Take The Kingdom

Take The Kingdom Slot Review

A castle burns orange against a purple dusk, a red dragon coils around the stone reel frame, and two armoured knights stand with their backs to you, facing the fire. Betsoft‘s Take The Kingdom makes its siege literal: this is a game built entirely around a dragon that torches the reels on a timer. It runs on a 5×4 grid with 100 fixed paylines and an RTP of 96.53%. Alongside Book of Helios and Golden Dragon Inferno, it’s one of the studio’s more mechanics-led fantasy outings. The dragon, though, is the whole story.

The Base Game

Wins pay left to right across those 100 lines, with only the highest combination on each line counting and coinciding wins on different lines added together. A 100-line grid means most spins find at least something, which suits a game whose real payouts arrive on a timer rather than spin by spin. Payouts scale with the selected bet.

The paytable, as multiples of the total bet:

• King – 0.04x for two, 0.16x for three, 0.40x for four, 2.80x for five
• Princess – 0.12x for three, 0.24x for four, 0.96x for five
• Knight – 0.12x for three, 0.20x for four, 0.80x for five
• Shield, Axe, Crossbow, Mace – 0.08x for three, 0.16x for four, 0.48x for five
• A, K, Q, J, 10 – 0.04x for three, 0.08x for four, 0.24x for five

The gaps between tiers are narrow. The King’s 2.80x for five is the ceiling, and the royals sit at barely a tenth of that, so the symbol ladder matters less than where the wilds end up. The wild substitutes for everything except the scatter and the dragon symbol, and five wilds on a line pay the same as five Kings.

The scatter is a treasure chest, and it only lands on reels two, three and four. That restriction matters for the bonus, and it explains why the middle reels carry so much of the base game’s tension. A spin can look busy on the outer reels and still be doing nothing towards the feature.

Fireball Wilds

This is the game’s centrepiece. Take The Kingdom plays in rounds of seven, and a countdown timer sits on screen at all times, ticking down one number per spin. Whenever a dragon symbol lands, it converts into a fireball marker and stays exactly where it is.

When the timer hits zero, every fireball on the reels detonates at once and turns wild. Wins are calculated after all the explosions, the timer resets to seven, and the wilds clear on the following spin. A round where dragons landed on reels one, three and five in the first three spins means four more spins of waiting before a three-wild detonation.

There are quirks worth knowing. A dragon can’t land on a position that already holds a fireball, so each reel position holds at most one marker per round. It’s also possible to run a full seven-spin round without a single dragon appearing, in which case the detonation comes and goes with nothing to explode.

That’s the main risk in the base game’s rhythm: the payoff is scheduled, but the fuel for it isn’t. The countdown also advances separately for each bet level, and fireballs are stored separately per bet level.

Change your stake and you change which set of stored fireballs you’re working with. It’s an unusual piece of design, and it rewards staying at one level while markers accumulate. Drop down mid-round and you leave your collected fireballs behind at the higher level, waiting where you left them.

Free Spins

Three treasure chest scatters, which only land on the middle three reels, award 12 free spins. The round begins by randomly awarding either six, nine or 12 wilds, scattered across the reels, and on every spin those wilds move to new positions. The fireball countdown is paused throughout, and free spins don’t advance it.

That roaming is what defines the round. Every spin is a fresh layout, with the same wild count redistributed, so a spin that misses can be followed immediately by one where the wilds cluster on the first three reels. With 100 lines in play, six wilds is a modest presence and 12 is close to saturation.

The wilds also substitute for everything except the scatter and the dragon here, just as in the base game, and the highest win per line still applies. What changes is density: there’s no detonation to wait for and no timer to watch, because the wilds are already on the reels from the first spin.

There’s no retrigger. The round runs its 12 spins, plays at the bet settings in force when it triggered, and that’s it. Everything hinges on how many wilds you were dealt at the start and where they travel.

Buy Feature

If waiting on the scatters doesn’t appeal, the Buy Feature sells direct entry to free spins, and the price scales with how many wilds you want on the reels. Every option buys the same 12 spins; the wild count is the only variable, and it’s the only lever that changes what the round is worth.

• 24x the bet – 12 free spins with 6 wilds
• 70x the bet – 12 free spins with 9 wilds
• 175x the bet – 12 free spins with 12 wilds

The spread is steep. Twelve wilds roaming a 5×4 grid with 100 lines is a very different proposition from six, and the pricing reflects that gap honestly enough. Whether the top tier justifies more than seven times the entry cost is a question of how much the roaming-wild mechanic is worth to you.

One thing the buy menu can’t change is the round’s fixed length. Twelve spins with no retrigger means every purchase is a closed book: what you’re choosing is how many wilds fill those twelve pages, nothing more.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.7/10

Playing this is like watching a siege from the battlements: long stretches of nothing much, then everything catches fire at once. The one reason to choose it is that build. Fireballs stack, the timer burns down, and when four or five markers go off together across 100 lines, the hit is proper. Free spins are the strongest thing here, because the roaming wilds give every spin a fresh chance at a full board in a way the countdown game can’t. The weakness is just as real: nothing guarantees dragons land at all, and plenty of seven-spin rounds pay out on an empty chamber.

It suits players who enjoy watching a mechanic accumulate towards a fixed moment, and who won’t chase the top-tier buy out of impatience. If constant triggers and immediate action are what you’re after, this isn’t that. Hold the walls, let the dragon do its work, and the siege pays off more often than not.

Take The Kingdom FAQs

• What is the RTP of Take The Kingdom?

  Take The Kingdom runs at an RTP of 96.53%.
• How does the Fireball Countdown work?

  A countdown timer starts at 7 and reduces by one on every spin. Dragon symbols convert into fireball markers that stay in place, and when the timer reaches 0 all fireballs explode and become wilds. The timer then resets to 7 and clears the wilds on the next spin. The countdown advances separately for each bet level.
• How do you trigger free spins in Take The Kingdom?

  You need three scatter symbols. Scatters only appear on reels 2, 3 and 4, and three of them start 12 free spins. The round begins with 6, 9 or 12 wilds randomly scattered on the reels, and the wilds move to new positions on every spin.
• Can free spins be retriggered?

  No. Free spins cannot be retriggered during the free spins round, which runs for 12 spins at the bet settings in place when it triggered.
• How much does the Buy Feature cost?

  The Buy Feature costs 24x your bet for 12 free spins with 6 wilds, 70x for 12 free spins with 9 wilds, and 175x for 12 free spins with 12 wilds.
• What does the wild substitute for?

  The wild substitutes for all symbols except the scatter and the dragon symbol. Five wilds on a payline pay the same as five of the highest paying symbol.
• How many paylines does Take The Kingdom have?

  Take The Kingdom has 100 fixed paylines on a 5×4 grid, paying left to right with only the highest win per line counting.
• Who makes Take The Kingdom?

  Take The Kingdom is made by Betsoft.
• When is Take The Kingdom released?

  Take The Kingdom’s release date is 26 November 2021.