Big Sumo Slot Review

The main focus of the Big Sumo slot is its titular ‘Big Sumo’ feature and the accompanying Mega Wheel and Triple Way Jackpot feature.

Big Sumo and Mega Wheel

When the Big Sumo and Rice symbols appear, the progressive free spins game begins. The game changes when activated. The grid becomes 5 reels and 5 rows with 50 fixed paylines.

The bonus starts with the Big Sumo symbol in the centre of the reels. The quantity of Rice scatters used to trigger the bonus round dictates the figure the rice stack counter starts. The game aims to fill up the rice stack meter.

During the bonus, the Big Sumo symbol will jump to all visible rice symbols, thus consuming them and adding their tally to the meter. 

When the meter gets filled, one of two things will happen:

•     The Big Sumo symbol expands to cover additional reel places.
•     Another free spin is added.

If granted, the expanded Big Sumo wild increases your chances of multi-line winnings, and the additional spin offers you another chance to discover more rice scatters to continue the cycle. 

When the Big Sumo eats its fill and has expanded to cover the entire reel set, players will be granted a spin on the Mega Reel; normal spins halt. Gives Mega reel spin. Prizes include 70x, 100x, 150x, 200x, or 350x your stake, and once awarded, players return to normal base game play.

Bonus Buy Feature (Non-UK)

Players in eligible regions can buy instant access to the Big Sumo bonus feature for 55x their current total wager.

Triple Way Jackpot Feature

This Playtech Jackpot system is less well-known, with limited information from third parties or Playtech (made worse by their absence of a search option on their site).

The Gold Triple Way (reels 1, 3, 5) and Silver Triple Way (reels 2, 4) scatter symbols are exclusive to this system. The gold or silver Triple Way sign resembles a slot machine with a 'w'. The Triple Way Jackpot feature is triggered by 3 or more of this scatter symbol. Given the game's Sumo theme, the bonus's pop-up screen looks like a 3x3 fruit machine with vintage icons, which is anachronistic and jarring considering the Sumo theme of the game.

Players can spin this slot to win 3-35x their wager, or the Minor, Major, or Grand Way jackpots.  The Minor, Major, and Grand Way pots have seed values of £1,000, £10,000, and £100,000, respectively, and all bets contribute 1.95%. Freeplay mode disables Triple Way and displays 'not available' instead of reward values.         

If you had asked me to blindly guess who developed the Big Sumo slot, I would assume it was from one of the smaller indie companies and not an online casino giant like Playtech.  I say this because while the idea and premise are good, the game has numerous basic problems, with a lack of clarity and information being my biggest concern. I thought only ultra-high volatility slots required a slog before a win, but due to the lack of transparency, writing this article was too.

Casino devs should have nothing to hide, and Playtech should most definitely know better. The lack of major information, such as volatility and top prize, plus the inaccessible nature of info, including vital mechanics like seed values, may make players sceptical of the legitimacy of the game.

While I understand some information takes time to accrue, making players run around in circles to try to find the most basic information does not sit well with me, and I think a lot of players will be frustrated by this.

Since there are better slots with more features, greater transparency, and possibly more fun to offer, the Big Sumo slot feels like a huge waste of time. So I give Big Sumo a puny 3/10.  

Rating: 3.0