Big Win Cat

As China continues to grow in size and importance, so too do slot makers move to find new ideas to make games around. And Big Win Cat has an obvious homage to a fan favourite animal of the Chinese. According to old Chinese stories, the Jade Emperor summoned all the animals to a grand meeting. The Rat and Cat were both bad swimmers, but made an agreement to cross the river together on the back of the Ox. The order at which the animals crossed the river would be their position on the zodiac – but the rat would betray the cat and push it over into the river, depriving it of its spot on the calendar, fuelling the dislike between the two for the rest of time. Big Win Cat offers gamblers a 3×3 playing field with 5 paylines, in which the mixture of frequent re-spins and the multiplier wheel can bring forward a sizeable 800x your bet win.

Big Win Cat has a certain visual appeal to it that is undeniable. The animals are done in a cutesy style, with pronounced cheeks, small eyes and big smiles drawn on their faces, which pairs nicely with several other icons that fit the theme of old China. The animations are quite enjoyable to watch and you can tell that Play’n GO put in a lot of effort to make Big Win Cat nice to look at.

But that doesn’t compare to the fact that it’s far more fun to play. We’ve expressed some annoyance with 3×3 slots as sometimes stick too close to the old formulas, but this Play’n GO release knocks it out of the park. It uses the smaller playing field to its advantage, as symbols appear stacked quite often. If only one reel isn’t fitting in, that reel gets a single re-spin to potentially fit in with the others. This also activates a follow-up special feature that adds a random multiplier by spinning a bonus wheel.

You can play Big Win Cat for as little as $0.05 a spin or as much as $100 per spin, depending on how much you have to spend. However, there’s no progressive jackpot and it doesn’t change that the top value is going to be a win that’s 800x your wager. To get that, the multiplier from the bonus wheel needs to land at its highest, 10x, and you need a reel full of Cats, which are Wilds. So, while this obviously won’t appear in the first fifty spins unless you’re insanely lucky, the game is full of small wins and engaging gameplay that lead up to one of these chunky wins, so we’re satisfied.

The obvious Chinese theme present is quite enjoyable, as it doesn’t rethread familiar territories, such as putting too much value on the number eight or using Chinese figures in a cheap pandering effort. Instead, you have a mixture of cutesy animal symbols and several items from old China such as exquisite fans, golden coins and jingling bells, just to name a few.
Beyond the icons, however, is the presence of special features. There aren’t plenty in Big Win Cat, but it goes to show you don’t need a massive amount of bonuses to make something great. The first obvious success is that individual symbols appear stacked quite often. The second is the re-spin which activates when two reels are stacked with a single symbol, which allows the third to adjust to the other two, and complete the full three reels with a single icon.

This activates the multiplier wheel. It has a random chance of selecting any multiplier between 2x to 10x, with 10x being the highest you can go, which allows for the highest possible jackpot of 800x the stake to be won.