Dragons’ Lock

Dragons' Lock: Slot Overview

Casino game maker Red Tiger has displayed an affinity for big, scaled, fantasy beasts over the years, expressed through its Dragon's Fire and Dragon's Luck range, amongst others. The studio has braved the beasts once again and designed Dragons' Lock, a slot which links dragons to a locked chest feature, where the more lucrative chests become progressively available and award cash payments when certain numbers of special key symbols land. There are plenty of dragons to go with all the boxes and keys, too, don't worry about that fantasy people.

Dragons are often depicted jealously guarding piles of treasure, not sure what they're going to do with all the rich stuff besides sleep on it, but that's the trope. This we get in Dragons' Lock, where in the base game, rich stuff litters the bottom of the screen, wedged between glowing rock formations and a wings-swept wide dragon. The camera pans out for free spins, to reveal a wider view of the area, extra dragons, trees, glowing effects, and so on. It looks a little bit like the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament when Harry and his fellow competitors had to grab a golden egg guarded by vicious dragons.

Laid over the dragons, treasure, and whatnot is Dragons' Lock's 5x4 reelset, awarding winning combinations from the leftmost reel along its 40 paylines. Gamblers have access to two feature buys and a stake range of 10 c to $/€10 per base game round. With a highly volatile math model, Dragons' Lock's most preferable RTP is a 95.8% version.

Scaly 10 to A card ranks sit at the bottom of the symbol hierarchy, paying 2.5 to 3 times the stake for a 5 OAK winning line. After them are bags of coins, gold chalices, gold bracelets, and gold medallions. Gold high pays award 5 to 25 times the stake for landing 5-matching symbols in a line. Wild symbols substitute for all paying symbols, thereby helping to link together winning combinations. They land on all reels and pay 25x for a line of 5 wilds.

Dragons' Lock: Slot Features

A player's mission in Dragons' Lock is to make all Dragon Chests available, then hit further Dragon Keys to unlock their prizes. This mechanic occurs in the base game as well as in a free spins bonus round.

Dragon Chests

Dragon Chests hold instant cash prizes and sit to the right, above the reels. The leftmost Dragon Chest provides wins of 3x to 10x the bet, the middle Chest has prizes of 15x to 50x the bet, and the rightmost Dragon Chest awards 75x to 250x the bet. At the start of the game, only the leftmost Dragon Chest may be opened. Dragon Keys are present on reels 1, 3, and 5. Each Dragon Key that lands adds +1 step towards activating the next Dragon Chest. The middle and rightmost Dragon Chests each require landing 5 Dragon Keys to activate so their prizes become available.

Dragon Chests are locked with padlocks. The Chests from left to right have 1, 2, and 3 locks. When all Dragon Chests are available to open, landing 1, 2, or 3 Dragon Keys on a spin opens the leftmost, middle, or rightmost Dragon Chest, respectively, awarding a cash prize. When the second and third Chests are unavailable, and more than one Dragon Key hits, each Dragon Key will open the leftmost Chest. If only the rightmost Chest is unavailable and 3 Dragon Keys hit, they will open the leftmost and middle Chest.

Dragon Keys

Dragon Keys may randomly land with a multiplier of x2 to x20, which applies to the prize from the Dragon Chest the key opens. If several Dragon Keys have multipliers and open the same Chest, their multipliers are summed up.

Free Spins

Landing 3 scatter symbols on reels 2, 3, and 4 triggers 10 free spins. During free spins, Dragon Keys have a higher chance of landing, and landing 3 scatters awards a further +10 free spins.

Feature Buy

At the feature buy, it is possible to purchase the free spins round for 80x the bet and all Dragon Chests will be available for the full duration of the round. For 20x the bet, players can buy a spin that guarantees 1 or more Dragon Keys to open 1 of the Dragon Chests. All Dragon Chests are available.

Dragons' Lock: Slot Verdict

Average was one of the first words that came to mind while forming a reaction to Dragons' Lock. The game has some attractive qualities going for it, some blah ones. Artwork is one of the game's favourable attributes. Red Tiger's artists have put a handsome world on the screen and filled it with handsome, winged, fire-breathing occupants. The numbers aren't bad either, and a 7,661.6x the bet max multiplier might cause some of the haters to reconsider the way they view the boxy features. Also, pushing deeper for a bit of positive feedback, Dragons' Lock has a classic Red Tiger look to it, which might appeal to followers of the studio's work.

The rest of the game wasn't amazing. First, you have to land a number of Dragon Keys to make the two higher-paying Dragon Chests available, which seems a little pointless. Not a huge number of keys need to land to get the job done, really, only 5 keys per Chest, but still. Then there are the Dragon Chest prizes themselves, and on their own, they're not monstrous. In addition, the displayed values are the best-case scenarios, and lower prize values were regularly awarded instead. But, Dragon Keys can hit bearing multipliers, so if we are going to drop the doom-mongering for a second and ponder the dream scenario, an x20 multi on a 250x Dragon Chest award wouldn't be the worst thing to ever happen.

Ancient texts like the Rig Veda and Sumerian, as well as Chinese legends, allude to dragons, meaning they've been on humankind's mind for thousands of years, so it's no wonder they've made their way into slots as well. Here, Red Tiger has made use of the creatures in an okay game, nothing special, but it might provoke a jolt of entertainment for people into dragons, or keys, or opening boxes.