Big Bamboo has a few intricate features built into the gameplay but it becomes easy to understand once you have played the game a few times.
In essence it can be broken down into three parts – Mystery Bamboo, Golden Bamboo and Free Spins. The latter has the best potential and works with a superb progressive gameplay mechanic but is extremely tricky to unlock.
But let’s start with the easy stuff.
Mystery Bamboo
You will see stacks of green Mystery Bamboo symbols regularly on the reels. When they land the green bamboo will slide across and reveal either pay symbols, wilds or Golden Bamboo.
Pay symbols or wilds will help you to create winlines and trigger payouts. But it’s really the Golden Bamboo that you want.
Mystery Bamboo and Golden Bamboo can bring up big winsGolden Bamboo
This is an instant win prize feature that is separate to the standard paylines wins. It can lead to some very good wins where multipliers and high value instant wins interact.
When Golden Bamboo is revealed, then each symbol position where the bamboo is displayed will spin on its own until it reveals a prize or modifier. The prizes are instant wins valued at 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x, 25x, 50x, 100x, 250x, 500x, 1,000x, 2,500x and 5,000x.
Modifiers are as follows:
Multiplier Symbols – these will multiply the value of the Instant Win prizes displayed by the the Multiplier’s value of 2x, 3x, 5x or 10x, before the Multiplier is removed.
Collector Symbols – This symbol will collect the value of all Instant Win Prizes displayed on the grid before they are removed.
Free Spins With Symbol Conversions and Progressive Multipliers
The main event, and the hardest part of Big Bamboo to unlock, is the free spins round. It has an intricate system to trigger it, so let’s start with that.
It requires a combination of Scatters and Gamble Scatters. Scatters can land on reels 2, 3 and 4 at any time, OR they can appear ANYWHERE courtesy of the Golden Bamboo feature.
Free Spins Rules in Big BambooTo be in with a chance of entering free spins you need a Gamble Scatter to land on reel 4 at the same time as two ordinary Scatters land elsewhere. If this happens, then the Gamble Scatter will spin before revealing one of the THREE available free spins configurations OR a blank:
- Between 4 and 9 free spins
- Between 7 and 9 free spins with two of the low value symbols converted to Mystery Bamboo symbols
- Between 8 and 10 free spins with ALL the low value symbols converted to Mystery Bamboo symbols
To add jeopardy at this point, if you land one of the first two configurations then you can gamble for a better one. However, if you do this you may lose the free spins completely, so beware! The gamble is done with the spin of a wheel shown in the screenshot above.
What makes this part of the game so exciting is the progressive gameplay during which collecting Scatters converts low value symbols into Mystery Bamboos AND awards you more free spins.
Scatters are collected in meters to the right of the reels. Each meter represents one of the low value symbols and has four dots next to it. When a scatter is collected in the meter, one of the dots changes color. Once all 4 change color, the symbol is converted and spins are awarded.
The first meter to be filled gets you 4 spins, the second and third get you 3 spins and the fourth gets you 2 spins.
Also, with each symbol converted, a multiplier value is activated to be applied to any wins from the Golden Bamboo feature (the one with Instant Win Prizes of up to 5,000x!). The multipliers are 2x, 3x, 5x and 10x.
And finally … you can earn more free spins by landing a Gamble Scatter when Golden Bamboo is playing in the free spins round. That can get you a further 1, 2 or 3 spins!
