Huangdi: The Yellow Emperor

Microgaming has maintained coming out with new games each and every month so far, but sadly enough, almost all, if not all, are merely a clone of one game or another, using the same design concept but with minor twists in the game play. This Huangdi game was released together with another new game, Life Of Riches, which I have also recently tried out and written a review on. Now it's Huangdi The Yellow Emperor's turn. The intro scenario for the game looks nice and well presented, but when it comes to the actual play screen, argh, it is disappointingly not attractive enough as I would have expected it to be. Perhaps those Chinese scripture alphabets would look much more vibrant against a dark or black background, to make them stand out more prominently. The picturesque icons are nice enough though, but would certainly look more dominant against a dark background. Ah well, some things just cannot be perfect.

Huangdi The Yellow Emperor plays with just 25 paylines, but why not 243-ways to win? Features like the stacked symbols and low win values would be best played with 243 paylines, but I guess Microgaming is keeping things on the cool side, for one reason or another. Personally, I would prefer things to be hot and exciting, stepping bravely forward, pushing cowardice aside. Hmm, wonder when Microgaming could be like this. Anyway, the logo is the Wild symbol in the game, paying a blardy low 10x the total bet for getting 5 of them, and substitutes for other symbols except the Scatter symbol. It doesn't double any wins with it, what a shame, but is stacked on all reels. The Dragon is the Scatter symbol, paying the usual 100x the total bet for 5 of them, and getting 3 or more of these Scatters trigger 15 free spins with fully Stacked Wilds on reel 1, but without any multiplier. The Free Spins game can be retriggered.

The high paying symbols, the Sword, the Musical Instrument and the Chest, are stacked on reel 1 only. The Emperor pays 8x, the Sword pays 7x, the Instrument pays 6x, the Chest pays 5x, and the others pay from 2.4x to 1x, all per total bet for getting 5 of each kind. In the base game, getting any fully stacked symbol on reel 1 expands all matching high symbols on the remaining reels. In the Free Spins game, any fully stacked symbol on reel 1 expands all matching high symbols and Wild symbols too, for even bigger win potentials. So, 15-of-a-kind wins are indeed possible, including getting all 5 Wild Reels, but then again, the extremely low paytable restricts the size of the maximum single win to only 250x the total bet amount. In order to win more, you need to get more of some other wins during the free spins, otherwise, there wouldn't be any wins of 300x or higher. What a big disappointment this is!

Playing at first with free spins given to me, Huangdi The Yellow Emperor seemed like a good game to play, with frequent small wins in the base game. They aren't really wins, but are actually small losses, because those wins would be less than the total bet amount in most cases, but, it keeps the interest and fun going. Playing with deposited money, I managed to get 2 Free Spins games, which was really surprising for me, because usually it would be like trekking across a desert to reach an oasis, but sadly, those free spins did not give good wins at all. Just a 48x and a 21x total bet wins, which were not satisfying enough for me.

“Microgaming” has resorted again to one of the Chinese deities to play a leading role in the theme of one of its games, and in this specific case, I speak of “Huangdi: The Yellow Emperor” slot, just released this January, and which I decided to give it a try after seeing it displayed on the front-page of some of my favorite online casinos.

This is a video slot with 25 pay lines in which Microgaming has included an interesting feature that involves expanding symbols, so during the base game, on reel 1, they appear often stacked symbols, and if we get enough matching symbols to form at least a line of 3 or more of a kind, then all the matching symbols will also expand throughout the reel with the possibility of having all 5 reels covered with the same symbol in a single spin, and of course, your prize will be a big win.

During the base game, the wild symbol does not expand as a result of the previous feature, but it does so during the free spin round, which is basically the only advantage of free spins over regular spins.

I think “Huangdi: The Yellow Emperor” slot is a pretty fun game as you always have a set of emotions waiting to be unleashed during one of those spins where you have identical symbols everywhere, and the truth is that this happens with some frequency, and in addition, during those lucky spins you get often wins over 50x your total bet and sometimes more, all in just one shot.

I think my first session with this game can be considered as successful since I could win $25 and I could also have a lot of fun, all this by betting only $0.25 or $0.50 per spin, so that at this moment I am satisfied and enthusiastic enough as to try luck with it again.