Dragon Boat Festival - Editor’s Impressions
If you're tired of the same old slot themes, this could be the game for you. Dragon Boat Festival offers a change of pace from the usual fast, flashy games. It takes you on a gentle river ride in China. You can enjoy soothing music as you spin the reels and watch the beautiful Chinese symbols.
In this slot review, we'll review everything you need to know about this slot. Of course, all technical information, like RTP and volatility, will be included. But we'll also give you some background on the design and theme. Let's dive right in with an overview of Dragon Boat Festival.
Overview of Dragon Boat Festival Game
Pragmatic Play produce their game based on the Dragon Boat Festival. The game is a highly volatile slot, with 10 fixed paylines on a 5-reel, 3-row grid. It uses the Hold & Spin game mechanic to give players bigger potential wins.
Floating Dragon Hold & Spin was the game that started this series. It uses the Hold & Spin game mechanic, which allows players to hold onto certain symbols. They get access to higher wins and awards if they match enough in a fixed number of spins.
The next game in the online slots series was Floating Dragons Megaways. As the name suggests, it uses the famous Megaways game mechanic. It was quite a departure from the first game, but still very popular.
Finally, we come to Dragon Boat Festival Hold & Spin. Reel Kingdom have returned to their favourite mechanic with this game. There are a few slight differences from the original game. They've increased the value of the Fish Money symbol, and there's greater potential for bigger wins.
Dragon Boat Festival Game Characteristics
This game is great for all types of players no matter what their bankroll is with a wide betting range of £0.10 to £250 per spin. You can buy Free Spins for 100x the bet amount. Alternatively, you can buy Hold & Spin for 100x the bet amount. However, you should be aware that these Bonus Buys are not available to UK players.
This slot has an of 96.07% and a high volatility. However, when the Ante Bet is active, the RTP goes up to 96.09%. The maximum that you can win on one spin is 10,000x your bet.
This game has some beautiful and valuable symbols. The lower paying symbols are A, J, Q, 10, and K. To get paid out you must hit at least three symbols and if you match five of a kind, you can win 5x - 10x the bet value. Higher paying symbols include the koi carp, the flag, the dragon boat, drums, and zongzi (traditional sticky rice dumplings). With these high-paying symbols, you can win 20x - 200x the bet size by landing on five of them.
The wild symbol is the lady. She can appear on all reels during free spins. The lady can take the place of all the symbols except Money and Scatter symbols.. The Scatter symbol is a dragon, and it appears on all reels. The two Money symbols are a diamond and a coin. They are assigned a random value between 1x - 2000x your bet amount. Finally, there's the fish symbol. The symbol is a shoal of koi carp, which can bring you between 2x - 10,000x your bet.
In the Ante Bet you have the option to choose the bet multiplier. Depending on the bet the game is a little different. The possible value is 15x, where the chance to win the respin round increases and there are more Scatters on the reels. In the Ante Bet the Bonus Buy is disabled.
Dragon Boat Festival Bonus Features
Slot players like to have some bonus features that can give them extra rewards. The slot has two main bonus features: Hold & Spin and Free Spins.
Hold & Spin Features
This feature is activated when three or more Money symbols show up. The game locks them, and the Hold & Spin bonus begins. The coin symbol replaces all other symbols, adding the coin values to the total. Players get four re-spins, and they reset every time a coin appears. The feature ends if you don't get any more Money symbols during the four re-spins.
Free Spins Features
Scatters trigger the free spins feature. If you get 3, 4, or 5 Scatters, you will get 10, 15, or 20 free spins. Every Wild symbol that lands will receive the value of all the Fish symbols on display. The fourth Wild retriggers an additional 10 free spins and also increases the multiplier on each re-spin by 2x on the first, 3x on the second, and 10x on the third. The Free Spins can only be retriggered three times.
What Are the Pros and Cons of Playing Dragon Boat Festival?
Pros
- Relaxing, laid-back theme
- Stunning graphics and soothing soundtrack
- Optimised for all devices
- Wide betting range
- 10,000x bet max win
Cons
- High volatility
- Bonus Buy not available for UK players
Summary of Dragon Boat Festival
This slot is a welcome update to the Dragon Boat series. The graphics are much better. It creates a relaxing, soothing environment where players can enjoy the slot.
It is similar to the first title in the Dragon Boat series, but there are some essential changes. Whereas the earlier game went up to 5000x the bet, this game gives you a potential 10,000x the bet win. Pragmatic Play and Reel Kingdom have also added buy buttons. These buttons let players buy Free Spins or Hold & Spin. The Ante Bet increases the stake and the chances of Scatters. These features give players more options and ways to win.
This slot is a moderate departure from the previous two games. But it does build nicely on them. Reel Kingdom has taken the parts that needed improving and has enhanced them. This slot could be worth a spin for those who want to relax with an easy-going yet still fun and exciting game.
A slot from Pragmatic Play based on once again a Chinese theme and comes loaded with 5 reels and 3 rows 10 pay lines with a min bet of just 0.10 making it highly suitable for low roller slot players.
As with most games it has a feature but once again this slot has two bonuses and you can also buy them for 100x bet if you don’t like waiting for a bonus the natural way. The coin feature you just need 3 coins or more anywhere on the reels and then you get those 4 hearts and any more coins or diamonds on the reels will increase your win and give you a payout each time including the coins you already got paid for before. Then there is that famous type of feature that you see on the fishing bass slots, where you get the scatter wild symbol appear on the reels and you get 4 of them to get 10 extra spins and those 10 extra will be at x2 and then the next 4 will go to x3 and then x10.
The music in this game in the base game is once again a Chinese in nature and Pragmatic knows its music and sound effects and I am going to say this music has even better than the other Floating Dragon, the other one I am comparing it to is the Hold and Spin version.
I found that during my real money play on this slot was a brief session for me of just under 100 spins and it was on lucky spin 97 that I landed the feature and paid a bit over 100x, in fact 104.2x, not bad once again for breaking the 100x on a first feature in once again quick time and ensured a profitable session on the slot.
Max win for this slot is a hefty 10,000x and that is a double the standard Pragmatic max win size, thus twice as big as the other Floating Dragon.
As for the RTP that is with this slot, I found it has a nicely high 96.07% RTP however that is when playing with max rtp but I played it on the 94.07% RTP version but even though my session was brief it was profitable cause of the quick feature and hit and run method used.
There is nothing I can say that is not liked about this game it has improvements over the other Floating Dragon slot and the music is better so I will say that there is nothing wrong with this slot in my option. However I will point out they lowered the max rpt just a bit.