Lucky Dragon (iSoftBet): Overview

With European rules tightening up and compliance becoming ever more complex and costly, many casinos have begun looking beyond the continent. Outside of the US—where online gambling is only gradually gaining acceptance—China is often seen as the ultimate target market. It’s not only a major economic force, but also home to 1.4 billion people. Officially, gambling is illegal in China. In reality, however, plenty of Chinese players travel to legal casinos abroad or to the administrative-territorial entities of Hong Kong and Macau to gamble. Some are also known to access online casinos via VPN services. The takeaway is simple: the surge of Asian themed slots from studios like NetEnt and Pragmatic Play probably isn’t happening by accident.

Powered by iSoftBet, Lucky Dragon is a Chinese style fruit machine featuring 3 reels, 3 rows and 5 paylines , with stakes ranging from 0.25 to €/$25 per spin. It runs on any computer, mobile phone, or tablet that supports the html5 format. As is typical for 3 reel slots, it keeps things straightforward, offering just one real feature: a stacked wild multiplier. On top of that, there’s also a chance to activate a progressive jackpot.

From a production standpoint, the standout element is the traditional music—a calm, pleasantly atmospheric soundtrack we took to immediately. The visuals, however, don’t impress as much. With a heavy red-and-gold palette, the background is essentially a basic wallpaper showing two dragons positioned on either side of the reels. Around the reels and on the symbols themselves, jagged edges are easy to spot, and compression artifacts show up in several areas. Sadly, it comes across as something done in a hurry, which feels well below the quality we usually associate with iSoftBet games. On the plain white reels you’ll find single, double and treble cymbals, plus rings, ingots, lanterns and flaming dragons—the last of which pays the most, awarding 40 times your stake for three of a kind.

Lucky Dragon (iSoftBet): Features

The flaming dragon serves as the Wild. It can land fully stacked on any of the three reels, and it only functions as a wild when it covers the entire reel. If you hit 1 or 2 fully stacked flaming dragons, any win is multiplied by 2x. Curiously, landing all three doesn’t apply that multiplier; instead, you simply receive the regular payout for the flaming dragon symbol, which totals 200 times your stake (40 x 5 = 200).

If that doesn’t sound like the kind of payout you were hoping for, the progressive jackpot is the other prize to chase. While it wasn’t confirmed at the time of writing, “progressive” here most likely refers to a local progressive (tied to the specific casino you’re playing at) rather than a pooled progressive (shared across multiple casinos). To trigger it, you need to land 3 lotus flowers on any of the 5 paylines.

Lucky Dragon (iSoftBet): Verdict

As you’ve probably gathered, Lucky Dragon is a very simple game. That isn’t even our main complaint. Beyond the dubious graphics—which make it feel like a quickly assembled release—there are additional issues, including steep bet increments and a paytable above the reels that’s presented in a way that makes the symbols seem more valuable than they actually are. It’s an old, manipulative trick used by plenty of providers, and one we’d rather see disappear entirely.

Even though iSoftBet’s two latest releases, Dragon Stone and Egyptian King, pleasantly surprised us, this one won’t be joining our wishlist—neither now nor anytime soon.