Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync

Review Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync

The overall look & feel of Buffalo Stack ‘n Sync is outstanding. Graphics are well designed and colourful, whilst the reels are surrounded by wooden poles lashed together. Animations are nice and smooth. The features look as great as you’d expect from a game powered by Hackaw Gaming, with stacked reels covered in flames whilst they spin. The audio is equally high quality, with a Wild West-style soundtrack with jangly electric guitar rhythms that fit the game well and will make you feel like you’re part of the prairie.

How to Play

When playing a new pokie game like Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync for the very first time, it might get a bit challenging to know how to make use of the different controls. This clear how-to-play guide should help get you going with this new title by Hacksaw Gaming:

• Click on the three-line menu in the bottom left corner to see the paytable.
• Set your stake by clicking the up and down buttons which are found at the bottom right-hand corner. Total bet levels per spin are shown to the left of these buttons.
• Spin the reels once by hitting the spin button, to the right of the bet icons.
• To spin repeatedly, click the auto spin icon to the right of the spin icon. This allows you to spin up to 1,000 times without interaction. The specific controls also make it possible to set a win or loss limit. Autoplay is available in New Zealand and you can conveniently set loss and win limits with the autospins to meet your needs.
• If you want to make use of the bonus buy features, click the ‘buy bonus’ icon in the bottom left corner. Remember that even though you buy your access to the bonus feature you are not guaranteed to make an actual win.

Symbol Wins

If you’re a fan of Western movies, then you will love Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync pokie as the wild west is the central theme of this game. This is reflected in the grid’s background where you see a sunny desert whilst the cool guitar music that accompanies the gaming process and also the symbols of the pokie. Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync has both regular and special symbols. Regulars are the symbols of playing cards, with 10 being the lowest of the low values. The animal symbols yield a bit more; there is the house, cougar, wolf, eagle, and buffalo; the latter is of course the highest paying regular symbol.

Then there are some other special symbols like wild symbols that look like a cactus and substitutes all symbols. It also costs as much as a buffalo symbol if you collect 5 Wilds in the payline. There are also special symbols that activate specific features of the game. If you manage to land 3 bonus symbols, you’ll get a free spin feature, and 4 bonus symbols will trigger stampede spins.

Bonus Features

The game of Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync is played with 10 fixed paylines, where a winning combination must always start on the 1st reel. This makes it a bit difficult to make winning combinations at first, but fortunately there are different special symbols and features that can help you with that such as the Stack ‘n’ Sync symbol and Stampede Reels feature.

Stack ‘n’ Sync symbol

The Stack ‘n’ Sync symbol can help you make winning combinations. When this symbol lands, a large number of any pay symbols are added to the reel which means that either 15, 30, 45 or 60 any pay symbols are then added to the reel, increasing the probability that this symbol lands.  You will then receive a respin for every Stack ‘n’ Sync symbol that can be seen on the grid. If you manage to spin even more Stack ‘n’ Sync symbols during a respin, the reels on which they land will copy a reel that has previously had a Stack ‘n’ Sync symbol. Then of course you get 1 or more extra respins.

Stampede Reels feature

Buffaloes play an important role and things get serious with a buffalo stampede. Reels that entirely consist of Buffalo symbols trigger the Stampede Reel. A random multiplier of x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x10, x15, x20, x25, x50, x75 or x100 is then added to the Stampede Reel. A Stampede Reel doesn’t function as a wild and so they can only form a winning combination with Buffalo symbols on other reels. If you manage to include multiple Stampede Reels in a winning combination, their multipliers will be multiplied together before being applied to the prize pool.

Free Spins

Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync comes with 2 free spins features which we’ll briefly discuss below:

1. To earn 10 free spins in this pokie, you need to spin 3 scatters in the base game. During the free spins feature, there is a greater chance that valuable symbols will land stacked. This also means Stampede Reels are a lot more common here.
2. To trigger the second variant you need to spin 4 scatters. During these 10 spins, only Buffalo symbols, Stack symbols or Skull symbols can land on the reels. Each time a Stack symbol is turned, a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 60 Buffalo symbols are added to the reel. These Buffalo symbols replace the Skull symbols. This increases the chance that Buffalo symbols land on the reel. That is of course beneficial, because you prefer to spin stacked Buffalo symbols. Each Stack symbol also gives us 1 extra free spin.

Bonus Buy feature

For the impatient players among us, the Bonus Buy feature gives a welcome solution. Making use of this feature means you don’t have to wait until you activate special features via the base game. In Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync, the Bonus Buy feature has 3 options:

• 15x your stake gives you a spin with a guaranteed 1 Stack ‘n’ Sync symbol with an RTP of 96.40%.
• 100x your stake gives you the free spins feature with an RTP of 96.46%.
• 250x your stake gives you the Stampede free spins feature with an RTP of 96.50%.

Payout Metrics

Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync is played on a standard grid of 5 reels, 4 rows, and comes with 10 fixed paylines. Winning combinations are made when the same symbol or wild lands on 1 of the 10 fixed paylines from left to right, beginning from the most left reel. Stakes range from just $ 0.10 up to $100 per spin, making sure that all sorts of players will be able to join the game. The Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync RTP is a sound 96.36%, which is above the 96% average for an online pokie and typical of a lot of Hacksaw pokies. This percentage was calculated by simulating 10,000,000,000 rounds. The hit frequency of Buffalo Stack ‘n’ Sync is set at a percentage of 20.20%, which means that just over a fifth of all spins on average will lead to a winning combination. The maximum win is 10,000x the bet, which is about average for Hacksaw games. The Stampede Spins feature is the quickest way to land this as you can get up to 60 Buffalo symbols on the reels for potentially large wins.

Summary

Visually, this game is what you’d expect from a wild west animal genre, but then again it is sort of untypical for a Hacksaw Gaming release. In the base game it’s all about landing the SNS symbol, which may lead to side-by-side respin wins that can potentially trigger full screen win. We have to say though that full screen wins don’t pay out more than 150x your bet unless the buffalo symbol is part of it. With multiplier symbols being added together, just about anything can happen in the base game and you need a multiplier of x50 to trigger the max win from a full buffalo screen. We find the regular bonus game a lot less thrilling than the Stampede Spin, but it can still lead to solid wins. All together, it is a joyful release like so many Hacksaw launches. It can either stampede all over your budget, or boost you with a sudden steroid jab to the sounds of no less than 10,000x your bet.