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Seven bonus variants sit behind three colour-coded dragon scatters on a 5×3 grid. Rising Rockets Emperor from IGT wraps a Chinese New Year celebration around one of the more layered lock-and-respin systems in the current catalogue. Each dragon colour triggers its own bonus with distinct rules. Land two different colours and you get a combination bonus that merges their features. Hit all three and everything runs at once across multiple game positions with multipliers and treasure chests stacking on top of each other. The result is a feature set with genuine depth, even if the path to triggering any of it runs through a base game that asks for patience.
Three dragon scatter symbols drive the entire feature system. Each one is colour-coded and linked to a specific bonus round. The Green Dragon triggers Prize Boost. The Red Dragon triggers Big Bang. The Blue Dragon triggers Spin Boost. After any spin where a dragon lands, it transforms into a coloured coin carrying a value or a jackpot award. If the game randomly decides to fire the bonus, those coins become the starting positions for the lock-and-respin round. Landing two different dragons on the same spin can trigger a 2-rocket combination bonus. Landing all three fires the full 3-rocket variant with every feature layered together.
The Green Dragon triggers Prize Boost with 3 initial respins. All coloured coins on the grid convert to gold coins, lock in place, and each remaining symbol position becomes a separate reel. Only gold coins land during the bonus, carrying values of 15 to 1,000 coins or a Mini, Minor, or Major jackpot award. Every new coin resets the respin counter back to 3.
What separates Prize Boost from the other two bonuses is the multiplier system. After each respin, one or more multipliers (x2, x3, x4, x5, x10, or x25) can be placed on reels already holding coins. The multiplier applies directly to that coin’s value. Minor and Mini awards can receive multiple multipliers that multiply together, though individual coin values cannot exceed 10,000 coins. Multipliers cannot be placed on Major awards. Fill all 15 positions and the Grand jackpot is awarded.
The Red Dragon triggers Big Bang, which plays out across 2, 3, or 4 separate game positions simultaneously. Each position starts as a copy of the grid with the triggering coins locked in place, and each position runs its own respin counter starting at 3. A new coin on any position resets that position’s counter independently. This means one grid might finish while another keeps going. The potential here is volume. Each position can independently award the Grand jackpot by filling all 15 spaces, so in theory you could collect multiple Grands from a single trigger. There are no multipliers in the standalone Big Bang, which keeps the individual coin values lower than Prize Boost but spreads the winning potential across more grids.
The Blue Dragon triggers Spin Boost with 4 initial respins instead of the 3 that Prize Boost and Big Bang use. The extra spin gives slightly more runway. The distinguishing feature here is the treasure chest symbol. During Spin Boost, both gold coins and chests land on the grid. Each chest opens to reveal a value between 80 and 1,000 coins, placing it above the floor of standard coin values. New coins or chests reset the counter to 4. Fill all 15 positions for the Grand. There are no multipliers and no multiple game positions in the standalone Spin Boost, making it the most straightforward of the three base bonuses.
Two different dragons on the same spin can randomly trigger a 2-rocket combination that merges the features of both individual bonuses.
The combination bonuses carry over all rules from their individual components with minor adjustments to respin counts and position numbers.
Rising Rockets Emperor sits alongside a sister game called Rising Rockets Empress, which shares the same engine with a different visual theme. IGT has been building out its lock-and-respin portfolio steadily, and Prosperity Link Wan Shi Ru Yi uses a similar Asian aesthetic with a different feature structure. Cash Eruption offers another take on the respin-and-collect format with a more accessible entry point.
For players looking for something simpler from the same provider, Cleopatra and Wolf Run deliver classic IGT gameplay without the layered bonus system. Browse the full IGT collection for more of their catalogue in free play.
The playing field is five reels wide and three rows tall, with 25 lines locked in and no option to reduce them. Combinations read from the first reel rightward, and overlapping matches on the same line resolve to whichever pays more. A coin-based staking system sets the wager at a flat 25 coins — adjusting the coin denomination shifts the total bet between 0.25 and 25.00 per spin.
The Wild symbol substitutes for all paying symbols except the three dragon scatters. It appears on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5 only, so it cannot start a winning combination from the left. On a 25-payline grid, a Wild on the middle reels can bridge gaps that would otherwise break a line win.
