank in 1857. The problem is that the gold is stashed in the compound of a rival, the Fire Feathers. Will the gang, ergo players, be able to get their hands on the stash? Such is the story behind Buffalo Blow, an online slot designed by Four Leaf Gaming and powered by partner Relax Gaming. To get your hands on the shiny stuff means getting lucky with a Cash symbol collect system or hitting combos on a grid that can expand to epic proportions.

Visually, releases like Iron Bank and Beast Mode creeps to mind when taking a look over Buffalo Blow. Palm trees sway in the breeze, swanky high rises line the horizon, and there's a dreamy, low-angle sunlight, 27 degrees at 6 pm warmth look to it. This vibe definitely captures the allure that makes people flock to tropical, urban escapes. Also flocking there are the Golden Claws gang, led by Tony 'The Bull' Bisonetti, as well as Regal Ramone, Howl, Harry The Beak and Jitters. A herd of suave, sophisticated animal gangsters they are, too.

Buffalo Blow's gaming grid is a point of interest. For most of the base game and at the start of the free spins round, it's made up of 6 reels equipped with 4 rows each. At this size, 4,096 ways to win are active. However, the reels can grow to a maximum of 8 rows high randomly in the base game and progressively so in the bonus round, increasing the number of ways to win up to a max of 262,144. Gamblers may wager 10 c to $/€100 per game round in this medium/high volatile slot, where the default RTP value is 95.9%.

Lining the lower portion of the paytable are 10 to A card ranks, paying 0.5 times the bet for a 6 matching symbol win. After them are 5 character symbols, animal gangsters of various species, paying 1 to 2.5 times the bet for 6 OAK. Buffalo Blow has two types of wilds; both substitute for anything except scatters or Cash. One is a regular wild, while the other is a multiplier wild with a value of x2 to x10, which multiplies any cash or line wins in view.

Buffalo Blow: Slot Features

For a Four Leaf Gaming slot, Buffalo Blow has a lot fewer extras than normal. The studio has stripped its usual features away while Cash symbols, Cash Collect symbols, free spins, and a bonus buy remain.

Cash Symbols and Cash Collect

Cash symbols land with cash values displayed on them. They can be found on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5. Present on the leftmost and the rightmost reels are the Cash Collect symbols. Landing a Cash Collect symbol with Cash symbols instantly awards any Cash symbols in view.

Free Spins

Landing 3 scatter symbols awards 5 free spins, or landing 4 scatters awards 7 free spins. The reel height in free spins starts at 4 rows high and expands by +1 row on each spin until reaching the maximum height of 8 rows high. At that size, the game provides 262,144 ways to win. At least one Cash Collect symbol will land on each free spin.

Bonus Buy

Rather than wait for at least 3 scatters to naturally land, players may buy the free spins round for a cost of 50 times their bet.

Buffalo Blow: Slot Verdict

One of Buffalo Blow's biggest shocks was seeing how much Four Leaf Gaming had left out as much as it had added in. Nitro Spins, Fortune Coins, pre-feature Bonus Booster gambles, post-feature Bonus Replays, Super Spinner, all that stuff is gone, like the bank balance after a wild Miami shopping spree. Buffalo Blow doesn't suffer from the trim; it was just odd to see such a streamlined, frills-reduced slot from this studio. As a result, Buffalo Blow is one of Four Leaf Gaming's least burdened slots, for want of a better term, letting players simply hammer the spin button in an attempt to let the bare naked gaming do its thing in a more conventional, less padded out kind of way.

Following on from that, some of Buffalo Blow's features are pretty conventional, too. The Cash symbol collect element is standard stuff. Hit Cash symbols at the same time as Collect symbols, ta-da, there's some money for you. In addition, the multiplier wild is able to lend a helping hand by increasing way wins and Cash collection values. The game info does not mention the cash prize value range, so it's unclear what the upper limits might be. It's also unclear what the game's winning potential might be since this information was left off the paytable. One would suppose, maybe hope is a better word, that with all of those ways on tap, solid wins are at least a theoretical possibility, though symbol values aren't massive.

Cash symbol collecting is a slot form which is exceedingly difficult to see ending any time soon, if ever. Such is this style's popularity amongst players and casino game makers alike that barely a week goes by without new ones pouring out onto the market. As such, it can be tough to make a cash collect game which stands out from the crowd. Four Leaf Gaming has managed to do so to an extent, though largely because of theme and presentation, rather than delivering a set of gaming features so cunningly created as to be unmissable.