Slots Like Big Bad Bison: The Minimum Ways Ladder Climb to 117,649
Big Bad Bison is Big Time Gaming taking its own Megaways engine back to the North American canyons, and the version it built here is unusually stripped back. Six reels stand two to seven symbols tall, so the ways count breathes between 64 and 117,649 from spin to spin, and there are no cascades to soften a losing spin. What you get instead is a wild that lands on the middle four reels carrying a multiplier of up to 5x, a free spins round of 12 spins from three or more scatters, and a Minimum Ways ladder that guarantees a wider and wider board every time you retrigger, up to a locked 117,649. Win Exchange lets you hand back a mid sized win for a shot at the bonus instead. The RTP is recorded at 96.58%, volatility sits at the top of Big Time Gaming’s own scale, stakes start around 10p or 20p depending on the casino, and the maximum win is 67,640 times the stake. Anyone hunting slots like Big Bad Bison is really hunting that ladder, because very little else on the market builds its bonus the same way.
Where to Play
18+ only. T&Cs apply. Please gamble responsibly.
Big Bad Bison Demo Play
The full game runs below on practice balance, no deposit and no registration. It is the same build the casinos carry, so the Minimum Ways ladder and Win Exchange behave exactly as they do for real money. 18+.
Game Information
How the Game Works
Reviewed by Brian TaylorPublished: July 2026
SlotsLike.co.uk contains affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you sign up through our site, and that never changes what a review says or what score a game gets. 18+ only. Please gamble responsibly (GamCare, BeGambleAware, GamStop).
The reels sit inside a rope framed board pinned against a red rock canyon at dusk, with a bison medallion hung in the top corner. Each of the six columns is redrawn every spin at any height from two to seven symbols, and the wooden sign above the grid tells you the ways total for that spin before the reels stop moving. A minimum board of 64 ways is common on a quiet spin. A full seven high board on every column gives the headline 117,649. Most spins land somewhere in between, and the number on the sign is the single most useful thing on the screen because it tells you immediately whether the spin has any real reach.
What separates this from most Megaways releases is the absence of a cascade. Big Time Gaming built the mechanic and it usually pairs it with reactions, so a winning combination clears and fresh symbols drop in. Not here. A win pays once, the reels stop, and you spin again. That decision changes the rhythm completely: sessions are quieter, individual spins matter more, and the wild multipliers have to do all the heavy lifting that repeated cascades would normally do elsewhere. It also means the base game has a hard ceiling of roughly 30,395 times stake, with the rest of the 67,640x maximum only reachable once the free spins are running.
Bet sizing depends on where you play. Some casinos open at 10p a spin and others start at 20p, and the top end is reported as either £10 or £20 depending on the operator and the market. That spread is worth checking on the stake selector before you settle in, because a game with this kind of variance behaves very differently at the two ends of that range. There is an autoplay control and a fast play toggle, both sitting in the standard Big Time Gaming side panel on desktop and tucked under the spin button on mobile.
Symbols and Paytable
The card ranks from 9 through to Ace fill most of the board and pay between roughly 0.20x and 0.30x for three matching, rising to about 0.70x to 0.80x for a six of a kind run. Above them sit the deer, the wolf and the bald eagle, worth around 0.40x to 0.50x for three and somewhere between 1x and 1.50x for six. The purple framed bison is the premium and the only symbol that pays from two on the reels, running from 1.50x up to 25x stake for a full six of a kind. Twenty five times your stake as the very top paytable line is modest by 2023 standards, which tells you plainly where the money in this game actually comes from: multiplied wilds stacking together across a wide board, not a single lucky premium line.
The wild carries a rainbow tinted canyon picture and only appears on reels two, three, four and five. It substitutes for everything except the scatter, and it can arrive plain or with a multiplier of 2x, 3x or 5x attached. The scatter is a golden BTG medallion and lands anywhere on the grid.
