Dragon Lines pokies are an Ainsworth game from the late 2000s that moved from club floors to online play almost unchanged: five reels, a stacked dragon wild, a yin-yang scatter and free games that arrive often rather than paying big. Online it comes in 50-line and 100-line builds with a 94.3% return. Play the official Ainsworth Dragon Lines demo below free, with no download.
Dragon Lines runs on five reels and three rows. The online game comes in two builds, one with 50 lines that can be set to 1, 10, 25, 40 or 50 and one with 100 lines, and both are in circulation. The land-based machines ran 40 or 50 lines at 1 cent and 2 cents a credit with a $10 maximum bet; online bet ranges vary by operator and start from 1 cent. The return to player is 94.3% online, while the ACT approved the venue version at 86.30%, 88.12%, 90.27% or 92.32%, with the two-progressive version at 90.35% to 92.25% in total. Volatility is medium, the free games arrive roughly once every 110 spins, and the only maximum win figure published is 246 times the total bet, from a single aggregator. The top line pay is 1,000 times the line bet for five golden urns.
Dragon Lines Pokies Characteristics
Wins pay left to right from reel 1 and need three matching symbols, except the nine, which pays for two. The dragon is the wild. It stands in for every regular symbol but not the scatter, lands stacked so it can cover a whole reel, and has no payout of its own. In the free games the dragons are confined to reels 2, 3 and 4; no source states where they land in the base game. The yin-yang disc is the scatter: it pays anywhere as a multiple of the total bet, and three or more start the free games.
There is no bonus buy, no respin, no cascade and no hold-and-spin, only an autoplay of up to 50 spins and a card gamble, both operator-dependent. Dragon Lines is unrelated to Aristocrat’s Dragon Link hold-and-spin family and far simpler.
The figures below are multiples of the line bet for five of a kind, the only rung every source agrees on.
The other three- and four-of-a-kind values rest on a single coin-credit transcription and are left out. The yin-yang scatter pays 2x the total bet for three, 10x for four and 100x for five, on top of starting the free games. The top line is worth 20 times the total bet on the 50-line build and 10 times on the 100-line build, so the money comes from stacked dragons filling several lines at once.
Three, four or five yin-yang scatters anywhere award 10 free games. Four or five do not add spins; they only pay the bigger scatter prize. The feature uses a separate reel set with its own background track, and the stacked dragon wilds appear on reels 2, 3 and 4 only. A spin that stacks dragons on two or three of the middle reels turns almost every line into a winner, and that is the outcome the game is built around.
Three or more scatters during the feature add five more free games. No source states a cap on retriggers, and there are no multipliers. Ainsworth sold the Play 50Line range on high-frequency free games, and the aggregator figure of one trigger per 110 spins fits: the feature is a regular visitor, and a typical round is worth a modest multiple of the stake.
After any win you can take the amount to a card gamble: red or black to double it, a suit to quadruple it. Gamble limits are not published, and some online operators switch it off. The online game has no jackpot; the seven-figure “jackpot” on some database pages is a placeholder calculated from the maximum line bet.
Venues had a different story. The ACT approved Dragon Lines (2 iSAP Levels) in November 2010, which adds two random-type standalone progressive levels: the jackpot contribution was 4.05% of turnover on the 1 cent machine and 4.133% on the 2 cent machine, for total returns of 92.17% and 92.25%. Seed values were not published.
At 94.3% the online game keeps about 5.7 cents of every dollar bet over the long run, a little more than most modern online pokies. The venue versions are a different proposition: at the ACT settings of 86.30% to 92.32% the machine keeps 8 to 14 cents in the dollar, roughly twice the online cost. Medium volatility means a balance moves in small steps, with the free games doing most of the lifting.
A worked example on the 50-line build at 1 cent a line: a spin costs 50 cents, $50 buys 100 spins, and at one trigger per 110 spins you are more likely than not to see the free games once. That round is worth a few dollars to a few tens of dollars depending on how many dragons stack. At $2.50 a spin the same $50 lasts 20 spins and will usually not reach the feature.
Dragon Lines Hold’em, approved in the ACT in December 2009 on Ambassador cabinets, is a hold variant with return settings of 85.99% to 92.01%, or 91.23% to 93.72% with two iSAP levels; its hold mechanic is undocumented. Multiplay Dragon Time, approved in March 2010, is a three-in-one cabinet offering Dragon Festival, Dragon Lines and Dragon Lines Hold’em at 40 or 50 lines, with two progressive levels and total returns of 91.53% to 94.13%.
Dragon Lines Super arrived online in February 2021. It keeps the symbols, the 100 lines, the 10 free games and the five-game retrigger, lifts the return to 94.8%, and adds Super Spin Active: during the free games special reels can appear at random on reels 2 to 5 and turn positions wild. One review site quotes a 1,000x maximum win. No Dragon Lines Deluxe or Legends exists in any regulator notice or database we checked.
The setting is a Chinese festival: a red-and-gold town in celebration, with a dragon that animates to mark wins. The high symbols are a golden yuan bao ingot, a gold coin, a lantern, a drum and firecrackers; the dragon is the stacked wild, a yin-yang disc the scatter, and nine-to-ace royals fill the low end. Sound is spare, a double click as the reels stop and a chime on wins, with a dedicated track in the free games. The online build is HTML5 and runs on desktop, iPad, iPhone and Android.
Dragon Lines is an Australian pokie by origin. Ainsworth is Sydney-based, ASX-listed and Novomatic-majority-owned since 2018, and the game went through ACT approval in 2009 and 2010 on the Ambassador and A560 cabinets. Whether any of those machines are still running is another matter: none of the ACT notices we checked from 2014 onwards mention it and we found no current venue listing, so expect it to be rare on floors today. Online, no casino that accepts Australians could be confirmed as carrying it, and the aggregator that tracks it lists 15 countries without Australia. Availability varies, and a lobby search is the only reliable check. Ainsworth does publish an official free demo.
Dragon Lines is a plain, frequent-feature line game from the era before hold-and-spin took over the floor. It suits players who like the old Ainsworth rhythm: stacked wilds, a free games round every hundred-odd spins, and a card gamble to push a small win. It does not suit anyone chasing a big ceiling, since the only maximum published is 246x and there is no jackpot online, nor anyone who wants a 96% return. The one thing to check is the line count in the information screen: the two builds pay the same per line but cost different amounts per spin.
94.3% online. The machines approved in the ACT ran at 86.30% to 92.32%, or 90.35% to 92.25% in total with the two standalone progressives.
Land three or more yin-yang scatters anywhere for 10 free games with stacked dragon wilds on reels 2, 3 and 4. Three more scatters during the feature add five games.
Five golden urns pay 1,000 times the line bet and five scatters pay 100 times the total bet. One aggregator quotes a 246x maximum; Ainsworth does not publish one.
One online build has 50 lines selectable as 1, 10, 25, 40 or 50, another has 100, and the land-based machines ran 40 or 50 lines.
It was approved for ACT venues in 2009 and 2010, though we could not confirm a current site, and no online casino serving Australians was confirmed to carry it. Ainsworth publishes a free demo.
A 2021 online follow-up with 100 lines and a 94.8% return that adds Super Spin Active, a random wild feature on reels 2 to 5 during the free games. It is unrelated to Aristocrat’s Dragon Link.
