Dragon Wins Slot by Light & Wonder

Look at the four corners of the screen. Each one holds a dragon, red, gold, green and purple, and each dragon has its own meter. Land a win on a coloured dragon symbol and the matching meter creeps up. Fill one and you get three Dragon Spins, but which three you get depends entirely on which colour filled up.

Red gives you stacked dragons on every reel. Gold turns all dragons gold and then converts a chosen gem into more gold dragons after each spin, paying only once the conversion settles. Green changes up to three of the middle reels into solid dragon reels. Purple is the one to hope for: every dragon turns purple and can expand to cover the spaces above and below it, which is how the biggest hits land. During any Dragon Spins round the blue Scatter is swapped for a colour-matched one, so three of them retrigger that exact bonus.

The scatter route is separate. Three or more blue shields award one of two free-game types, decided at the trigger. More Wilds runs 10 to 15 spins and turns selected symbols wild after each spin. Wild Reels runs 5 to 10 spins and floods up to three of the centre reels with nothing but wilds. Both can retrigger. There is also Dragon's Fire, where a dragon breathes fire to repeat its win three, five or ten times.

None of this is menacing. The reels sit on a cracked stone tablet floating in a clear blue sky dotted with grassy islands, the dragon heads ride on little flaming tiles, and the lower pays are bright faceted gems in pink, teal and blue. With four dragon bonuses and two free-game flavours but no buy bonus, the depth is in how many different ways a single colour can take over the grid.