Happy Bamboo

Happy Bamboo Review

Push Gaming recently announced that they are redefining their portfolio, focusing on complex Push Originals, casual Actions, and classic-style Reel Hot Games. Happy Bamboo falls into the latter category, boasting a 3x3 grid with simple gameplay and few features. If you enjoyed the cartoonish, Asian visual style from Bamboo Ways, you’ll probably like what Happy Bamboo has to offer as well, at least in the graphics department. You get to join the panda and the monkey king on another trip to the Orient, with a similar temple backdrop.

You start by selecting your preferred bet level between €0.10 and €100 per spin, which should satisfy both penny punters and more serious gamblers. The panda is the highest value symbol, followed by the monkey king, a scroll, and a gourd. You win by landing 3 matching symbols on up to 5 paylines, starting from the leftmost reel, and the premium symbols award 25x to 100x your stake. The lower-value royal symbols pay either 0.1x or 0.5x your stake for 3 of a kind.

Happy Bamboo Slot - Reels Screen

The koi fish Wild symbol not only substitutes for pay symbols to help complete wins, but it also pays 100x your stake for 3 wilds on the same payline. If the panda symbol lands in the top position of a reel, a symbol swap feature triggers, guaranteeing a win. Mystery bamboo symbols take center stage in Happy Bamboo, as you may expect, revealing pay symbols, wilds, or golden bamboo mystery symbols. The golden symbols reveal cash prizes, jackpots, collectors, or multipliers, the latter boosting all present prizes.

You will accumulate sticky mystery bamboo symbols in the Hold and Respin bonus round, and these are revealed as the feature ends. If they turn golden, you get another reveal of special symbols, and either way, your total bonus win is boosted by up to an x10 multiplier. Happy Bamboo is a low to medium volatility slot game, scoring 2 out of 5 on Push Gaming’s scale. It boasts an above-average RTP of 96.3% (beware of RTP ranges) and a max win of 6,060x your stake.

Happy Bamboo Features

We have already briefly introduced the features above, but in this section, we go into more detail. You can always try the Happy Bamboo free play demo at the top of the page, if you want first-hand experience before or after you read about the features. Let’s check it all out!

Mystery & Golden Mystery Bamboo Symbols

The Mystery Bamboo symbols can appear on all 3 reels, revealing randomly chosen matching pay symbols, wilds, or Golden Mystery Bamboo symbols. If you get Golden Mystery Bamboo symbols, they spin to reveal one of the following special symbols:

• Coins - awarding instant prizes of 1x to 100x your stake.
• Collectors - collect the value of all present coins, mystery jackpot coins, and other collector symbols, removing the coins for a respin of those positions.
• Multipliers - boost all present coins, mystery jackpots, and collector symbols by x2 to x10, before being removed for a respin of that position.
• Mystery Jackpot Symbols - reveal either the 10x Mini, 25x Minor, 100x Mega, or 500x Grand jackpot, awarding the prize.

Happy Bamboo Slot - Reels Screen

Swapper Feature

When you land the Panda symbol, which is the highest paying symbol in the game, at the top position on any reel, 2 symbols will swap positions to guarantee a win.

Hold and Respin

The Hold and Respin bonus round triggers randomly when at least one golden coin is collected by the Panda Pot at the top of the grid. Before the feature starts, a wheel spins to determine what multiplier you’ll benefit from at the end of the feature, ranging from x2 to x10. Only mystery bamboo symbols and blanks land per respin, and mystery symbols become sticky, keeping respins going.

The bonus round ends when you don’t land another mystery bamboo symbol or when all positions are filled. Then, the present mystery bamboo symbols reveal either a random matching pay symbol or golden mystery bamboo symbols. If you get golden mystery bamboo symbols, they reveal special symbols as described above. In the end, when your winnings are summed up, the initial end-of-the-feature multiplier is applied to boost your total win.

Theme & Graphics

The Happy Bamboo slot game features Asian cartoon-style visuals, set against a classic Chinese architecture temple shrouded in a mysterious golden fog. The sun is setting behind the temple, or so it seems, and animated clouds roll across the foreground like puffy waves. The panda atop the reels is sporting an Oriental conical hat for the occasion, collecting gold coins in the pot between its paws. Symbols include the panda, a monkey king character, scrolls, and gourds, and you’ll spin the reels accompanied by a relaxing soundtrack that’s surprisingly Western-oriented for a game like this.

Happy Bamboo Free Play

Now that you understand how all the features of this game work, perhaps you feel ripe and ready to test the free Happy Bamboo demo, if you haven’t already. This is just a reminder that you can play as much as you want right here on this review page, by simply scrolling to the top of the page. Of course, we encourage you to read our conclusion and verdict below too, either before or after you sample the Happy Bamboo free play version at the top of this page.

Pros and Cons of Happy Bamboo

Our Verdict

Push Gaming’s Bamboo series has been quite successful thus far, with the original Big Bamboo still doing well on the charts after multiple years have passed. Happy Bamboo is an attempt to squeeze everything into a smaller, classic slot format, as part of Push Gaming’s new Reel Hot Games series. The visuals are heavily inspired by the previous Bamboo Ways, but with fewer characters, presumably due to the smaller 3x3 grid. The panda and the monkey king are carried over, though, and the temple in the background looks close to identical.

If you come straight from the predecessor to this, Happy Bamboo will feel cramped at first. However, this is less of a problem if you’re not used to the larger and expanding grid you get in Bamboo Ways. Again, Happy Bamboo is designed with a specific purpose in mind: to appeal to players who enjoy simple classic-style slots with modern features. This is exactly what this game delivers, but just like with the visuals, there aren’t all that many new things to see in the feature department either.

Sure, Happy Bamboo has its charm, with plenty of bamboo mystery symbol action all the way. However, it seldom amounts to much unless they turn into golden mystery bamboo symbols. Even then, you should not expect miracles in the base game. The only way to land anything significant is to get a multiplier combined with jackpots, although the 500x grand jackpot prize alone is a decent haul. Still, for players who’ve already played the previous installments, Happy Bamboo may come across as underwhelming.

The hold and respin bonus triggers fairly regularly, at least in my experience, but a lot hinges on whether or not your accumulated mystery symbols turn golden. If that happens, you’ll most likely get away with a decent sum, not least because of the end-of-the-round win multiplier boosting your total win. Being able to win up to 6,060x your stake is pretty solid for a low to medium volatile game like this, but I will probably stick mostly to the previous Bamboo installments myself.