Medium-high volatility shapes the session rhythm. Regular spin returns are modest, with the heavy lifting handled by the bonus features. The 96.01% RTP sits above the current average for games in this category and applies to the normal game mode.
Coin values below are based on the fixed 25-coin wager. Changing the coin denomination adjusts all payouts accordingly.
| Symbol | 5 of a Kind | 4 of a Kind | 3 of a Kind | 2 of a Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caishen (God of Wealth) | 125 | 50 | 25 | 5 |
| Gold Ingot | 50 | 15 | 5 | — |
| Red Lantern | 50 | 15 | 5 | — |
| Drum | 50 | 10 | 5 | — |
| Gold Coins | 50 | 10 | 5 | — |
| A / K | 25 | 5 | 3 | — |
Four fixed jackpots can appear as coin symbols during any bonus round. They are not progressive and pay the same values at every bet level.
| Jackpot | Payout (x Total Bet) |
|---|---|
| Grand | 2,000x (awarded when all 15 positions are filled) |
| Major | 400x |
| Minor | 30x |
| Mini | 10x |
After the final respin in Prize Boost, a single coin may also receive a random bump of 5 to 300 additional coins, giving one last boost before the round settles.
Rising Rockets Emperor packs seven bonus variants into a single lock-and-respin framework, giving the feature game more structural variety than most titles in this format. The three-dragon scatter system is clever, and the combination bonuses that merge multipliers, treasure chests, and multiple game positions create some of the more complex rounds available in current slots. A strong RTP of 96.01% and an upbeat Chinese New Year soundtrack round out the positives. Regular spins let the package down with sparse returns and a random trigger condition that keeps the bonuses at arm's length. A 2,000x max win cap feels modest for the volatility level and feature depth on offer. A game built for players who value feature complexity over session-level payback.
The soundtrack does its job. An upbeat, percussion-driven loop with Chinese instrumentation sets the mood and keeps things moving even when the reels are not paying. The firework animations that accompany the dragon symbols add a festive energy, and the overall visual package is functional if not particularly memorable. IGT has built a solid-looking game here, but the art direction does not push boundaries the way smaller studios sometimes do with similar themes.
While we achieved a few good returns, the main issue is with the regular spins. Throughout our session, long periods went by without significant wins, and not having a Wild on reel 1 reduces the chances of forming standard winning connections. The paytable values are modest even for a five-of-a-kind Caishen at 125 coins (5x at a 25-coin bet), and the mid-tier symbols all share the same cap of 50 coins for five matches. When the dragons did appear, they transformed into coins and sat on the grid without triggering a bonus. The random trigger condition means landing a dragon is not enough on its own. You need the game to decide it is time, and during our session, it rarely did.
When a bonus does fire, the feature depth becomes apparent. Seven distinct variants give the lock-and-respin format more room to breathe than most games in this category allow. Prize Boost with multipliers up to x25 has genuine high-end potential for individual coins, and the Big Bang format of running 2 to 4 grids simultaneously creates a visual spectacle even when the coin values stay low. The Spin Boost chests add a higher value floor that standard coins cannot match. In theory, the 3-rocket combination running multipliers, chests, and multiple positions together represents one of the more complex bonus rounds in any current lock-and-respin title.
That complexity comes with a caveat. Seven bonus variants sound impressive on paper, but the underlying loop remains largely the same throughout. Coins land, respins reset, the grid fills or it does not. The differences between variants are meaningful when you study the rules, but during actual play, the distinction between a Prize Boost and a Big Bang can feel less dramatic than the rules suggest. The combination bonuses are the exception, where you can visibly see multipliers and chests working together across multiple grids, but those require multiple dragon colours on the same spin and the random trigger to cooperate.
The 2,000x max win cap is the other factor. For a medium-high volatility game with this much feature depth, that limit is low. The multiplier system in Prize Boost can theoretically push individual coins to 10,000 units, but the Grand jackpot that caps the round at 2,000x total bet undercuts the sense of open-ended potential that similar games from other providers offer. Players coming from titles with 5,000x or 10,000x caps may find that the payoff does not match the patience the reels demand. The free play demo lets you test all of this without commitment, which is the recommended starting point given the learning curve involved.
The number of game positions is chosen by the rocket before the Big Bang feature starts – in this case, we got all 4!
All reels in play, with the number of positions filled and the number of respins remaining.
Not a bad result: 835 coins returned from a 5-coin bet.
