Sleeping Dragon

Sleeping Dragon: Slot Overview

Monsters guarding treasure is a motif that has been with us for a long, long time, and one of the most pervasive and visually arresting is the idea of a big ol' dragon jealously guarding its horde. Thanks in part to the popularity of The Hobbit movie trilogy, Smaug, deep-voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, sleeping on a mountain of loot is one of the most recognisable iterations of this idea. Getting past an annoying guardian to lay hands on loot has a certain gambling connotation, so it's no wonder dragon horde games are quite numerous. In this instance, developer Pragmatic Play contributes to the scene with Sleeping Dragon, a slot that takes an old-fashioned idea and pairs it with relatively old-fashioned gaming concepts.

Sleeping Dragon is not the most original slot in the world, and this applies to its presentation as much as to its gameplay. For your eyes, a big reddy-orange dragon dozes on a pile of coins and gems, much like a thousand or so other dragons in books, movies, and slots have done for years. He, she or it wakes up from time to time, such as when free spins are active or when triggering a random Money symbol assist, giving the game an extra blast of life. However, Sleeping Dragon's looks like a sleepy, old-school slot, presumably on purpose, since we've seen Pragmatic Play's skill at pulling off pretty pictures in the past.

The treasure hunt begins by grabbing your trusty sword and picking a stake of 10 c to $/€250 per spin. The adventure will suit gamblers who prefer highly volatile math models, and the maximum RTP they can theoretically expect is 96.5%, no matter how the game is played. A column propped 5x3 gaming area is where Sleeping Dragon lands symbols, forming wins along its 25 paylines.

All pay symbols in Sleeping Dragon pay left to right from the leftmost reel and consist of 10-A playing card ranks, swords, shields, crowns, and lady characters. Five-of-a-kind winning combinations in the base game pay 2x to 3x the bet for the card royals or 4x to 6x the bet for the four higher-paying symbols. Helping complete winning combinations, wilds are present on all reels except the leftmost reel to substitute all symbols except scatters or Money symbols.

Sleeping Dragon: Slot Features

Stirring the dragon may occur when features trigger, where the possibilities include a Respin Bonus, free spins with giant symbols, and a feature buy section.

Respin Bonus

Money symbols appear on all reels with values of 1x to 80x the bet, or displaying the 20x Mini, 100x Minor, or 300x Major prize. Hitting at least 6 Money symbols triggers the Respin Bonus. However, if at least one Money symbol hits, there is a random chance the dragon wakes up, and 5 Money symbols are added to the grid to trigger the feature.

3 respins are awarded, and only the triggering Money symbols remain stuck on the screen. Respins land only Money symbols or blanks, and if a new Money symbol lands, it sticks till the feature ends and resets the respin count back to 3. The round ends when there are no more respins, or all positions are filled, then the values of all Money symbols in view are awarded. If the screen is filled, an additional 7,000x the bet prize is awarded. In the base game, if 15 Money symbols hit, their total value and the 7,000x Mega bonus are paid.

Free Spins

Hitting 3, 4, or 5 scatters awards players 6, 9, or 50 free spins, respectively. In free spins, the middle three reels spin together to form mega symbols. If a mega scatter hits, +3 free spins are granted. If a mega Money symbol hits, the Bonus Respin feature activates, where the mega Money symbol counts as one symbol, awarding its value once. At random, if a free spin does not produce a win, there is a chance the mega symbol is replaced by a Money symbol, triggering the respins round. During free spins, the 10-A card ranks pay 0.6x-0.8x for 5 OAK, while the four premiums award 1x to 4x for 5 OAK.

Feature Buys

In Sleeping Dragon, players are able to buy the Respin Bonus or the free spins round, each costing 100 times the bet.

Sleeping Dragon: Slot Verdict

At the time of writing, Pragmatic Play had been on a bit of a local jackpot binge, and adding a touch of weirdness is the way Sleeping Dragon is, in many ways, a dragon version of Fiesta Fortune, reviewed mere days before. Fair enough, the two games are not bang on the same, but they both centre on a Respin Bonus, free spins where respins can trigger from, and local jackpots. Perhaps the developer threw the design team a set of features it wanted to see used, and half of them wanted a dragon slot, while the other half wanted a Latin America slot, so they split up to make competing games. Or, still thinking out loud here, maybe saturation of the local jackpot market was simply the overriding goal, so the more, the merrier? Whatever the case, here we are with another very similar game.

However, while there are similarities, arguably more similarities than differences, Sleeping Dragon forks away from Fiesta Fortune in a number of ways, too. One is that its free spins round drops giant symbols on the middle three reels, though this is something straight out of the Wolf Gold playbook. Winning potential is a lot higher, too, as Sleeping Dragon boasts a win cap three times greater at 15,000x the bet, plus the top jackpot is a larger amount. However, on a less motivating side, Sleeping Dragon's max win is around 50 times less likely to occur, meaning its mechanical dragon does a pretty good job of guarding the wealth.

Dragons are popular, as are local jackpot slots (in certain markets, mind you), so Sleeping Dragon will likely fall in certain gamblers' laps. On the other hand, there's nothing much new here to see from any perspective, so while some of the stats hold up pretty well, Sleeping Dragon was just too sleepy to get wildly fired up about.