Golden Dragon Inferno Slot Review

We noticed that we have a BTCGOSU Betsoft Casino Page but no reviews of Betsoft slots. That cannot stand. For the uninformed lay gamblers out there, in the past, Betsoft had a reputation for being this sphere’s top provider of 3D reel spinners. However, recently, it has moved away from this genre, predominately releasing games with 2D graphics. The Malta-based company is also famous as one of the premier suppliers of casino games for US-facing sites. It keeps a fairly decent release schedule, setting loose two to three slots per month on chiefly international operators. Its latest game, Golden Dragon Inferno, debuted on November 24th. And it made quite a splash in countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, and Belgium, markets where it entered the top thirty most-played games rankings. That served as incentive enough for us to scan it for your reading pleasure.

Theme & Design

A dragon, like everyone knows, is a legendary oversized winged reptilian creature that breathes fire. It has appeared in the folklore of many cultures, with the belief that they first got depicted in ancient Mesopotamian art and literature. It is a fact that dragons have been an integral part of East Asian culture for thousands of years, acting as an essential part of the religious traditions of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. In Chinese mythology, these creatures have various animal-like forms, like fish and turtles, but they most commonly get depicted as massive four-legged snakes, symbolizing auspicious power and potency. The presence of dragons in Chinese culture dates back to at least the fifth millennium BC. These mythical beings, along with various other popular symbols from Chinese culture, are the theme of this Betsoft game.

The Asian motif has a sizeable presence in the interactive gaming sector, as close to three thousand titles utilize it in some fashion. Noted examples are Sakura Fortune from Quickspin and 5 Lions Megaways from Pragmatic Play. The presentation here is colorful, dominated by reds and gold. It is in line with many other simple Betsoft slots, particularly reminiscent of the design used in their Golden Horns spinner, another Chinese culture-inspired game. No one has ever said that Betsoft releases look bad. That is also the case here. The 2D painterly graphics are super polished, with the reels spinning in a traditional Asian temple ornamented frame. The music is a cliché, generic Chinese tune, and the same goes for the sound effects in play. As a whole, Golden Dragon Inferno’s packaging works. Though, it is a tad uninspiring.

The game utilizes a newer buttons setup from Betsoft, with the spin and auto-spin functions on the bottom right, the stake adjuster in the middle, and the info buttons in the bottom left corner of your screen.

Specs & Gameplay

Golden Dragon Inferno incorporates 243 paylines that get overlaid on a 5×3 layout. The smallest bet someone can make on this game is one of $0.25, and the most substantial one per spin is $80. The max win potential of Golden Dragon Inferno is x5,000, which is somewhat surprising for a Betsoft release. In the early to mid-2010s, this provider chiefly made low to medium-variance products with modest max win potentials. It has chosen to put in a medium variance math model in Golden Dragon Inferno, one with a return to player of 96.41% and a hit frequency of a staggering 71.39.

Wins here get awarded left to right for two or more matching symbols landing on adjacent reels. The low-pay tokens are your classic A-J royals, paying wins of x0.8 for five-of-a-kind combos. The premiums here are four golden sculptures, producing rewards of x1.2 when five instances of them hit on the grid on the same spin on connecting reels. Yes, these win amounts are disappointing, but that is what the high hit frequency is for, to offset them.

The word wild is the wild here, appearing on all the reels except the first one and substituting all the tokens except the jackpot symbols. Red mask blocks act as mystery images. Fireballs with prize values or jackpots connected to them play the scatter role, and this game also has dragon wilds, which we will explain below.

Bonus Features

Each reel has stacked mystery symbol positions that get replaced with a random token after a spin concludes. When that happens, these spots on the 5×3 setup get substituted with pay symbols, the same ones per position per spin.

Golden Dragon Inferno also has nudging multiplier wilds. These fall in the base game. They can nudge up or down to create a wild reel with multiplier values in the x2 to x10 range. If no winning combo gets formed with the multiplier wild reel on the screen, the game awards a second chance by holding it in place and providing a respin.

Know that one of the main selling points of this slot is that it has a hold & win bonus feature. It gets triggered by landing six or more scatters. These can have prize values in the range from five to fifty or have mini (75), minor (150), or major (1,000) ones attached. The bonus/scatter symbols get locked in place here, with three respins getting provided. Each new token appearing on the reels sticks in place and resets the respin counter to three. The mode ends when all fifteen scatters get locked. Or no respins remain. Note that you cannot get a nudging multiplier wild reel simultaneously with the hold & win bonus.

GOSU Verdict

Don’t take this the wrong way. For a Betsoft game, Golden Dragon Inferno offers more features than we expected. Yes, this Malta-based provider has created some interesting titles before, with a few novel mechanics, but they primarily stick to simple releases that look good. The hit frequency here is terrific, and the RTP is slightly above average. While not Earth-shattering, and its somewhat tedious soundtrack aside, this is a better-than-expected release from Betsoft. It will not go down in the history books as an industry-changing game or one that will attain sizeable levels of popularity, but in our eyes, it is above average and worth a session or two.

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