Dragons Clusterbuster
By Red Tiger
Overview
Prepare for an epic journey into the fiery heart of Dragons Clusterbuster, Red Tiger's latest grid slot masterpiece. This highly volatile adventure unfolds on an expansive 9-reel, 9-row game panel, utilizing an innovative Cluster Pays mechanism where five or more matching symbols adjacent create wins. Visually captivating, the game immerses you in a world where dragon scales and mystical elements adorn the backdrop, setting a scene of ancient power and untold riches. What makes this game truly unique is the central 3x3 Clusterbuster block, a dragon's egg waiting to hatch, challenging players to smash its outer tiles to unlock potent Hatchling Features and trigger a thrilling Free Spins round. With a Max Win of 5,250x your stake, this quest for glory offers immense potential for players who brave its high volatility, promising an exciting and rewarding experience for those seeking a deep, feature-rich grid slot.
Gameplay & Features
The path to potential glory in Dragons Clusterbuster is by linking wins together with a chain reaction feature and clearing the Clusterbuster to unlock features and activate free spins. Here's how it works.
• Chain Reaction
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Chain reactions are fundamental to Dragons Clusterbuster. Whenwinning clustershit, they areremovedfrom the game board and replaced by symbols which fall down into the gaps. Chain reactions continue until no new cluster appears.
• Clusterbuster and Dragon Eyes Progress
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Freshly trademarked, the Clusterbuster is the name given to the3x3 blocksitting in the middle of the grid with a dragon's egg image on it. When a winning cluster hitsadjacently to the Clusterbuster, its outer tiles areremoved. At the start of the game, thefeatures are locked, so they cannot trigger. To unlock them, players must smash all8 outer tiles of the Clusterbuster. When this happens, the Clusterbuster hatches and a dragon eye appears above the reels, indicating that its associated feature is now available. Features progress in a set order from Blue to Green then to Purple.
• Hatchling Features
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When a feature isunlocked, it triggers on the following spin, and the next egg is placed in the Clusterbuster, ready to unlock in the same way. Any unlocked feature from then on can trigger at random on future spins. The three features are:
Blue Hatchling– all low pay symbols are removed from the reels, and only high pay symbols fall on the following cascade. Green Hatchling– up to 20 wilds are added to the screen in random positions. Purple Hatchling– Lightning Multipliers are added to up to 13 random symbols. Multiplier values range from x2 to x100, and when more than one is part of a winning cluster, the values are multiplied up to a maximum of x100 per winning cluster.
• Free Spins
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After the3 eggshave been unlocked, the 3x3 Clusterbuster from then on displays the words 'Free Spins'. Now, when the 8 surrounding tiles are removed,10 free spinsare awarded. While free spins are active, theClusterbuster is removed, freeing upmore spaceto land winning clusters. Also, Hatchling Features have agreater chance of triggering on random spins. Since the Free Spins Clusterbuster is no longer on the hoard, the featurecannot be retriggered
Final Thoughts
As well as the dragon theme, which Red Tiger has a soft spot for, Dragons Clusterbuster has the type of unlocking features element the studio also favours. As a follow along fromThor's Lightning, Dragons Clusterbuster does a few things the previous slot didn't, both good and potentially not so good. For one, Dragons Clusterbuster is arguably less eye-catching than, though it is an attractive game, and when Hatchling Features are doing their thing, the board dramatically lights up. The expanded game board is another factor. Does having all that extra space make it harder to land winning clusters next to the Clusterbuster, which is critical for unlocking features? Hard to say, really, and the volatility and RTP numbers are more or less the same as before, so it all sort of comes down to personal preference.
One of the biggest question marks hanging over the game is having to unlock features before they can be triggered. This concept has been used in several past Red Tiger slots, so there is clearly a market for it. It's hard to say whether unlocking features or having them all at hand from the start is better for Dragons Clusterbuster or not. There is a quest element to the Dragon Eyes progress that wouldn't be there otherwise, which some players may enjoy. Others might not dig the fact you have to patiently wait it out, though these sorts of systems haven't tended to take huge amounts of time to complete in the past. One sweetener is that Dragons Clusterbuster is a clear winner overThor's Lightningwhen it comes to potential, packing a max win figure of5,250x the bet.
Add it all up, and Dragons Clusterbuster is a well-made entry in the cluster paying grid slot category. The combination of smashing the Clusterbuster with the unlocking features system is something new to try; the features themselves can be potent (when available), and Red Tiger has avoided the disappointment of the previous slot by placing decent levels of reward on top.
