5 Lions

The Asian-themed sub-genre of online slots is pretty huge, and there are tons of games that fall into it. As a result, if a software developer like Pragmatic Play wants to stand out with a title in that sub-genre, it has to really bring it on graphics and gameplay. The graphics are pretty solid, but it's the gameplay that really stands out in the 5 Lions online slot. The combination of features and the way they are handled is much different than what you've most likely ever seen before, and the game is designed for action with a medium volatility.

Game Layout

The base layout for this game has five reels and three rows with 243 ways to win. This all-ways style of game turns all paying symbols on the regular portion of the pay table into left-to-right scatter-style symbols. You'll be increments of 50 coins from 50 to 500 per spin, and the coins can be worth $0.01 to $0.50 each. This puts the minimum wager at $0.50 with the maximum at $250, so everyone from penny players to the highest of rollers will find that there are bet sizes in this game that match up with what you're looking for.

Golden Lion Wild Symbols

The golden lion is one of the two most important symbols in the whole game. It's a wild symbol, and it makes an appearance on the middle three reels only. While it only shows up on the second, third and fourth reels, don't be tricked into thinking that it doesn't have that much to offer because it has a hidden trick that will give you an enormous amount of value. Each spin, a random number is chosen that's as high as 40. Whenever you get wins on that spin that include at least one wild symbol, that combination's payout will be muliplied by that number. This turns the wilds into randomized wild multipliers that are worth as much as a whooping 40x.

This symbol substitutes for everything except the scattered yin-yang symbol.

Scattered Yin-Yangs

The yin-yang symbol shows up on every one of the five reels, and it's responsible for some pretty reasonable payouts. Five of a kind is worth 20 times your total bet, and you can win 5x for four of a kind. Three of a kind earns 2x, and it's worth pointing out that this symbol does not have to appear left-to-right on the reels to win. Instead, you'll get paid no matter where it shows up.

Free Spins Bonus Round

Three or more of the yin-yang scatter symbol will take you to a free spins feature. You'll have seven options to pick in terms of the number of free spins and the values for the wild multipliers. You can earn up to 25 free spins here with wild multipliers of 2x to 5x, or you can have as few as six free spins where the wild multipliers are forced to be 15x, 30x or 40x. A number of options between these two extremes are available as well as a randomizer option that picks between the number of available free spin options and the number of wild multiplier options. It can be risky, but it can also end up being worth it.

Payout Structure and Prizes

Keep in mind that all of the wins we are going to describe here are multiples of how much you're betting overall, so the more you bet, the more you'll win. To start with, the red dragon gets you 20x for five, and the orange bird is worth 16x for five as well. Five of a kind of the frog symbol also gets you a 16x, and then it drops to 6x for five of a kind combinations of the blue koi or purple turtle.

Card rank symbols make up the remainder of the pay table, but they really just split up into two tiers. You can get 4x wins for five of the A or K, and the payouts for five of the Q, J, 10 or 9 are all 2x.

In Summary

What Pragmatic Play has done with the 5 Lions slot is jump right into a crowded sub-genre and provide a game with reasonable graphics and tremendous gameplay. While this title probably won't ever win any awards for having the absolute best visuals of any game on the market, they're definitely above-average, and they're a great pairing for the play style, which is something that most players will be focused on anyway with the great features.