Xing Guardian Slot
Xing Guardian is a 5-reel, 4-row, 1,024-pay line "all ways pay" online slot from NextGen Gaming. Every year, around the last couple of weeks of January until the beginning of March, the online slots world seems to get very excited. The reason for this excitement? The Chinese New Year! Online slots are very popular with Asian gamblers, so it's only natural that we see a whole new slew of Chinese-themed slots released around this time. 2016 was a real bumper year, and 2017 is just as frantic. We've already seen "Fa-Fa Twins" from Betsoft and "Year of the Rooster" by Genesis Gaming, and here is NextGen Gaming's offering: "Xing Guardian".
Xing is a fairly common Chinese surname, but its usage here is likely to because two of the English translations of 'Xing' can mean 'Star' or 'Happy'. In any case, the 'Xing Guardian' of this slot looks like a beautful Chinese princess, although it's never revealed what it is she is actually guarding. Maybe the coins in this online slots' coffers? She is joined on the reels by a host of other Chinese-themed symbols, including a dragon, a rooster (2017 is the 'Year of the Rooster' after all), a tiger and a turtle giving a snake a piggy-back … or should that be turtle-back?
This slot has four rows as opposed to the usual three and 'all ways pay', so that's a fantastic fixed total of 1,024 lines. All you need to select is your coin size which you can do by adjusting the hidden slider close to the spin button. Your coin size can be anything from 0.01 to 2.50, and you pay fifty coins per spin. When you're ready to experience the mysteries of the Orient, hit the spin button.
Payout & bonus rounds
The lowest paying winning symbols in this game are playing card suit symbols. If you manage to match three identical ones across the reels then you win two coins. The top-of-the-range symbol is the Yin-yang scatter symbol. If you land five of these anywhere on the reels then you will earn yourself five hundred coins.
The Xing Guardian herself is the wild symbol in this slot. She substitutes for all other symbols aside from the scatter symbol.
During the base game a dragon may appear at any time and reveal a stack of wilds on one or more of the reels, hopefully breathing fire into some sizeable wins.
Also during the base game the Xing Guardian may make an appearance and any two (or more, up to all five) reels will spin in unison to display identical symbols in the same position, again hopefully triggering big wins.
If you land three or more scatters anywhere then you win ten free games, in which the Xing Guardian appears on every spin. You can re-trigger free spins but you are only awarded five re-spins, not ten.
Is this slot worthy of celebrating the Chinese New Year? Possibly, but all the features here have been seen before, and both the graphics and the game interface are a little too retro-looking. Kudos for NextGen Gaming though for a different look and of course any slot with over one thousand pay lines is always worth a spin or three! Why not see if the Xing Guardian will become your new best slotting friend?