China Shores Slingo Slot – Free Demo

A Gaming Realms grid under someone else's slot

Who could be better placed to deliver you a Slingo-themed slot than a studio named Gaming Realms? I ran 370 spins on it at 0.30 a spin. Owning the name of the mechanic won't automatically make your game a fine one, though. However, it's not the China Shores theme that seized my curiosity: it was promoted as a Slingo game, and I was curious to discover what was so distinctive about it that it had to be trademarked.

It's described as a mechanic where a 5x5 number grid rests over a 5-position reel strip and finished win lines ascend a Payladder. Lines count horizontally, vertically and along the two diagonals. It soon becomes clear that it's another one of those bold slot-and-bingo hybrids that are arriving hard and fast from all directions, and here the licensed theme is China Shores. Elsewhere in the same range it's another borrowed slot brand, Slingo Rainbow Riches or Slingo Starburst. The grid underneath never alters. Games constructed on a number grid and a reel strip are not wholly exclusive to Gaming Realms, although it has grown linked with it to a great degree, and bingo halls had been handling the grid portion long before anyone fastened a reel to it. With this in mind, Gaming Realms should be in the clear, but oddly it's slightly puzzling to observe them leaning so heavily on other studios' slot themes to carry it, with Gaming Realms possessing the mechanic outright.

Ten spins to mark the grid

China Shores Slingo grants you 10 spins to align reel numbers against the grid. Only one of my 370 spins ever carried me into the slot half of the game. A 30-line, 5-reel China Shores slot is bolted on for the free games, and the main game is pretty much a bonus hunt with little thrill to provide. That round came on spin 151 and it did not retrigger. Instead, it all comes down to the Slot Spins where the licensed China Shores reels finally spin, and you can use your desktop computer or mobile device as a doorway to the Far East and spin at 0.30 per spin.

Gold turtles on the strip, pandas on the reels

Visually, China Shores Slingo is a run-of-the-mill slot. The Payladder runs down the left edge of the screen while you play. It appears pretty much like any other Slingo that came before it using a comparable theme, and it does the job, but there's undeniably a bit of a generic feel to it. In any case, on the reel strip you'll see numbers alongside the Wild, which marks any number in the column above it. Where more than one position would take a Wild, the game puts it wherever it gets closest to a Slingo, and where several positions are equal it takes the one covered by the most win lines. There's the Super Wild, which marks any number anywhere on the grid, and the Free Spin symbol, which simply adds another spin. My opening spin dropped two gold turtle Wilds onto the strip with the grid waiting for a number to be marked, nine spins left on the counter and both meters still blank, Cash Wins on 0.00 and Slot Spins on 0. The gold character is the top payer over in the slot, handing you 4,000 coins for five on a payline, and the Yin Yang is the symbol worth looking for there. The Wild over there is the Panda, and it only lands on reels 2 to 5.

The Payladder is the whole paytable

The main game is mostly about observing the Slingos tick over between 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and a Full House of 12, and there are 12 win lines and 11 awards. One dab can close more than one line at a time, and the last number left on the grid always closes at least two. The Payladder pays up to x2, x3, x5, x5, x5, x5, x35, x100 and x200 of your stake respectively. The floor moves as well: three Slingos pays from x0.2 of the stake and a Full House from x75. Or it gives you up to 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 15, 25 or 50 Slot Spins instead. The upper rungs are ranges rather than fixed counts, so nine Slingos can hand over as few as 10 spins and a Full House as few as 20. Once the 10 spins are gone you can purchase Extra Spins, priced by your spot on the grid and the reward in reach. The price of the next one is printed on the spin button. They may cost more than the base stake, and Free Spin symbols are withdrawn while you do. The Payladder also shows how large a Mini Reel you're playing for. Between three and twelve Slingos also unlock the Mini Reel, one reel for 3–5, two for 6–8 and three for 9–12, awarding cash or Slot Spins with values that grow as the Slingos are collected. Cash from it drops into the Cash Wins meter and spins into the Slot Spins meter as each Slingo lands.

The Minty Summary: Two meters sit above the grid, Cash Wins and Slot Spins, and across 370 logged spins only one of them did much. The Slot Spins side opened on spin 151 and never again, and the 6.30 those free games paid was three percent of the session's winnings.

Free Games play themselves

Slot Spins unfold as Free Games in the China Shores Slot, all of them automatically, and three, four or five Yin Yang symbols on a win line award another 8, 10 or 15 Free Games. Yin Yang pays cash at the same time as it hands over the extra games. At three points you can take the Balance of Fortune instead. That swaps your Free Games for a cash prize somewhere between a shown low and high value, whether you collect, land a Full House, or leap out of the slot with 20 or more spins still on the clock.

The slot half stayed shut

China Shores Slingo is a middling game with middling graphics and gameplay, and the main game provides little of worth. The Slot Spins are not really where the money came from in my 370 spins. Spin 64 paid 179.10 and left the balance at 1,175.71. The one Free Games round I saw returned 6.30, three percent of everything won. The peak arrived a spin after that big one, 1,176.13 on spin 65, and the lowest the balance ever sat was 995.20. Twenty-three percent of spins paid, more than half of those for less than the stake, and I still ended 1,000.00 up to 1,119.07. I also sat through a run of 20 spins without a single return, ending on spin 259.

The Slingo mechanic doesn't feel very inventive either. This is especially so at this point in time, when every other Gaming Realms release seems to be fastening the same grid onto another borrowed slot brand. It's not a total disaster, and the 94.07% RTP holds a 94.00% minimum on each Extra Spin purchased.