Play Year of the Dragon King Slot Machine Free Demo & Comprehensive Review

Introduction

So far Pragmatic Play never ceases to amaze me with their new slots releases. So far this provider is consistently releasing exciting titles and many of them are one of my favorites across online casinos. Right now the game that caught my attention is Year of the Dragon King.

The game is inspired by the Chinese New Year and you can clearly see symbols on the reels that go with that theme. But in addition to the interesting design and visuals the game comes with an innovative bonus round. I was really surprised to see how everything works in the game and I knew I had to give it a try. Year of the Dragon King didn’t disappoint and it has the potential to end up on our players favourites list..

How to Play Year of the Dragon King

The design of Year of the Dragon King is quite simple. It has 5 reels and 3 rows, with 20 active paylines. The bets can go from only $0.10, all the way up to $375 per spin. Once all is ready, hit the spin button or use the Auto Play feature to get the reels started.

A Decade of Playing Slots

After playing slots for such a long time it’s not easy to be impressed by new slot releases. You get a feeling that you’ve seen it all and done it all, but sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised. This was the case with Year of the Dragon King. The slot has something new to offer and it’s a great sense of refreshment. This is the case with many other Pragmatic Play slots and I hope they keep it up.

My Own Experience Playing Year of the Dragon King

Year of the Dragon King is still a new slot, but I already gave it a try a dozen times. On my first try, I didn’t really read through any of the rules and the paytable. I just set the auto-play to 100 spins and managed to land a bonus fairly quickly. The payout wasn’t too great, but I liked the way it worked. On my next session, I had some extra cash and came back to the slot once again. Read the rules, saw how everything works and decided to go all in on the bonus buys. I went for the top payout, shelling 350x the stake per buy. The first buy returned around 200x the stake, so I went to another one. This time the result was much better, earning 1,700x the stake. This was a massive win in my book and is the reason why I will surely keep on coming back to the reels of Year of the Dragon King.

Bonus Features and Payouts

Before you start playing Year of the Dragon King you can choose to play with the Ante Bet option enabled. This will increase your bet size by half, so if your normal bet is $2, you will now bet $3 per spin. This is a big increase in bet but is well justified as you have a much better chance to trigger the feature.

As for base play the only special symbol is the Wild. It has a classic function and will replace all other symbols from the paytable. Year of the Dragon King is one of the rare slots that have no bonus or scatter symbols installed.

Free Spins Bonus

So how is the bonus round triggered in Year of the Dragon King? Well, on every spin the background of the reels can randomly change to Green, Blue or Red. This sucks if you’re colour-blind, but is still a fun way to trigger a feature. All 5 reels need to turn into the same color, triggering the bonus round.

Once the feature starts you get anywhere from 1 to 5 mini slot machines across the screen.

In the feature on each spin, these machines will spin and stop. They have one active payline and if a win lands you get an extra free spin on that machine. Each one of them acts independently from the other. Once you get a non-winning spin that machine becomes locked and is not active for the remainder of the feature.

If you land 3 Red Eights on the machine you get a payout of 20x the stake. Land 3 Green Eights for 5x the stake and 3 blue ones for x2 the stake. If a mixed combination of Eights lands you get a payout of 1x the stake.

But that’s not all. If you trigger the feature with the green reels the multiplier on the mini-slots starts at x1 and increases by 1 on each spin.

If you triggered it with the blue reels the multiplier starts with x2 and increases by 2 on each spin.

The red reels have the best multipliers. They start with x5 and increase by 5 on each following spin.

The multiplier applies to each payout on each mini-slot machine on each spin.

You can also buy the bonus for a certain price. For 100x the stake you get 1-5 random colour dragons. For 60x the stake you get 1-5 Green Dragons, for 140x the stake 1-5 Blue Dragons and for 350x the stake 1-5 Red Dragons.

Comparison with Other slots

I can’t think of any other slot that has a similar bonus round as Year of the Dragon King. But if you like dragon slots with an unusual set of features I can warmly recommend Drago: Jewels of Fortune. In addition to the unusual bonus round and design this slot can produce massive payouts and will amaze you with what it has to offer.

Benefits and Drawbacks

I like the fact that the game has an unorthodox bonus round and that you can buy each of the features based on the dragons and multipliers you want. But honestly, the 350x the stake for the red dragons is too much. I never managed to get more than 2 of them in the bonus, despite landing some big wins. But I guess this has more to do with the high volatility and in one bonus round Year of the Dragon King can land a massive payout.

Our Conclusion

Year of the Dragon King is without a doubt an interesting slot with a lot to offer. I really like the way the bonus works and I know the game can pay big. But to land the top payouts in the game can land with the red dragons and you will need a bigger bankroll to be able to buy them. You can easily give the game a try at any of OnlineCasinos.net recommended Pragmatic Play casinos and see how it works out for you. Who knows maybe the Chinese New Year will be your lucky one.

Author: Nicky Smith

I love slot machines, play and test slots nearly daily, and have done for over ten years.  read about me here.