Dragon Shard is actually developed by Stormcraft Studios for Microgaming, so depending on the source you can find the game as a Stormcraft Studios game or the Microgaming game. Both would be correct. The game has 40 fixed paylines on a 5x5 board, and all wins pay left to right in the unboosted game, or left to right and lift to right in the boosted game. You click the Win Booster icon on the left to boost the game, which will double your bet size, make the 40 paylines pay both ways, and will make the Mystery symbols reveal only Wilds or high-win symbols. There is no specific info about the difference in RTP between two modes, but it's almost certain the boosted game is much better for the player. Main game and paytable This is yet another Game of Thrones clone as you have the Fire Queen and Ice King here as the two main symbols, as well as dragons, but even if we ignore the reference to the HBO series, it's still a quality fantasy theme. Fire Queen and Ice King are stacked 5 symbols high. All other normal symbols in the game are double stacked, which means they're always 2 symbols high. The paytable is a low-variance one as the best symbol pays 4x better than the worst one in case of five-of-a-kind, and only 2x better in case of three-of-a-kind. That means you won't care much about which of the nine symbols got involved with your winning payline, though of course you'll want the two best ones, especially as they're stacked five rows high so they can produce huge multi-payline wins. If you'd land a full-board win of the Fire Queen, you'd win 160x your bet. Bonus features Three or more Scatters trigger the free spins game with 10 free spins. You'll get full stacks of Mystery symbols on reels 2, 3 or 4, and the number of reels is proportional to the number of Scatters. You get one, two or three Mystery reels for three, four or five Scatters respectively. It pays off to have the Boosted game in effect at this time, as the Mystery reels will reveal better symbols then. Each Scatter you land during the feature will award +1 extra free spin, so you'll likely get 12-13 or more. Dragon Shard Slots RTP Theoretical return to player (RTP) is 96.77%, which is great, but it isn't clear if this is the theoretical payout for the unboosted or the boosted version of the game. In either case, you'll do better if you play the boosted version as you get double number of paylines for the double price and are therefore getting the increased value of the Mystery stacked symbols for free. This is especially important during the free spins game, where you'll have tons of Mystery symbols on every spin. Conclusion This is a low variance game, and that could be the only downside of this game, which isn't really a downside at all if you wanted a low variance game in the first place. This is a quality slot game, but some players won't like the fact that the best possible win isn't that big. On the other hand, it's a great slot game for players who enjoy low variance slots. You can't lose a lot of money with this one, not with low variance and not with a payout as high as this. Play the game for real money at Microgaming casinos.