Year of the Dragon King

Theme and Design

A Mountaintop Setting For A Classic Oriental Slot 

Year of the Dragon King is an Oriental-themed slot set up in an epic mountainscape with orange skies, skidding clouds and forests providing the backdrop to a floating reel set that is packed with Chinese-style lettering, fortune cookies and red lanterns. A quick bit of research tells us that those red lanterns are symbols of prosperity, fitting for a high variance slot. It’s a nice-looking game, backed by a suitably Oriental soundtrack and anyone who enjoys Chinese-luck style slots will be at home here.

RTP and Variance

Year of the Dragon King has three available RTP settings – 96.08%, 95.08% or 94.08%. It will be at your slot sites’ discretion which rate they choose for this game. In our testing we have found that MrQ always run games at the optimum available RTP levels so I recommend playing this slot there. At other sites you can check the RTP by hitting the ‘I’ button in the bottom left of the reel set.

This is rated as a ‘very high’ variance game by Pragmatic Play on the game information sheet provided to operators, so expect a volatile gaming experience – Year of the Dragon King can blow hot and cold with less frequent wins than other slots but sometimes bigger wins when they do drop.

Maximum Win

The top payout available on one spin is 5,000x. That is underwhelming and very typical for Pragmatic Play slots. It is not a blockbuster jackpot – you will find much better in our list of the highest paying slots.

Symbols and Paytable

Year of the Dragon King plays on a 5 reel and 3 row reel set with 20 paylines in play on all spins in the base game. You will need to land 3 or more identical symbols across a line from left to right to trigger a win, starting at the left-most reel.

There is some good value in the paytable with 7 symbols in all. They are the cards – Jack, Queen, King and Ace - the lanterns and the fortune cookies. These are valued at from 0.5x for 3 Jacks up to 25x for 5 cookies.

Look out for the Wild too which will substitute for any other symbol to complete a payline AND has it’s own values of 5x, 10x or 25x for 3, 4 or 5 on a payline.

Features and Gameplay

This game is simple but it has a unique and fun bonus feature that can trigger at any time. You will notice as you spin that each reel is lit up in green, red or blue. The color changes on each spin but if ALL 5 reels display the same color then the bonus is triggered.

Play On Up To 5 Mini Reels

When this happens the standard reels disappear to be replaced by between 1 and 5 mini reels. The number of reels is random too.

These reels are different to the main reel set from the base game. They have 3 reels and only ONE payline and display blanks and three pay symbols. There is a single red 8 which pays 20x for 3 on the line, a yellow 8 that pays 5x for 3 on the line and a blue 8 that pays 2x for 3 on the line. Landing a combination of the three 8s gets you a 1x payout.

Once the round starts each mini reel will spin. If you score a win it re-spins. If not, it locks. Once all displayed reels are locked, then the round ends.

Bonus Round Progressive Multiplier

But that’s not all. You will also get a multiplier for the round whose value is determined by the color of the reels on the triggering spin.

If your reels were all GREEN when the bonus round tiggered, you get a 1x multiplier for each mini reel. Every winning spin on each reel will increases it’s multiplier by 1x.

If your reels were all BLUE when the bonus round tiggered, you get a 2x multiplier for each mini reel. Every winning spin on each reel will increases it’s multiplier by 2x.

But this is the one you really want … if your reels were all RED when the bonus round tiggered, you get a 5x multiplier for each mini reel. Every winning spin on each reel will increases it’s multiplier by 5x.