Floating Dragon Wild Horses

Floating Dragon Wild Horses: Slot Overview

Two creatures in the Chinese zodiac join forces in Pragmatic Play partner Reel Kingdom's online slot, Floating Dragon Wild Horses. If you've been following along, you'll know this is the sixth release in the studio's Floating Dragon series that was first brought to life in 2021. Making it six deep in a series of anything is generally a positive sign, though the Floating Dragon has been helped along by Megaways and a willingness to make use of borrowed mechanics. Floating Dragon Wild Horses throws borrowed out the window and goes full clone mode, as it piggybacks off the technical specs found in Reel Kingdom's Big Bass Boxing Bonus Round.

If nothing else, Wild Horses looks dramatic, and Reel Kingdom has made the game matrix see-through so players can cop a greater eyeful of what's going on. What it's got for the eyes is a cinematic, fiery background of a horse-shaped cloud presiding above a bit of the countryside. It's close-ish to Floating Dragon Year of the Snake, sort of, but nothing like the clear blue base game skies on parade in games like Floating Dragon Boat Festival or Floating Dragon Hold & Spin. It goes to show that Reel Kingdom can cast its net wide when developing optics, yet when it comes to mechanics, the studio has a habit of falling back on past glories.

Floating Dragon Wild Horses' transparent gaming area is a 5x3 grid with 10 paylines, evaluating winning combinations of up to 5 OAK in length. The numbers are the same as the game Floating Dragon Wild Horses is made from, so players get a highly volatile math model pushing out an RTP of 96.5%, as well as two lower return values. From $/€0.10 to $/€250 is wagerable, or when using the ante bet, the stake is raised by 50% in order to have a higher chance of getting free spins.

The symbol list is made up of 10-A royals, coins, envelopes, lanterns, sycees, and golden bonsai trees. Hitting 5 matching royals pays 5-10 times the bet, or 20-200 times the bet is awarded when landing 5 matching premium symbols. There are two types of wilds, which appear only during free spins. Both are able to substitute for all symbols except scatters and the money symbol.

Floating Dragon Wild Horses: Slot Features

The coin pay symbol is also the money symbol, possessing values of 2x to 5,000x, which can be won during free spins. As well as natural triggers, bonus buy options are also available.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatters in the base game triggers 15, 20, or 25 free spins, respectively. In the base game, when 2 scatters land, there is a random chance that another scatter is revealed by paper lanterns or by a respin effect. During free spins, each wild symbol collects the values of all money symbols in view. Wild symbols are also collected, and every fourth collected wild of any colour in the respective meter awards +10 free spins, and the multiplier for money symbol collection with the wild of that colour increases to x2 at the second level, x3 at the third level, and x10 at the fourth level. After the fourth level on each meter, the feature cannot be retriggered anymore. Three modifiers may randomly occur during free spins.

• Folding Fans - When there are wilds but no money symbols, money symbols may randomly appear at the end of the spin.
• Paper Lanterns - When there are money symbols but no wilds, at the end of the spin, wilds may randomly appear.
• Firecrackers - When there are wilds but no coins, this modifier may randomly change all symbols on the screen except wilds into something else at the end of a spin.

Feature Buy

There are two options when buying free spins. One is triggering free spins with at least 3 scatters for 100x the bet, or 300x also triggers free spins with 3 or more scatters, but in this round, only 3 wilds of any colour collected are needed to trigger the feature.

Floating Dragon Wild Horses: Slot Verdict

Well, that was oddly familiar. Then again, not so odd considering the number of times Reel Kingdom has reheated its Big Bass formula in the past, and may well do so again in the future. As they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results, but the odds seem pretty good that the studio is going to drag a form of these mechanics out again, and again, and again… in one way or another. What's a little scary is that Floating Dragon Wild Horses is a remake of Big Bass Vegas Double Down Deluxe, and gamblers already had one of those in the form of Big Bass Boxing Bonus Round. This means Floating Dragon Wild Horses is just reheated leftovers, like discovering an old pizza box under the couch while cleaning the house, and scarfing down the contents, cos eh, why not?

So while dragons and wild horses might not have much to do with fishing, neither did boxing, and Reel Kingdom was happy enough going there. Will gamblers? Spose some will. However, this constant cloning, copying, and reusing may be tedious if you're studiously following the developer's output. The theme does put a new spin on things, but its mechanics are the same old thing; nothing has changed. For newcomers, this formula might still deliver bursts of excitement and explosive potential of up to 5,000x, yet anyone familiar with Reel Kingdom's output will likely find the repetition hard to ignore. By now, Reel Kingdom has recycled its Big Bass stuff so many times that spotting the original source material feels like a history test rather than a discovery.

In other circumstances, Floating Dragon Wild Horses' repetition might have come across as weirder than it does. However, since it comes from a casino game maker which wholeheartedly embraces the recycling ethos, the shock is lessened. That doesn't mean Floating Dragon Wild Horses is a good game, but it's not a disaster, provided you're a gambler who can't get enough of Big Bass-style mechanics in a variety of non-fishing settings.