Release the Bison

Release the Bison: Slot Overview

Hey players, are you in the mood for a 'Release' history class? If so, then let's rewind the clock to 2020, when developer Pragmatic Play caused Release the Kraken to bubble up from the depths, then later on dropping a sequel, Release the Kraken 2, a couple or so years later. The separation of time resulted in two quite different games. This brings us to early 2024, and Pragmatic Play has loosed an animal of an entirely different kind. The slot is Release the Bison, and the creature switch has a few technical changes accompanying it.

Of the two earlier Release games, Release the Bison most closely resembles Release the Kraken 2. Not on the front end, naturally. For this one, players are treated to a rather glorious outdoor location, all mountains, meadows, and trees. It really is a rather nice scene, though the serenity is interrupted by a number of oddly expressioned animal symbols on the reels. Not to the extent they're likely to prevent players from wanting to play the game; no, it could be argued that Release the Bison's technical aspects do a better job of curbing enthusiasm.

Not so much the RTP, however, as the default 96.54% is nothing to complain about. Nor is volatility, if highly volatile is your preference, and the vast 20 c to $/€240 bet level range should cover the majority of gambling appetites. For an added 50% to the stake, players can activate the ante bet, to gain a higher chance of winning free spins. Release the Bison's action unfolds on a 5-reel, 3-row, matrix with 20 paylines for assessing winning combinations.

The pay symbols have nature covered 10-A playing card ranks as the lower values ones, and 4 animal characters as the higher paying lot. A winning line of 5 identical royals pays 0.5 to 1.5 times the bet, while a line of 5 high pays is worth 2 to 10 times the bet. Bison appear on wild symbols, present on all reels. Wilds substitute regular pay symbols and are worth up to 12.5 times the stake for 5 wild win.

Release the Bison: Slot Features

The features in Release the Bison, whilst similar to Release the Kraken 2, have been chopped and changed, so this time, players get to look forward to wild respins, guaranteed wins, free spins, and feature buys.

Wild Respins Feature

In the base game, if at least 4 wild symbols hit, Release the Bison enters respin mode. In this mode, all wild symbols roam the reels, moving to random positions after each respin, while the game pays between each respin. Any new wild landing during this time awards another respin, and the multiplier that applies to all wins increases by +1. The new wild is also a roamer. Any scatter symbol landing during the feature is collected up to 5, and if at least 3 scatters are collected by the end, then free spins are triggered.

Guaranteed Win

In the base game at random, a non-winning spin may be changed into a win worth 10x to the 40x the bet.

Free Spins

Landing 3 or more scatter symbols triggers the free spins bonus game. At random, if 2 scatters hit in the base game, a respin may be triggered on the reels that do not contain a scatter. If a third scatter appears, free spins are granted. Before the bonus round starts, a wheel with two sides appears to award a multiplier and a number of free spins, governed by how many triggering scatters there were:

• If 3 scatters triggered the round, then 8-18 free spins with a multiplier of x1 to x5 are awarded.
• If 4 scatters triggered the round, then 8-18 free spins with a multiplier of x2 to x5 are awarded.
• If 5 scatters triggered the round, then 10-18 free spins with a multiplier of x3 to x5 are awarded.

During free spins, any wild landing on the grid transforms into a roaming wild that stays on the reels till the round ends, moving to a random position between free spins. All new wild symbols are collected in a meter. Starting from the fifth collected wild, for each new one, +1 more free spin is awarded, and the multiplier increases by +1. A maximum of 10 wild symbols can be collected this way.

Feature Buy

The free spins feature can be bought from the base game for 80x the bet for a 3 scatter trigger (RTP 96.55%), 150x the bet for a 4 scatter trigger (RTP 96.57%), or 300x the bet for a 5 scatter trigger (RTP 96.51%).

Release the Bison: Slot Verdict

Just as bison aren't as terrifying as krakens are, if they were real (maybe they are?), so is Release the Bison a less scary game than either Release the Kraken slot was, as it were. Pragmatic has trimmed away at the features of Release the Kraken 2, the game Release the Bison most closely resembles, as well as knocking back the winning potential. The Shifting Stack Wild symbols have been cut out, for example, and the guarantee win feature has been chopped down. The number of free spins is possibly greater, okay, but the maximum starting multiplier values have been reeled in a notch. Take some here, give some there, what have you got? Well, Release the Bison, really.

Overall, the changes have produced a less exciting game, partly because the win cap will now engage at 3,000x compared to 5,000x in Kraken 2 or 10,000x in the original release. Even the number of paylines remains the same when transitioning from the base game to the free spins round instead of doubling as they did last time, plus the Kraken Offer/box picking has gone. If there's a lot of grumbling going on in this Release the Bison's review, yeah, it does seem that way. Few of the technical changes Pragmatic Play has made are of the smile-inducing variety, and the positives are mostly swept away by the negative ones.

'Release the Kraken!' is a line from the 2010 film 'Clash of the Titans', uttered by the Greek God Zeus, played by actor Liam Neeson, a remake of the 1981 original, which went on to become an Internet meme. That quote has a lot more weight; it's a lot more chilling coming from the mouth of a Greek God than 'Release the Bison!' would have, and the same goes for the online slot versions Pragmatic Play has released.