Dragon Hero

Intro

Pragmatic Play kicked off 2023 with the release of the action-packed Dragon Hero. Playing out on a 5×4 game grid with 20 winning ways, this Asian-inspired online slot offers players the chance to land multiple wilds and super wilds with every spin, in the base game and the free spins round alike! It’s a slick looking game and very playable but by no means the only Asian-themed slot on the market. It has plenty to live up to, so let’s see if it does.

Screenshots

With 20 paylines to land winning combinations of three to five of a kind, Dragon Hero plays out on a 5-reel, 4-row grid styled to look like an Asian pagoda. The 10-A cards serve as the lowest-paying symbols, and these are joined by higher-paying symbols such as coins, scrolls and fish. The gold sycee is the biggest payer, worth 40x your bet for 5 in combo. Yin and Yang Wilds and Dragon Super Wilds help you along the way, substituting for all symbols but Scatters. The standard Wild can even form a winning combo of its own, paying up to 60x the bet for five-of-a-kind. Pragmatic Play’s Dragon Hero is a highly volatile slot, which means you can expect large wins less frequently, instead of the small, regular wins seen in low-volatility slots. The volatility of this slot game also means that a bigger bankroll is preferred, as you’ll likely need to ride out a few losses until a winning combo lands on the reels. In the UK, Dragon Hero features a solid RTP of 96%, so you can expect an average of £96 back out of every £100 you wager on this game over time. Anything can happen in a single spin, though, and that is especially true here.

Dragon Hero adds a couple of bonus features to make gameplay more interesting. Firstly, there’s the Super Wilds we mentioned earlier. These gleaming, golden Dragons appear on the central three reels in the base game and during free spins, holding up to three regular Wilds and distributing them randomly across the reels once the spin is over. The second of Dragon Hero’s bonus features is the Free Spins feature, which is triggered by landing 3, 4 or 5 Scatter symbols in the base game. This causes 6, 8 or 10 bonus wheels to appear on the screen awarding 1, 2 or 3 free spins each, which in turn gives you between 6 and 30 free spins to play with. As the free spins round plays out, any Super Wilds that land become sticky until the end of the bonus, sending up to 3 Yin and Yang Wilds to random spots on the reels after every spin. Scatter symbols add half of a Wild to one of the Super Wilds in place. Once a full Wild is collected, that same Super Wild will send an additional Wild after each spin. These are fun additions to the Free Spins feature, though it would be good to see a larger number of free spins available. 30 is not bad, but the chances of hitting the max number of free spins are probably pretty low. * In some jurisdictions, Dragon Hero offers a Buy Free Spins feature which allows players to trigger the free spins feature instantly by buying it for 100x the stake. This Buy Bonus option is not available to UK players.

Pragmatic Play’s Dragon Hero slot is produced using mobile-friendly HTML5 technology. This allows for play across a wide variety of devices, including desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and mobiles. The game is optimised for iOS and Android smartphones, with the 5x4 reel setup allowing for an enjoyable gaming experience on smaller screens. There aren’t any huge differences to gameplay whether you’re playing at home or on the go with this one, so we’d suggest enjoying it whenever the mood strikes.

Dragon Hero is bound to win a few fans when it comes to design, graphics and sound. While the Asian theme isn’t particularly unique, Pragmatic Play’s pretty pagoda and the ethereal pink dragon that circles in the background certainly help this slot to stand out. This isn’t this developer’s first rodeo when it comes to Asian-themed games, with Caishen's Gold among its previous efforts. That slot was released in 2017 and looks a bit dated now, so fans of this style of slot will probably be pleased to get an updated model with slicker graphics. Dragon Hero also adds a jaunty soundtrack that amplifies teasers and big wins.