Buffalo King Megaways demo: 200,704 ways, two published RTPs and multipliers that multiply

Buffalo King Megaways is Pragmatic Play’s Megaways build of its own Buffalo King, and it does two things worth knowing about before you spin it. It runs more ways to win than a standard Megaways game, and its wild multipliers multiply each other rather than adding up.

The second one matters far more than the first, and it is the opposite of how the studio’s most famous game handles the same idea.

200,704 ways, and where the extra ones come from

A conventional Megaways slot has six reels carrying up to seven symbols each, which gives 7 to the power of 6, or 117,649 ways. That figure is quoted so often it gets treated as what Megaways means.

This game is built differently. Reels 1 and 6 hold up to 7 symbols, reels 2, 3, 4 and 5 hold up to 8, and the top row above reels 2 to 5 spins independently. Multiply it out and you get 7 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 8 x 7, which is 200,704. The game prints that number on its own rules screen and the arithmetic checks out.

Whether it means anything is a separate question. More ways is not more return, it is the same return sliced more finely, and the paytable is adjusted to match. It does change the texture: with eight symbol positions on four reels, small wins land more often and are worth less each.

What the symbols pay

Ten paying symbols, wins from the leftmost reel rightwards on adjacent reels. Everything below is a multiple of total bet.

The buffalo also pays on two of a kind at 1x, the only two symbol win here.

Look at how far the buffalo sits above everything else. Six buffalo returns 20x your stake while six eagles, the next symbol down, returns 6.25x. That gap is the game: one symbol carries the base game and the other nine are there to keep the reels moving.

The wild appears only on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5, never on the outer two, and substitutes for everything except the bonus symbol.

Free spins, and the multiplier rule that defines the game

Four or more bonus symbols anywhere trigger the round, and the bonus symbols pay on their own as well.

Three or more bonus symbols during the round add five more spins, and the rules put no limit on retriggers at all.

Inside the round, every wild that lands carries a random multiplier of 2x, 3x or 5x. Each time a wild takes part in a winning combination its multiplier is added to a running indicator, and here is the rule that separates this game from its stablemates:

Compare that with Sweet Bonanza, where the bombs are added together and three of them at 100x, 25x and 10x come to 135x. Same studio, same tumble mechanic, opposite arithmetic. Multiplying compounds fast, which is why this game’s free spins can go from ordinary to finished in three tumbles, and why most rounds do neither.

The catch is the condition attached. A wild only contributes if it takes part in a winning combination, and wilds land only on the middle four reels. A 5x wild on a reel that does not connect is worth nothing at all.

Two RTPs, and an ante bet that says what it does

The rules screen is unusually straight about this. It states a theoretical RTP of 96.52%, and directly beneath, an RTP of 96.49% when using the Ante Bet.

Most games with an ante option state a range and leave you to work out which end belongs to which mode. This one labels both. But the more useful page is the next one along, because it does something rarer still: it quantifies what the extra money buys.

So the trade is stated rather than implied. Standard play is a 20x bet multiplier. Switching the ante on moves you to 25x, which is 25% more money per spin, and in exchange the natural free spins chance is doubled and more bonus symbols appear on the reels. The symbol paytable does not change: those symbols still pay as they would at 20x.

Whether that is worth it comes down to arithmetic you can now actually do. You are paying 25% more per spin to double the frequency of the round that holds all the multipliers, and giving up 0.03 percentage points of RTP for the privilege. If the free spins are the only part of this game that can produce a large result, and they are, then paying 25% to hit them twice as often is a defensible trade in a way that most ante bets are not, because most ante bets never tell you what you are buying.

The other figure on that page is the ceiling. Maximum win is 5,000x bet, and reaching it during free spins ends the round on the spot with any remaining spins forfeited. That is mid-range: above Big Bass Bonanza at 2,100x, well short of Sugar Rush 1000 at 25,000x.

Checking the rules screen yourself takes two taps and is the single most useful habit a slots player can pick up. We wrote up why in what a slot’s three numbers actually tell you.

Playing the demo above

Pragmatic Play’s own free play build, loaded straight from the studio. Play money, no account, nothing real at stake.

The thing worth watching here is the reel heights. Megaways games change shape every spin, and this one changes more than most because four of its reels can run to eight symbols. Watching how often the board actually reaches its full size tells you something the 200,704 figure does not: the maximum is rare, and most spins are played on a considerably smaller grid.

What a demo cannot show you is variance, because a play balance is not your money and a short session is not a sample.

Where these numbers come from

The RTP figures, ante bet terms, volatility rating, paytable, ways calculation, bonus symbol pays, free spin counts, multiplier rules, win cap and bet limits were read off the rules screens inside Pragmatic Play’s own Buffalo King Megaways build on 20 August 2026. The screenshots above are ours, taken from that build on that date, and show the exact lines the claims on this page rest on. Comparison figures for Sweet Bonanza, Big Bass Bonanza and Sugar Rush 1000 were read the same way from their own builds.