Microgaming and Stormcraft Studios Release Dragon Shard
Microgaming unveiled their latest slot offering.
Dragon Shard is the latest game from Stormcraft Studios, an independent studio that creates exclusive content for Microgaming. Anchored in South Africa, Dragon Shard in the third game released by the studio, their first coming in June 2018.
Dragon Shard is a fantasy-themed slot game, being released right as HBO’s supershow Game of Thrones wraps up. Players will find a few similar themes between the show and Dragon Shard, which is a familiarity that Stormcraft might banking on helping to draw players in with.
About Dragon Shard
Dragon Shard is a 5 reel slot game with 40 different paylines. It’ll be available for desktop, mobile, and tablet devices. Symbols come in the form of two competing factions: the Fire Queen and the Ice King (the GoT references make themselves.)
The big feature is the Win Booster, an elaborate button on the left side of the reels. The Dragon Shard can be engaged at any time. It doubles your bet and pays lines in both directions, effectively doubling winnings. It also affects question mark symbols so that they will only reveal wilds or high value symbols.
Beyond that, it’s a familiar-feeling game that players won’t have too much trouble figuring out. Scatter symbols will pay in any position, regardless of being on a payline or not. Scatter wins are multiplied by a player’s non-boosted bet and added to the payline win.
Additionally, three or more scatter symbols results in 10 Free Spins and up to 3 mystery reels in the center of the game. The mystery reels will all result in the same symbol being shown, drastically increasing your chance of winning big.
Players might notice how the game specifies that a boosted game pays left to right and right to left, but doesn’t say it doubles a players win. However, all paylines are symmetrical, so something that pays left to right will pay right to left as well, and anything that doesn’t pay one direction won’t pay in the other.
Stormcraft’s Productions
Dragon Shard is the third game from Stormcraft Studios. Their tow previous titles are Agent jane Blonde Returns and Fortunium. Fortunium also features a similar win booster that is seen in Dragon Shard.
Fortunium is self-described to be “created to answer a business need to develop a premium user experience for mobile players who prefer to play in Portrait Mode.” It features all the same bonuses as Dragon Shard along with the win booster.
With each successive game, the RTP is inching higher. The RTP of Fortunium was different depending on the win booster, with a lower RTP of 96.37% when not engaged and 96.47% when engaged. Agent Jane Blonde, which does not have similar boost, sits around 96.45% RTP.
Dragon Shard is by far the luckiest of the games, with a RTP of 96.77%. Currently the game is only available for UK online casinos partnered with Microgaming. US players will have to hope that state-side online casinos will have Dragon Shard soon.
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