How To Win On Floating Dragon - Dragon Boat Festival Slot - Features & Mechanics

Players who'd like to join the festivities and participate in thrilling dragon boat races should start by selecting their desired stake per spin from a £/$/€0.10 - £/$/€250 range. On a semi-transparent playing area, a 5x3 grid will produce payouts from a minimum of 3 matching symbols landing on any of the 10 pay lines. Successful combinations must start from the left side of the board and continue rightward along adjacent columns. The mathematical model offers a default return to player ratio of 96.07% combined with very high volatility. Participants who demonstrate the highest persistence during the races stand to secure rewards up to 10,000x.

Among the regular symbols, two distinct groups outline the hierarchy. The first, low-paying set includes images representing royal icons from 10 to A resembling the Asian alphabet. They award prizes amounting to 0.2 times the bet for a 3-of-a-kind hit and between 5 - 10 times for a line of 5. Premium characters are depicted by a group of fish, a flag, zongzi dumplings, drums, and a dragon boat, granting from 1 to 5 times the bet for the short sequences and 20 to 200 times for complete lines. The top-paying symbol is the only one that can form 2-of-a-kind combinations worth 0.5x.

Hold & Spinner Bonus

Money symbols appear as gold coins or diamonds holding values between 1x - 2000x, and at least 3 are needed simultaneously in view to activate the bonus round. The scored Money symbols remain in their position for the duration of the bonus while all others are cleared from the grid. Players receive 4 respins, which will reset to the initial amount whenever there's a hit on the board. Every new Money symbol landing causes all visible cash values to be added to the total. The feature ends after 4 consecutive non-winning spins.

Free Spins

Landing 3, 4, or 5 Scatters activates the bonus comprising 10, 15, or 20 free spins. The Wild symbol will become available on all reels, substituting for all paying icons in win evaluation and triggering the collection feature from Fish symbols that carry instant prizes between 2x - 10,000x. Every 4th Wild scored retriggers the bonus with 10 extra spins while increasing the multiplier applied to wins from Fish symbols to x2 on the first threshold, x3 on the second, and x10 on the third. Beyond that, no further retriggers can occur.

Non-winning spins with at least one Wild in view have a chance to add Fish symbols in random positions.

Bonus Buy

Floating Dragon - Dragon Boat Festival slot offers players an option to trigger both bonuses instantly for a fixed buy-in of 100 times the bet each or benefit from better chances to activate them organically through an ante bet function that increases the active stake by 50%.

Floating Dragon - Dragon Boat Festival On Mobile

The slot is available on all mobile devices in HTML5 technology, and it presents the highest level of a portable design. The landscape variant directly imitates the desktop view. The portrait mode looks clean and readable, as reels occupy the central part of the screen, and interactive buttons (including the Bonus Buy) sit at the bottom. The reels and symbols are prominent thanks to the composition utilizing the entire viewport. User-friendly screen estate distribution makes it a perfect slot to play on the go.

Final Thoughts

Pragmatic Play is a studio known for frequently reusing their existing mechanics in combination with themes that proved successful in the past. This time, we're dealing with a third addition to the Floating Dragon series, after the original under the same title and a Megaways variant that debuted in 2022. All three games boast a similar design, although the Dragon Boat Festival introduces a few new images to its iconography since it tries to relate to a specific holiday in Chinese culture. Otherwise, it's a relatively straightforward composition that doesn't go overboard with additional effects or unexpected twists in the story. A predictable yet familiar setting for anyone who feels comfortable in the traditional Asian atmosphere.

If you've played the original Floating Dragon, then Dragon Boat Festival won't hold many secrets. It's more like a new version on steroids. The old Hold & Spin, which required the coin symbols to land on the middle reel, turned into a more accessible Hold & Spinner, which allows them to drop anywhere on the grid. All rewards have been significantly increased, from Money symbols and Fish symbols to the overall max win, which has grown from 5,000 to 10,000 times the bet. The entire configuration is in fact exactly the same as the fishing-themed release that popped up a couple of months ago - Big Bass Hold & Spinner. That basically classifies Dragon Boat Festival as a reskin. So if you prefer the company of a beautiful Asian woman to a bearded angler, perhaps it could prove a better choice.