Dragon Pearl Slot Review
Weathered stone guardians flank a dark reel enclosure on a misty Chinese mountainside, blue peaks drifting through cloud above a carved green-grey lintel. Behind all that carved ornament, Dragon Pearl is running a steep piece of arithmetic: five dragons on a line pay a hundred times what five royals do, and the middle of the paytable doesn’t come close to closing that gap.
The rest of the package is deliberately old-fashioned. This is a straight-down-the-line 5×4 grid with 20 fixed paylines and a 96% RTP, from KA Gaming, whose range also includes Borderland, Donut City and Ghost Hunter. There’s no jackpot ladder here, no prize wheel, no buy menu – just symbols, lines and one bonus round, with a paytable doing all the persuading. Fifteen trebled spins are carrying the whole mountain.
Dragon Pearl’s Symbols and Pays
All symbols except the scatter pay left to right across the 20 active paylines, and only the highest win counts on each line. It’s a conventional arrangement, and the game doesn’t complicate it. Wins land, the winning line highlights, and play moves on.
The dragon serves as the wild, substituting for everything except the scatter and paying 2x on any win it helps to create, though line wins made of wilds alone don’t collect that doubling. It’s a small rule with a real effect: any line the dragon completes is worth twice what its symbols would otherwise pay. A single wild filling a gap between two swordsmen turns a two-symbol match into a three-symbol win at double value.
The paytable runs deep, and the wild sits at the top of it. Per-line pays, in order:
- Dragon (wild) – 2 pays 25.00, 3 pays 500.00, 4 pays 5,000.00, 5 pays 25,000.00
- Crystal ball (scatter) – 2 pays 100.00, 4 pays 750.00, 3 pays 250.00, 5 pays 5,000.00
- Man with sword / Woman with sword – 2 pays 7.50, 3 pays 62.50, 4 pays 250.00, 5 pays 1,875.00
- Cauldron of gold – 3 pays 62.50, 4 pays 250.00, 5 pays 1,000.00
- Moon rabbit – 3 pays 25.00, 4 pays 187.50, 5 pays 625.00
- Gold ingot – 3 pays 25.00, 4 pays 125.00, 5 pays 625.00
- A – 3 pays 25.00, 4 pays 125.00, 5 pays 312.50
- K – 3 pays 12.50, 4 pays 125.00, 5 pays 250.00
- Q, J, 10, 9 – 3 pays 12.50, 4 pays 62.50, 5 pays 250.00
It’s a steep ladder. Five wilds on a line is worth twenty-five times what five swordsmen pay, and even the gap between the two hero symbols and the royals is wide, so the top of the grid does almost all of the talking when a big win lands. The royals themselves are tightly packed: K shades Q, J, 10 and 9 only at the four-symbol tier, and the four lower royals pay identically everywhere else.
The scatter pays wherever it lands, so it doesn’t need a payline to count, and it’s the second-richest symbol on the board in its own right. Two crystal balls already return something, which is unusual – most scatters need three before they pay a thing.
Two hero symbols share the top of the standard ladder, both paying from just two matches. Below them, the cauldron of gold, the moon rabbit and the gold ingot form a middle tier, with the royals bringing up the rear. The rabbit and the ingot are worth the same for five of a kind; the cauldron pulls ahead of both at every tier it appears in.
Because the doubling only applies to wins the wild substitutes into, the dragon is doing two jobs at once. On its own it’s the richest symbol in the game; standing in for anything else, it takes a modest line and doubles it. The one thing it can’t do is stand in for the scatter, so bonus triggers are never helped along by wilds.
Wins are marked clearly in play: the winning symbols light up on their payline, a banner names the line and its value, and the spin resolves. With 20 lines across a 5×4 grid, several lines can land on the same spin, and each pays its own amount. Only the highest combination counts per line, so a line holding both a wild-assisted win and a natural one pays the better of the two.
The Free Game Feature
There’s one bonus round, and it’s the scatter’s job to open it. During the base game, landing three or more scatter symbols anywhere on the reels triggers 15 free spins.
The trigger scatter win pays first, then the round begins at the same bet as the spin that triggered it. Nothing changes on the reels – same grid, same symbols, same 20 lines – and the scatter continues to pay wherever it lands during the round.
Inside the Free Game, every win is multiplied by 3x, with a single exception: a line of five wilds, which pays its full paytable value without the multiplier. That exception matters less than it sounds, since five wilds at 25,000 is already the richest line in the game, and multiplying it again would dwarf everything else on the board.
The doubling wild carries over into the round as well, which is where the arithmetic gets interesting. A wild-substituted line in the Free Game pays its base value, doubled by the wild, then trebled by the round: six times the listed pay for a line the dragon completes. The flat multiplier doesn’t stack in tiers or grow over the round; it simply applies to everything, every spin, until the spins run out.
Retriggers are where the ceiling sits. Landing three or more scatters again during the round adds further spins, and the Free Game can be retriggered up to a cap of 180 free spins in total. Each retrigger adds the same scatter pay on top, so the round keeps paying on its own trigger even as it extends itself.
That’s a generous allowance for a round this simple. Fifteen spins at 3x is already a solid return when the hero symbols land; a run that keeps retriggering towards the cap gives the flat multiplier room to compound across a long session at someone else’s expense.
Our Honest Verdict
Overall Rating: 7.1/10
Dragon Pearl is a patient game in ornate clothing. The reason to pick it is the dragon itself: the richest symbol on the board and a doubler of every line it completes, which means the long stretches between scatters still pay double whenever the temple finally gives one up.
The free spins round is the strength. A flat 3x on every win, the wild’s doubling stacked on top, and a 180-spin retrigger ceiling give a mechanically simple round more room to run than games with three bonuses and a wheel. The weakness is what’s outside it: the base game is symbols, lines and nothing else, and once you’ve read the paytable there’s nothing left to uncover.
That plainness will suit anyone after an unhurried, legible spinner where the numbers on the screen are the whole story, and it’ll leave anyone after elaborate bonus machinery finding the mountain very quiet. For the rest, this is a handsome frame around a seriously steep paytable, and the misty temple is a pleasant enough place to sit and wait for the dragon.
Dragon Pearl FAQs
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What is the RTP of Dragon Pearl?
Dragon Pearl runs at an RTP of 96%. -
How do you trigger free spins in Dragon Pearl?
Landing three or more scatter symbols anywhere on the reels during the base game awards 15 free spins. Scatters don’t need to land on a payline to count. -
What does the Free Game multiplier do in Dragon Pearl?
Every win in the Free Game carries a 3x multiplier, apart from one case: five wilds on a line, which pay their standard paytable value instead. -
Can free spins be retrigged in Dragon Pearl?
Yes. Free spins can be retrigged up to a total of 180 free spins, and the round plays at the same bet as the triggering spin. -
What does the dragon wild do in Dragon Pearl?
The dragon wild substitutes for all symbols except the scatter and pays 2x on any win it helps create. Line wins made up of wilds alone don’t receive the doubling. -
Does the dragon wild work during free spins in Dragon Pearl?
Yes. The wild’s 2x doubling applies throughout the Free Game, so a wild-substituted win there pays six times its listed value once the round’s 3x multiplier is applied. -
What is the highest-paying symbol in Dragon Pearl?
The dragon wild is the richest symbol in the game, paying 25,000 for five on a line. The crystal ball scatter is next at 5,000 for five, paying anywhere on the reels. -
When is Dragon Pearl released?
Dragon Pearl’s release date is 20 September 2023.
