Lion Coin 2000 Slot Review

Let's be real right out of the gate: YGR has built this hold-and-win-and-collect idea before, on the same 3x3 board, in Piggy Bank, Piggy Boom and Temple Adventure. What it does differently here is put the collect symbol on the middle reel and let it pay outside the bonus, which is a smaller change than the artwork suggests and a bigger one than it sounds.

It's completely decked out in the standard Chinese New Year theme, lots of red, lots of gold, some lanterns, and a grinning lion mascot that reacts to your spins. It's fine, but it's definitely nothing you haven't seen a hundred times before.

Also, a quick heads up about the name, because it's a little confusing. YGR recently released Dragon Master 8880, where the 8,880 was the max win. Naturally, you'd assume the max win here is 2,000x. It's not. The 2,000 refers to the Grand Jackpot coin, but the actual max win is a much better 5,000x your bet.

This is a medium-high volatility slot with bets ranging from 0.20 to 50.00. The base game gives you standard line payouts (a row of Wilds gets you 50x, while a row of Jacks gets you your money back at 1x).

But the real focus is the collect mechanic. You'll see coins with cash values (ranging from 1x to 12x, plus the jackpots) landing on the first and third reels. By themselves, they are totally useless. To actually pocket that cash, you have to land the Lion symbol, which only ever shows up on the middle reel.

This game is the absolute king of the "near miss." The game is designed to show you exactly what you just missed out on. Across twenty-five rounds we watched the board come up one symbol short six separate times, and the worst of them sat there with 14x in coins on the outside reels and a useless playing card in the middle where the Lion needed to be. It hurts every single time.

To trigger the bonus naturally, you need the perfect setup: a coin on reel 1, a coin on reel 3, and the Lion right in the middle. If you get tired of waiting for that to happen, you can just buy the bonus for 88x your bet.

The bonus is your standard hold-and-win. You start with 3 spins. Only Lions and coins land on the board, and every time one hits, your spins reset back to 3. The Lions lock into place, and as a nice little twist, if you manage to fill an entire outer reel with three coins, it doubles their value. The round ends when you hit three dead spins in a row.

Lion Coin 2000 is a solid, middle-of-the-road slot. The 5,000x max win is pretty standard for these 3x3 games, putting it right up there with games like Lucky Barrel.

I do love that you can hit decent wins in the base game just by landing one coin and a Lion, so you aren't completely reliant on the bonus round. But fair warning: because of the medium-high volatility, you are going to sit through a lot of dead spins.

Even if you pay the 88x to buy the bonus, there are no guarantees. You can easily keep a bonus round alive for a dozen respins, only to realize you've just been collecting pocket change and haven't even made half your buy-in back. It's an easy, clean game to play, but don't let the smiling lion fool you, it can be brutal.