Dragon Kingdom Slot – Free Demo

A dragon theme built on an old 5x3 layout

The grumbling you might have detected on the horizon isn't a stampede of wild beasts. It is the bellow of Pragmatic Play's dragons, and I can verify it has at last occurred. Pragmatic Play has returned to the most ancient theme in the cabinet, and that's the fine news. The not so fine news is that the maker has opted to take a cautious approach as it turns out, instead of devising a fresh concept to display what they can do with it. The only feature bolted onto the reels is a Free Spins round, and the rest of the game is plain spinning.

To give a dragon-themed overhaul, Pragmatic Play has employed one of its old layouts. It is the plain 5x3 grid with 25 fixed paylines. The lines can't be switched off, so every spin buys all 25 of them. The format might have been well-liked but was scarcely a classic, so how has the dragon refit transformed the game? I ran 370 spins at 8.75 a spin to find out. The initial impression is nice. But it doesn't furnish anything to get enormously thrilled about. Of those 370 spins, 115 paid something back, and 67 of the 115 paid less than the stake that bought them.

The scene is pleasant though with a golden glow over the mountain realm. That is usual in this genre, and the most gratifying element, to begin with, is the calming flute tones composing the soundtrack. Whenever I hit spin though the quiet is smashed by the thumping drum effects. Those arrived as standard with Asian themed slots. The 2016 release contrives to be a subtle enhancement over its stablemates, while also being a textbook illustration of a payline slot. The longest I went without a paying spin was 11 in a row.

Stacked characters pay from two of a kind

Pragmatic has made complete use of what a fixed-line game provides mechanically: players receive 5 reels with 3 symbols on them and 25 paylines that pay left to right from the leftmost reel. Only the highest win counts on any one line, and wins landing on separate lines are added together. The game makes use of a stacking symbols scheme, and every symbol except the Scatter appears stacked in the base game. The Scatter is the exception because it counts from anywhere on the reels rather than along a line. The stacked characters pay from two of a kind and up. The card ranks are the exception there, since A, K, Q and J need three before they pay anything. So a lone tall stack can drop a win across the entire screen at once.

The symbols employed are akin to the theme's customary crop, but have had a slight shakeup. For one, the Dragon Kingdom logo is now wild, and it can substitute for any other pay symbol in the game except the Scatter. It also pays in its own right, and it is the top symbol in the paytable. On the high side, there are the Queen, the red dragon, the green dragon, and the blue dragon. The Queen sits above all three dragons in the paytable, and the blue one is the lowest of them. So far everything is fairly typical for a paylines game. How about the features?

Five options before the first free spin

Well, you can't accuse Dragon Kingdom of being a feature-rich slot. The crux is the Scatter symbol. It came in three times across my 370 spins. When 3 or more land in view they trigger the Free Spins round, worth 5 free spins, and before starting, players are presented with 5 options to select from, each with its own Super Stacked symbol and win multiplier:

• Dragon Kingdom logo, Super Stacked at 1x.
• Queen, Super Stacked at 2x.
• Red dragon, Super Stacked at 3x.
• Green dragon, Super Stacked at 4x.
• Blue dragon, Super Stacked at 5x.

Each option comes with its own distinct reel set, and the selected symbol runs Super Stacked there. The choice is made before the first free spin and holds for the whole round. Now, during the feature any win is added to the payline win. Should another 3 Scatters land in view they add 3 extra free spins to prolong the feature. The extra spins run on the option already chosen rather than offering a fresh pick. There is no cap on how often that can occur. None of my three rounds retriggered, so each of them ran the opening 5 spins and stopped there.

Minty’s Final Note: The Free Spins round handed over 717.50 of the 1,890.22 that came back across my run, and the difference between a round worth 1x and one worth 5x is settled by the option picked before the first free spin turns.

Three triggers in a 58.4% session

As well as being sparse on features, Dragon Kingdom is also fairly sparse on innovation. My three rounds paid 350.00, 192.50 and 175.00. A studio's attempt at a dragon theme is often a cautious affair, and Pragmatic demonstrates the point with this release. No one is claiming it's not a well-built game. But there is nothing here to set pulses racing, or people chattering from a novelty standpoint. Pragmatic has taken the cautious; some might say simple, option – from the well-worn theme to the recycling of an older layout, to the free spins round built around a choice of five options. The one spin that stood out in my run was spin 138, worth 362.25, or 41.4x the stake.

Still, it functions in the way any well-assembled payline game does, and it's not a clumsy clunk of a release. My balance peaked on spin 12 and never returned to that level afterwards. Max returns depend on the lone extra feature to do the heavy lifting. Over 370 spins at 8.75 a go the bonus arrived three times, each one 5 spins with no retrigger. The three of them together paid 717.50 – 38% of everything won across a session that returned 58.4% of the cash staked. Pragmatic states an RTP of 96.47%, which leaves the run I played some thirty-eight points of turnover short of the claim.

At the end of the day, Dragon Kingdom is technically capable of supplying some fine gaming. Two of my three bonus rounds arrived inside the opening dozen spins, and the third didn't turn up until spin 138. There's nothing excessively wrong with it as such, and it's just a shame that Pragmatic was so timid here. The multipliers exist only inside the Free Spins round, and the base game has none of them. Ah well, the dragons are up and rolling at the Pragmatic studios now. So the question is what tack will they take next – subdued and forgettable, or something more inventive?