Bonus Features Explained
Multiplier Wilds
Every wild that lands has a chance of showing a multiplier value, and when two or three multiplied wilds fall into the same winning way those values multiply rather than add. Three 5x wilds on one line therefore turn a win into a 125x version of itself. Because wilds are locked to the four middle reels you can never hold more than four in a single way, and the arithmetic behind the max win is essentially the best case version of that stack landing on a very wide board. In practice a single 2x or 3x wild is what you see most sessions, and it is enough to turn a break even spin into a modest profit rather than anything dramatic.
The Free Spins Feature and the Minimum Ways Ladder
Three or more scatters anywhere on the grid awards 12 free spins, with additional scatters in the triggering spin adding more spins on top. The round starts with the ways count behaving as it does in the base game, and the interesting part is what happens when you land two or more scatters during the round. Each retrigger adds another four spins and pushes the Minimum Ways ladder up one rung. That ladder runs 729, then 4,096, then 15,625, then 46,656, and finally 117,649, at which point it locks and every remaining spin plays out on a full seven high board on all six reels.
That is the whole game in one mechanic. A single retrigger is pleasant, a second starts to feel like something, and reaching the top of the ladder with spins left on the counter is the only realistic route to a life changing result. It also creates a genuinely unusual tension: retriggers in most slots simply add spins, but here every retrigger permanently improves the quality of the spins that follow, so the round either compounds into something enormous or fizzles out on a narrow board.
Win Exchange
Land a win worth between roughly 25x and 50x your stake and the game offers you a trade. Accept and the win disappears, replaced by a spin of a red and green wheel: green awards 12 free spins, red awards nothing at all. Above 50x the exchange works differently, taking 50x of the win in return for a guaranteed run of free spins and paying you the remainder. It is a proper gamble rather than a dressed up bonus, and the honest read is that handing back a real 40x win for a coin flip at a bonus is a decision most players should think about carefully rather than reflexively accept.
Bonus Buy
Where local rules allow it, the free spins can be bought outright for 50x the stake. UK players will not see the button, since bonus buys are not permitted at British licensed casinos. Reviewers who have run the buy at volume report that the average return from a bought round is unremarkable relative to its price, which fits a game where the value is concentrated in the retrigger ladder rather than the base 12 spins.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- The Minimum Ways ladder is a genuinely original take on retriggers and gives the bonus a shape almost nothing else has.
- 96.58% is comfortably above the UK average and sits inside our high RTP band.
- Multiplier wilds that multiply against each other keep the maths open even on a narrow board.
- Win Exchange gives you an actual decision to make rather than another animation to sit through.
- The artwork and the canyon soundtrack are a cut above the average animal slot.
Cons
- No cascades means dead spins stay dead, and there are a lot of them.
- A 25x top paytable symbol makes the base game feel thin between features.
- Reaching the top of the ladder requires five retriggers, which almost never happens.
- Stake ranges and the exact RTP figure vary between operators, so the game needs checking before you play.
- Win Exchange can talk you out of a perfectly good win if you are not disciplined.
Game Screenshot
A base game spin caught at 21,600 ways. Four gold framed WILD tiles are on the board at once, spread across the middle reels, with deer, wolf and eagle symbols filling the gaps between the card ranks. The stake box on the right reads a plain 1.00 with no currency symbol shown, because this is the practice build.
Free Spins Screenshot
Inside the bonus the canyon turns to night and the Minimum Ways panel appears down the left edge, with the 4,096 rung lit green and the higher steps stacked above it. A gold x5 tile sits on the second reel alongside a WILD, and stacked bison fill the first and fourth columns on a 12,000 ways board. The side panel shows 1.00 as the free spins stake and 150.60 in total winnings so far.
Expert Take
Reception was warm rather than ecstatic when the game arrived in the middle of 2023. Reviewers who cover Big Time Gaming closely praised the ladder as a smart piece of design and were noticeably cooler about how flat the base game feels without reactions, and that split has held up. The community consensus that formed over the following year is that Big Bad Bison is a bonus hunter’s game rather than a session game: the base spins exist to find scatters, and everything worth watching happens after the third one lands. Reported hit frequencies from long sample runs sit in the low twenties as a percentage, which matches the experience of playing it. If you want a Big Time Gaming release you can grind at a small stake, this is not the one. If you want a round that can escalate in a way you cannot get anywhere else, it earns its place.
