Fucanglong Slot Machine
What do you call a long thin dragon with wings too small to fly who lives underground guarding treasure? Nope, the title of this slot isn’t some poorly framed wordplay, Funcanglong is a mythical Chinese dragon called a ‘long’ dragon which lies in the underworld acting as sentinel over hoards of riches. This gives the rather traditional Asian slot theme of dragons a novel twist on RTG’s new Fucanglong slot and, first play seems like the new online slot is definitely bringing something new to the table in many ways.
RTG have really upped their game in recent years, games like the Big Bopper and Zanshi slot have proven the manufacturer is keen to keep up with the very best in the industry as the competition to have the best online slots heats up. The Fucanglong slot, with its fire breathing central beast, is very much turning up the heat with a variety of stacked symbols, free spins with multipliers and a 1024 ways to pay reel layout. The game has a higher variance than many of the existing RTG slots and whilst this may appeal to some of the higher stakes players, it will leave small bankroll players fearful that they will disturb the sleeping beast and find their cash hoard fried!
Theme
Dragons and the Asian slot gaming genre go together like Laurel and Hardy, it is just a natural winning combination which is why everyone and their aunt in the slot gaming world has been here and done it. Whilst jumping on the bandwagon of a good thing is a marketing norm, you do have to add something to the style or risk being an also ran. RTG have certainly pulled out all the stops, this is a very busy game visually. In fact, we almost prefer the mobile version of the reel backdrop and reels as it’s a little less fussy on the smaller screen and easier to follow as a result. Talking about the mobile slot version – it’s structure and layout is a massive improvement over the previous generation of RTG titles and stands up well to the best out there for optimisation and usability as both an Android slot and an iOS slot.
The reels and the backdrop are filled full of the traditional reds and golds which symbolise wealth in China. There are also a variety of dragon characters to back up the main man himself with treasure chests, ancient gongs and wily merchants all adding to the colourful array of pay icons. Credit where credit is due everything on this slot is bespoke, not a playing card in sight. The animations are solid, sound effects are good and, whilst the music isn’t jaw dropping, it’s entertaining enough and doesn’t clash with the theme. Overall this is a very good visual and audio effort from RTG and with the theme work, this is an entertaining slot to spin at over a long-term play period.
Features & Layout
The base game play on this slot is very easy to follow if a little low on the rewards threshold. This is a 1024 ways to win slot where all symbol combinations on consecutive reels from left to right will award a pay. The ease of combinations and the slightly higher than normal volatility on this slot can lead to some fairly barren batches as you try and unearth the buried treasure the Fucanglong is guarding. That said there is a decent wild symbol in play across four of the five reels which expands in the free spins bonus features – which is where the hot streaks in this game lie.
There are two different scatters on offer each triggering a slightly different free spins bonus game. The dragon mountain scatter starts a spins feature of the same name. Here, any re-trigger adds another three free spins and the multiplier increases by one up to a max of x8 on the total win of each spin. The wilds can expand here too if the trigger was either 4 or 5 scatters.
Personally, we find the Dragon Pearl feature (You can guess the scatter icon) to be the most exciting and potentially the most lucrative of the primary spins games. Here, the pearl hides a win value multiplier of 3x-88x the triggering bet and is revealed and applied at the end of the round. You don’t get a re-trigger but if no win is achieved at the value of the pearl by the end of the game you get access to the Fucanglong extra bonus spins. Here extra free spins are played till the value of the wins meets the pearl value, on each extra spin the value rises randomly between 1x and 8x and so the total can be an incredible 888x the triggering bet!
Summary
Fucanglong is sure to be a hit for RGT. Their rivals in the US online casinos simply aren’t putting out games of this quality often enough. Not only is this a good Asian themed slot in its own right, it also has some novel feature aspects in the spins games which make it stand out against competing video slots with more modern themes. It’s easy to play, streaky enough to keep any gambler entertained and works superbly as a mobile slot.
