Big Bad Towers Slot Review

If you're the type of player who needs a little dopamine hit on every single spin, Big Bad Towers (a July 2026 release from Rare Stone and Playtech) might take some getting used to. It's a fairytale-themed slot with a pretty unique hook: during the free spins round, the spins themselves don't pay out a dime. Instead, you're just using those spins to build up "frames" on the board, which cash out all at once at the very end. It's a slow burn, but it makes the finale pretty exciting.

You can trigger the bonus organically by landing six scatter crowns or catching a random pulse from a coloured flag in the base game. However, if you want to see the game at its full potential, there's a 70x bonus buy that guarantees you start the round with all three of its modifiers active.

Here's how the bonus actually plays out: the blue modifier stretches the board up to six rows, while the green one randomly scatters a few starting frames onto the grid. Once the spins start, you're just looking for crowns. Every crown that lands either puts a new frame on the board or upgrades an existing one.

Usually, these frames max out at level three (which can pay up to 100x). But this is where the red modifier comes in. If the red perk is active, it drops a persistent level-four frame on the grid before your first spin, and allows your other frames to upgrade to that fourth tier as well. That's where the real money is, as a level-four frame can drop a 1,000x prize on a single spot. When you run out of spins, all the frames turn into towers and finally reveal your cash prizes.

I bought the 70x feature. True to its word, it gave me all three flags, a six-row grid, some starting frames, and that coveted level-four frame on the fourth reel. Watching the spins play out without any immediate wins is a slightly weird feeling, but I managed to build up 15 frames by the end. When the towers finally paid out, my two level-four frames delivered 100x and 15x. Overall, I walked away with a little over double what I paid for the feature. It was a decent result, and most of it came from the top tier: my two level-four towers paid 115x of the 156.7x.

Big Bad Towers isn't part of a series, but a few other slots will feel familiar next to it. For instance, Playtech's own Gold Trio: Tres Amigos uses a similar three-character system to expand the grid and multiply coins, though that one plays as a standard hold-and-win. I actually prefer Big Bad Towers in this regard; its 70x buy guarantees all three modifiers, whereas Gold Trio's 50x buy assigns them randomly. The RTP is virtually identical (95.90% here vs. 95.91%), but Big Bad Towers offers a slightly better max win of 2,103x compared to 1,380x.

The "build now, pay later" mechanic also reminded me a lot of Microgaming's 12 Skulls of the Dead, which does something similar but with a higher 3,000x max win.

Big Bad Towers takes popular mechanics, like expanding rows and level-up systems, and bundles them into one neat, fixed package. It's a fun, well-designed game, provided you have the patience for it. Just keep in mind that all the weight of the bonus round rests entirely on that final reveal, so you have to be okay with the suspense of putting all your eggs in one basket.