Genre: On-line multi-player casino
Developer: Big Fish Games
Game Description: An addictive, funky bingo game with strong emphasis on team playing
Platforms: Mac
Price: Freemium
I have been playing Big Fish Bingo for months now and am completely hooked. I just love this game. It’s fun, colourful, easy-to-use and has many features. The game consists of a number of bingo rooms, which Big Fish games change fairly regularly to mix things up. You have a choice to play from one to four cards and the cost per card varies from room to room (from 2 gems up to 80 gems). So, often what room you choose depends on how many gems you have in your kitty. Those rooms that are marked “pro” require that you play four cards but for much higher rewards.
Gemstone Canyon Pro is my fave room but costs a whopping 80 gems per round!
As each round starts, different numbers are called out which you then have to “daub” if you have them on any (or all) of your cards. Once you have filled out a card in any one of the winning combinations (horizontal, vertical, diagonal and corners) you may call bingo and keep playing until the end of the round. There are a limited number of bingos on offer depending on how many people are playing at any given time, so the quicker you can score bingos, the better. The first three bingos win you extra coins, gems and XP (experience). Each player collects XP with every round that they play which enables them to progress to higher levels.
Winning is great!
You can choose to log on with Facebook which awards you with 18 free gems and 500 gold coins every day that you log on or you can play as a guest. Furthermore, every half hour you may claim 10 free gems by pushing a claim button on the home page, which is a handy feature when you are running out of gems – without gems, you can’t play. Unlike other Bingo apps which give you only paltry amounts of free gems, this allows you to play without having to spend a fortune in real cash on buying gems and coins. You may initially have to spend some cash on buying gems to get you started, but if you are patient and log on every half hour until you have saved up enough gems (and provided you win more rounds than you lose) you shouldn’t have to spend a cent.
Free gems for logging on with Facebook.
Big Fish Bingo is a social game, so with the exception of one solo room (Dotties Drive-In) you are automatically teamed up with three other players when you enter a room, with bots being used if no “real people” are around to play. If you don’t want to play with bots (nobody does), you may start a fresh round yourself and invite “friends” to come and play with you or you may accept an invitation to play if it is sent to you. You may become friends with as many players as you want by simply tapping on their avatar and tapping “add friend”. The game has a chat feature, one for team (which only the team gets to see) and one for global (everyone gets to see) that allows you to exchange pleasantries, strategies or choice words depending on how the game is going. A recent welcome addition has seen the emergence of a numbered icon on either tab allowing you to switch between modes if members of your team have posted a message on either forum.
The solo room is a great place to earn gems and coins if you have great individual power ups.
Power-ups are an important feature of the game and you can only buy power-ups with gold coins which you can either purchase from the store or earn from each round you play. Depending on how many coins you have, you have a choice of four different power packs offering a different selection of power-ups each time (and you don’t always get the ones you want). These power-ups are categorised into common, rare and epic and include a range of power-ups to improve your chances of hitting bingo. Team instant bingos (which automatically award you with a bingo if it is hit) and team daub bursts are highly sought after and go a long way in ensuring your team comes out on top if one or more of you play them.
I always save up my coins to purchase the Mythical power pack which gives you guaranteed Epic power-ups which are the most sought after.
A recent addition is the Powerup Lab, which enables you to create different power-ups by combining different daubs that you have in stock. This makes it more interesting, especially when you have run out of the more powerful daubs.
Let the Powerup Lab bring out the mad scientist in you!
Big Fish Bingo has been plagued with connectivity issues from time to time, but lately seems to have stabilised, although you still get complaints of people getting booted from a game and replaced by an annoying bot! All in all, I find Big Fish Bingo to be addictively huge fun.
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