Dolphin Gold Slot – Free Demo

The reef, the royals and the stingray

The reef is a busy spot, and dolphins travel in pods, stingrays burrow themselves in the sand, and turtles glide through it all without much worry for either. The grid is four rows deep. Your betting budget is the only thing at risk in this Lightning Box Games slot, fortunately. Only the highest win counts on each line. This sea themed slot arrives with a Blue Dolphin. Wins are paid left to right along the lines you have selected. It serves as wild and scatter at once, doubling any win it substitutes into, and you'll also benefit from stacked wilds and a free games feature. The 40 lines are selectable rather than fixed.

5-reel, 40-payline slot is built to run on most devices and can be played on your mobile, tablet or dekstop computer. Line wins are multiplied by the bet per line. Symbols on the reels are positioned against a sunlit reef. Wins on separate lines are added together. They feature 9 to K royals as well as high-value seahorses, butterflyfish, turtles and a stingray. The 9 and the 10 pay the least of any symbol. The best paying symbol is the stingray. Turtle, butterflyfish and seahorse fill the places below it. It awards 500 coins for 5 across a payline, or 1000 when a wild helps it along. My best paying spin outside the bonus rounds was 10.08 on spin 52, 8.4 times the stake. It's the only symbol that pays for two of a kind.

The Blue Dolphin doubles what it substitutes into

An essential part of Dolphin Gold is the Blue Dolphin. It substitutes for every other symbol in the game. It lands on reels 2, 3 and 4 only, and it is wild and scatter at the same time. Being a scatter, it counts from anywhere on the grid. It will lift any winning combination it completes to double the basic value. The doubled column covers combinations of two, three, four and five symbols. The paytable displays that as a second column beside the first.

Pay close attention to the Gold Dolphin, which is wild for everything except the Blue Dolphin. It turns up on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5. It appears during free games only. Outside the feature the Blue Dolphin is the only wild on the reels. It doubles wins in the same way, and in fact, during the free games stacks of Gold Dolphins are added to reels 2, 3, 4 and 5.

How many free games do twelve dolphins pay?

A free games feature is included as well. Nine Blue Dolphins are worth 12 free games, and every one after that adds three more. It is triggered by collecting Blue Dolphins anywhere on the grid, granting you 3 spins for six of them and climbing to 21 for twelve, with a chance for retriggers, and the bonus is played at the triggering lines and bet.

Minty’s Closing Thought: Three bonus rounds paid 85.20 between them, and the balance never once rose back above the 1,000.00 it began with.

310 spins that never got back to level

With a tolerable 95.30% RTP on offer, Dolphin Gold is a neatly built medium volatility slot. The three bonus rounds I hit accounted for 30% of everything I won. Sure, it's not the most inventive theme I've ever come across. Of my 310 spins, 101 paid something, and 54 of those paid back less than the 1.20 stake. But the doubling wilds are an excellent addition that will keep most players on their toes throughout, in combination with the free-game stacks. My longest run without a win was 10 spins, ending on spin 283.

The plain design could need some further work. The balance bottomed out at 877.72 along the way. It's in no way a deal-breaker, and after all, graphics are only of secondary importance as long as the mathematical engine is ok. The three bonus rounds arrived on spins 197, 230 and 298. Over my 310 spins it wasn't: 372.00 wagered returned 284.04, a 76.4% session return. The two later ones ran 12 free games apiece and paid 32.40 and 13.20, neither of them retriggering.