Drago - Jewels of Fortune: Overview
For anyone with some experience playing Pragmatic Play slots, booting up Drago - Jewels of 🏵 Fortune will surely offer a surprise or two. Visually, it looks strikingly different from their usual stuff, almost as if 🏵 produced by a different studio altogether. After a line of somewhat mediocre games, this step up in quality is a 🏵 welcomed one.
Drago - Jewels of Fortune is a fantasy slot that offers a couple of interesting features alongside impressive potential. 🏵 There are dragons involved, but not Asian inspired as you might expect from this provider, but with more of a 🏵 cartoonish touch. Drago also manages to keep the intrigue rolling due to its unusual reel formation and gameplay that can 🏵 work well to generate some uncommonly large payouts - provided you aren’t incinerated by a mouthful of dragon fire.
The game 🏵 takes place in a dimly lit cavern, littered with treasure while a dragon watches over his coins to the side. 🏵 This purple dragon, presumably Drago, though it’s not made explicitly clear, sways like he’s under the influence of something. Then 🏵 again, it would be creepy if he just stood, staring motionless at you. It’s a classic dragon sitting over his 🏵 riches scene, capped with a powerful fantasy infused soundtrack adding extra atmosphere.
The game grid is an interesting one, made up 🏵 of 5 reels, in a 5-4-4-4-5 configuration. The first and fifth reels possess an extra row, with a golden frame 🏵 around each corner position. These special corner positions are the key to triggering the features - more on this later. 🏵 Along with the larger than usual reel format is a larger than usual number of win ways. Winning combinations are 🏵 formed of three or more matching symbols, from the first reel, left to right. Winning symbols can land in any 🏵 row, which provides 1,600 ways to win, but are easy enough to follow along with.
The home screen brings up Pragmatic’s 🏵 ever-helpful volatility meter that lets players know exactly what they are getting in to before pressing play. In Drago’s case, 🏵 it scores 4.5/5 which might not be as volatile as it gets, but is still a high rating all the 🏵 same. A figure that will find universal appeal is the default RTP, which at 96.5% is comfortably above average.
Playable from 🏵 20 p/c toR$/€100 per spin, the symbols are made up of 9 regulars, a wild and a bonus symbol. The 🏵 regulars are five brightly coloured 10 - A royals, decorated with a scaled pattern to give them a dash of 🏵 personality. They are not as personable as the premiums though which include 4 dragons, with our purple pal as the 🏵 most valuable. Premium payouts range from 2x for the first dragon up to 10 times the stake for five Dragos. 🏵 The wild symbol slots in nicely here, appearing only on reels 2, 3, or 4 to substitute for all symbols 🏵 except the bonus.
Drago - Jewels of Fortune: Features
As mentioned, the 4 corner positions of the grid are the keys to 🏵 glory in Drago. Depending on the symbols that land in them players can trigger Dragon Super Spins, or Free Spins. 🏵 If players hit 4 matching dragon symbols in all 4 corners of the screen, then the Dragon Super Spin feature 🏵 is triggered.
During this feature, only the triggering symbol may appear on the reels. Each time it does, it is locked 🏵 and remains in place for the duration. The round ends when no more new Dragon symbols hit, then the number 🏵 of collected symbols results in a prize. On top of this, up to one upgrade symbol may land during the 🏵 feature. If it does, then all pays on the paytable are doubled. The more symbols, the bigger the prize:
Yellow dragons 🏵 award 2x – 100x the bet.
Green dragons award 4x – 250x the bet.
Red dragons award 5x – 500x the bet.
Pink 🏵 dragons award 10x – 5,000x the bet.
The white crystal icon is the bonus symbol, appearing only on reels 1 and 🏵 5. Hit 4 bonus symbols in all corners of the reels to trigger the Free Spins feature. Before the round 🏵 starts, a special respin game is played which starts with 3 respins and resets whenever a symbol lands. Players collect 🏵 the following special symbols to build up the free spins feature, making each free spins round more or less unique:
Green 🏵 crystals add a random number of 1 to 10 free spins.
Red crystals add from 1 to 5 sticky wilds.
Purple crystals 🏵 add a random number of 5 to 50 mystery symbols.
Blue crystals add 1x or 2x to the win multiplier.
Once respins 🏵 end, whatever has been collected gets transferred to the free spins feature and highlighted in each of the four corners. 🏵 You better make the best of what you've been awarded as there are no retriggers to benefit from. On a 🏵 final note, Drago may come with bonus buy option. Where available, this option costs 100 times the bet to trigger 🏵 the free spins. As is otherwise typically the case, you don't get to benefit from a RTP advantage here when 🏵 you use the bonus buy option.
Drago - Jewels of Fortune: Verdict
Drago - Jewels of Fortune turned out to be quite 🏵 a good game, something a little different from Pragmatic Play. Going off the math model, it might appear geared towards 🏵 more dedicated gamblers with its high volatility/high potential, but its looks and features may also appeal to a wider range 🏵 of player types.
Speaking of features, it did take a while for the first one to hit, and up until that 🏵 point, it was a grind. Then four matching dragons appeared in the corner positions for a tidy, if not amazing 🏵 win, which sort of got the ball rolling. From there, features appeared fairly regularly which kept the game flowing nicely 🏵 while the bankroll seesawed more or less around its original value. Of course, the game is highly volatile, so anything 🏵 is possible.
Something we observed during testing is that the predetermination factor can be a bit too obvious at times. For 🏵 example, during the respin collection feature, if you get 10 free spins you almost certainly won't get more than a 🏵 x1 multiplier. Moreover, when wilds are to be distributed across the reels, they always seem to settle in the worst 🏵 possible positions. Mystery symbols are interesting too. It doesn't seem to matter whether you're awarded 10 or 50, the chance 🏵 of landing mystery symbols almost appears to be the same.
When it comes to wins, Drago - Jewels of Fortune can 🏵 reach some pretty high heights. For one, there’s up to 10,000x available during Dragon Free Spins should you score 20 🏵 or more Dragos with the upgrade symbol doubling wins. Even more is possible during free spins where Pragmatic has cited 🏵 potential in the region of 48,000 times the stake. Some insane collecting will need to take place in the respin 🏵 round before hitting the magic during free spins. Unfortunately, it's a well known fact that Pragmatic Play potential can be 🏵 a bit...aggrandized.
Overall, however, Drago - Jewels of Fortune proved to be a thoroughly entertaining slot. It’s got a good look, 🏵 a stirring soundtrack, and a couple of exciting features that can technically dazzle. The result is good for some high 🏵 volatility gaming with remarkable rewards should you manage a bold raid on the dragon’s treasure chamber.
