King of 3 Kingdoms (NetEnt): Overview

Aiming to build a stronger foothold in the Far East, NetEnt has assembled a small line-up of titles with themes designed to resonate with Asian audiences. At the time of writing, six such games appear on NetEnt’s roadmap, and most are essentially re-skins of earlier releases. Rather than reviewing every one of them, here’s a quick rundown instead;

• Twin Happiness (clone of Twin Spin)
• Happy Panda (clone of Mercy of the Gods)
• Sweet Honey Fruity (clone of Fruit Shop)
• Who’s the Bride? (clone of Dead or Alive)
• Imperial Riches (original)

If you’ve followed NetEnt for a while, you can probably work out which classic title has been copied and rebranded as King of 3 Kingdoms. To keep a bit of mystery, we’ll save the reveal for the final section. For now, a few clues: it runs on a 5-reel, 243 ways setup and is available on all devices with stakes from 0.25 to €/$125 per spin. Set in Ancient China, King of 3 Kingdom is a fairly volatile slot that largely revolves around the free spins round, where every win is tripled and re-triggers come frequently.

With this clone, NetEnt’s team has essentially swapped the spotlight from one powerful civilisation to another. As NetEnt puts it; “King of 3 Kingdoms takes players back in time, to an era where the mighty Asian king conquered the three kingdoms.” Against a fiery backdrop, the reels show low-value A to 9 card symbols alongside soldiers and the three kings. The blue king is the top-paying symbol, awarding 60 times your stake for five on a full payline. The wild is a colourful map of the three kingdoms that looks as if it came straight out of the board game Risk. Appearing only on reels 2 and 4, the wild substitutes for all regular symbols except the scatter.

King of 3 Kingdoms (NetEnt): Features

There’s just one bonus element in King of 3 Kingdoms – the Free Spins feature. Hit at least three dragon scatter symbols anywhere on the reels consecutively, beginning from the leftmost reel, and you’ll enter the free spins round – 3, 4 or 5 scatters award 15, 20 or 25 spins respectively. With battle shouts and war drums in the background, every win is boosted by a 3x multiplier. Re-triggers also happen fairly often, letting you add up to 25 additional free spins to your total each time a re-trigger occurs.

King of 3 Kingdoms (NetEnt): Verdict

And that’s really it. If you still hadn’t pinned it down, King of 3 Kingdoms is a clone of Victorious. First launched in 2011, it became a major success for the studio and is still considered one of the genuine classics today (even if it’s not talked about as much anymore). Since it’s a clone, King of 3 Kingdoms won’t feel like a new experience to anyone who already knows Victorious, but the point of the release is clearly to reshape the theme for Asian markets. In short, King of 3 Kingdoms is a calculated move that could end up being just as popular in Asia as it once was in Europe when it originally arrived.