Updated
Lisa Michaels
Experience explosive entertainment and an insightful history lesson in one with Microgaming's five-reel x 25 fixed payline slot: Huangdi, The Yellow Emperor. Thisfeature-packed slotis based on a mythical Chinese Icon that reigned in Ancient China 5,000 years ago. Players will surely enjoy the ambiance of traditional Chinese culture, along with many great gaming features like expanding reels, stacked symbols, wild wins and up to 30 free spins.
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The controls for Huangdi: The Yellow Emperor are straightforward. To the right of the 5x3 playing grid is the spin button, which you press to set the reels in motion. You can push it during a spin to stop the reels, but note that this doesn't affect the game's outcome.
Below the reels, you'll see your current win and total credits displayed at all times. To the left is your bet, and you can select this to change your stake per spin. Above this is a menu, which allows you to view the paytable and information about the symbols, bonus features, and payouts.
Open the game's paytable to find all the details on how to play and what to look out for. This slot has eleven symbols, with two bonus symbols and nine regular paying symbols. At the bottom of the paytable, the low-pays consist of A-10 card royals. Each is designed in Chinese calligraphy and pays between 1x and 2.4x for five of a kind.
Moving higher up the pay scale, there's an ornate chest, a traditional string instrument and Huangdi's sword. These pay 5x, 6x and 7x your stake for five of a kind. The highest-paying regular symbol is the Yellow Emperor himself. If you land five of a kind, you'll win 8x your bet on that spin. All of the premium symbols can land stacked on the first reel. However, Emperor Huangdi can appear stacked on all five reels.
Finally, two bonus symbols increase your chances of winning each time you spin. There's the wild, which substitutes for other symbols to help you form wins. This is the game's logo, and it will pay up to 10x your stake if you land five of a kind. There's also the Golden Dragon scatter, which pays from any position. Just two of a kind gives you 1x your stake, but five of a kind will payout an impressive 100x your bet.
This slot features 25 paylines, and landing a win is as simple as landing three or more matching symbols along any of these lines, starting from the first reel. The only symbol that doesn't require a payline for a payout is the scatter, which only needs two symbols for a win.
As you play, you should look for favours from the Emperor, who shares his wealth with you and helps you land more significant and better wins. Here are the main bonus features included in this slot:
The Huangdi symbol is wild and will substitute for any other symbol in the game to help you form wins. It's also a paying symbol in its own right, giving you up to 10x your bet if you land five of a kind on any spin.
If you land a whole stack of high-value symbols on reel one in the base game, i.e. the Instrument, Medicine Box, Huangdi's sword, Huangdi logo and Dragon symbol, all corresponding symbols on other reels will expand to yield potential wins.
When three or more Dragon scatters appear anywhere in sight, it will trigger the Free Spins feature that allows you 15 free spins. Land 4 scatters in any position on the reels and receive 10x your stake as a bonus. Land 5 scatters and receive 100 x your stake as a bonus.
Throughout this feature, the Huangdi wild is stacked on reel one. Additionally, wilds will expand to cover other reels if they can form part of a win. If you land three more Dragons during this feature, it will retrigger 15 more free spins.
This slot comes with a maximum win worth 240x your stake. When playing at the highest possible bet, this would pay up to $600. This is low for modern slots, many of which have big multipliers and max payouts worth hundreds of thousands.
This game has an RTP rate of 95.48%, which is lower than average for online slots. Meanwhile, the volatility rate is medium-high, which means slightly above average payout potential although lower win frequency. When looking at the RTP rate, it's important to remember that it's calculated over thousands of spins. You might experience higher or lower returns during standard playing sessions, depending on your luck. When I played, I had a lot of success and ended up in profit.
Microgaming and Games Global have brought the ancient history of China to life with their sound and graphics design. While it came out in 2017, the slot still looks great today, with original designs and animations helping make the game more interesting as you spin the reels. While the low-pays are standard, they're still designed around the theme, and the premium paying symbols are all unique.
The soundtrack helps set the theme, too, with traditional Chinese instruments providing the background music and sounds played for each spin. All in all, it creates a fun atmosphereas you play, bringing the characters and items to life and making the bonus features even more exciting.
You can enjoy Huangdi: The Yellow Emperor for free with our demo, which is available on this page. All you have to do is open the game and load it on your device. There's no need to pay anything, and all the features work exactly the same as the version you play at any online casino.
We recommend giving the free play demo a spin before playing for real money, as it allows you to test it out and get to grips with how it all works. While our reviews give you lots of info on how the game works, there's no substitute for playing it yourself. You can decide whether to play at a real money casino once you've played some spins for free.
There are lots of great slots based on Ancient China. Here are some of our favourites compared to Huangdi: The Yellow Emperor:
Compared to other offerings from Microgaming, this medium-paced slot delivers a fair performance in terms of design quality and entertainment value. The bigger wins arrive during the free spins feature thanks to the expanding wilds, and more so if the feature is retriggered. The maximum winning potential per spin is 240x your stake, and the RTP for this slot is 95.48%. Since our initial article about the launch of Huangdi, we have noticed quite a few slot players making big wins on it. Could this be the next big payer?
Lisa started off as a croupier at her local casino. However she found her niche in writing and has subsequently used her real-world gambling experiences to help produce and review the many online slots that are released monthly. Lisa also contributes to keeping you up to date with Canadian newsworthy stories.