Similar Slots to Try
If it is the bison rather than the Megaways engine you came for, Bison Moon is the obvious companion piece: same animal, but the money sits in a locked jackpot board instead of a widening ways count.
Blueprint’s take on the same North American herd, built on the licensed Megaways engine with cascades left in, so the pacing is far busier than Big Bad Bison’s.
Pragmatic Play’s rebuild leans on wild multipliers that combine in exactly the way Big Bad Bison’s do, and its free spins round is the closest thing to the ladder in feel.
Another canyon and another set of stacked predators, with a mystery symbol reveal instead of a retrigger ladder. Worth a look if the artwork is what drew you in.
Blueprint again, this time with a wild multiplier trail that grows across the bonus round. It scratches the same itch of watching a number climb spin after spin.
About the Developer
Big Time Gaming is the Sydney studio that invented the Megaways engine and then licensed it to most of the industry, which is why a mechanic first seen on a mining themed slot in 2016 now turns up on everything from fishing games to television tie ins. The studio dates its own history to 2011 and became part of the Evolution group in 2021. Its output is deliberately small compared with the volume studios, and the house style is recognisable: real mathematical ambition, features that ask something of the player, and a willingness to ship a game that will not suit everyone. Big Bad Bison is a good example of that last trait, because dropping reactions from a Megaways game was a choice that plenty of studios would not have made. You can read the full studio profile on our Big Time Gaming page.
The Feature Drop game that made bonus buying mainstream in the UK before the rules changed, and still the studio’s best free spins gamble.
A quieter Megaways build with a coin collection angle, and a useful comparison for how differently the engine plays with cascades switched on.
Four separate free spins modes and a Heartstopper wild, showing the studio at its most maximalist rather than its most restrained.
Synchronised reels and a Megasymbol that swallows the grid, plus the licensed track, for anyone who wants the studio’s showier side.
Big Bad Bison Key Stats
Big Bad Bison slot information last reviewed: July 2026
| Big Bad Bison Slot Info | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Big Bad Bison |
| Provider: | Big Time Gaming (part of the Evolution group) |
| Developer Rank: | 11 out of 35 Big Time Gaming games |
| RTP: | 96.58% (a small number of sources record 96.59%, and the bonus buy configuration is quoted at 96.58%, so check the game information panel before playing) |
| RTP Category: | High |
| RTP Rank: | Mid table within the 96.50% to 96.99% high RTP band |
| Feature Description: | Multiplier wilds up to 5x on reels 2 to 5 that multiply together, 12 free spins from 3 or more scatters, a Minimum Ways ladder that climbs 729, 4,096, 15,625, 46,656 and 117,649 on retriggers, Win Exchange wheel gamble, and a 50x bonus buy outside the UK. |
| Feature Categories: | Megaways, Free Spins, Multiplier Wilds, Bonus Buy, Gamble |
| Reels: | 6 |
| Rows: | 2 to 7 per reel, variable every spin |
| Paylines: | None. 64 up to 117,649 Megaways |
| Volatility: | Very High (Big Time Gaming rates it 5 out of 5; several review sites file it simply as High) |
| Volatility Rank: | 5 out of 5 on the studio’s own scale |
| Min Bet: | £0.10 at some casinos, £0.20 at others |
| Max Bet: | £10 or £20 depending on the operator and market, so sources disagree |
| Max Win: | 67,640x stake (the base game alone is capped at around 30,395x) |
| Release Date: | June 2023 (Big Time Gaming’s own game page dates it 14 June, while most review sites record the wider rollout as 21 June) |
| Slotslike Rank: | New listing, not yet ranked among the 4,300+ games on the site (View Top 100) |
Slots with the Same Features
Megaways Slots
Games built on the same variable height engine, whether Big Time Gaming made them or licensed the mechanic out. See the full Megaways feature directory, or the games that reach the same 117,649 ways ceiling.
The savannah answer to the canyon, with tumbling reels and a multiplier that climbs through the bonus.
Red Tiger’s licensed rebuild of the avalanche classic, and a fair comparison for how much cascades change a Megaways board.
Multiplier Wild Slots
Slots where the wild carries a value rather than just filling a gap. Our increasing multipliers page collects the ones where that value grows.
Sticky wilds holding 2x and 3x values through free spins, stacking in the same multiplicative way.
Big Time Gaming’s fairytale build, where the multiplier climbs with every appearance of Bonus Boy and never resets.
Bonus Buy Slots
Titles that sell the feature directly where local rules allow it. British licensed casinos do not offer buys, so treat our bonus buy directory as a reference rather than a shopping list.
Another American plains setting with a jackpot layer bolted on and a buy option in eligible markets.
The most direct buffalo rival on the site, with a buy price that puts it in the same bracket as Big Bad Bison’s 50x.
Animal Slots
The wider herd. Our animal theme directory covers everything from prairie wildlife to jungle cats.
A ten payline bison game with jackpot symbols, at the opposite end of the complexity scale from a Megaways board.
The safari heavyweight, and one of the few animal Megaways titles with a comparable reputation for punishing dry spells.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the bonus work in Big Bad Bison?
Three or more golden medallion scatters award 12 free spins, and extra scatters on the triggering spin add more. During the round, landing two or more scatters gives you four extra spins and moves the Minimum Ways ladder up one step, guaranteeing at least 729 ways, then 4,096, then 15,625, then 46,656, and finally a locked 117,649. Multiplier wilds carry over from the base game and combine with each other.
What is the RTP of Big Bad Bison?
96.58% is the figure recorded across the sources we checked, with one or two listing 96.59% instead. That puts it in the middle of our high RTP band, which covers 96.50% to 96.99%, and comfortably above the UK online average. Operators occasionally run reduced configurations of Big Time Gaming games, so the number in the game information panel is the one that counts.
What is the maximum win on Big Bad Bison?
67,640 times your stake. The base game on its own is capped at roughly 30,395x, so the rest of that ceiling only becomes reachable once the free spins are running and the ways ladder has climbed. At a £1 spin the theoretical top prize is £67,640, and the probability of reaching it is remote enough that it should not influence how you bet.
Is Big Bad Bison high volatility?
Yes, and at the top of the scale. Big Time Gaming rates it 5 out of 5, which is the studio’s maximum, although several review sites file it under plain High rather than Very High. Either way the practical effect is the same: long stretches with nothing, then a bonus that either escalates through retriggers or ends quietly.
What are the best slots like Big Bad Bison?
Buffalo King Untamed Megaways is the closest for combining wild multipliers with a herd theme, while Buffalo Rising Megaways is the better pick if you specifically want cascades that Big Bad Bison leaves out. Primal Megaways offers a comparable climbing multiplier, and Golden Goose Megaways keeps you inside the same studio with a very different personality.
Can I play Big Bad Bison for free?
Yes. The demo is embedded on this page and runs on practice balance with no deposit and no account. On a game rated 5 out of 5 for volatility that is a sensible way to see how often the base game actually pays before committing real money.
Who makes Big Bad Bison?
Big Time Gaming, the Sydney studio behind the Megaways engine itself, now part of the Evolution group following its 2021 acquisition. The game was released in June 2023.
Should I take the Win Exchange offer?
It depends on how the win compares to your session. Below 50x you are gambling the whole amount on a wheel that can pay nothing, which is a genuine coin flip dressed in green and red. Above 50x only 50x is taken and the rest is paid out, which is a far easier decision to justify. Neither route changes the game’s overall return, so treat it as a preference about variance rather than a way to gain an edge.
Our Verdict on Big Bad Bison
Big Bad Bison is the rare Megaways slot that gets remembered for a single idea, and the Minimum Ways ladder deserves that. Watching a retrigger permanently widen the board rather than just top up the spin counter gives the bonus a sense of progress that most free spins rounds never manage. The price is a base game that has been stripped of everything comfortable: no cascades, a premium symbol worth only 25x, and dry runs long enough to test anyone. Big Time Gaming clearly knew what it was doing and built the game for players who are hunting the bonus rather than passing the time, and judged on those terms it works. Just go in knowing that the 67,640x headline sits behind five retriggers, and set your stake accordingly.
SlotsLike rating: 8/10