| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| RTP | 96.5% (demo info screen; Pragmatic ships several configs — a given casino may serve less) |
| Volatility | High — in-game meter at all five bolts |
| Max win | 2,700x stake, from the game’s own splash |
| The engine | Two features on opposite ends of the reel set, both fully autonomous: three DRUMS on reels 1-3 award 10 free spins where every spin opens by transforming ALL lions into one random type — a re-pay across the 1024 ways, re-rolled independently each spin, retriggers adding 10 more with no stated cap; three LION REEL symbols on reels 3-5 merge reels 1 and 2 into a single cash reveal of 5x-200x total bet, paid instantly |
| The catch | No pick screen, no bonus-buy, no ante, no side bet — nothing on this machine takes input |
| Base game | Tops out at a flat 20x gold-lion full line; sub-stake drips between long silences |
| Bet | A$0.20-A$100.00 total |
The winning line
5 Lions Dance gives you no say in the matter, honestly: no pick, no buy, no ante. Three drums on the left reels award 10 transform spins, while three Lion Reel symbols on the right merge reels 1-2 into a 5x-200x cash reveal. They land when they land. The real trick is figuring out which feature brings the value and which one carries the ceiling. Reveals refill the wallet, mind you, while transform rounds can stretch towards 2,700x. Budget for the wait, then bank the results properly.
Step 1 — Fund the silence, because nothing here can be hurried
Every path to cash sits behind a trigger you cannot buy, boost or bait. On a five-bolt build, the waiting is the whole game. The demo chewed through a long run of sub-stake line wins before either feature showed up, and that is not the machine acting up. Well, that is it doing exactly what it was built to do.
Action: Pick a flat stake that lets the session roll well over a hundred spins, then leave it alone. A$0.20-A$1.00 suits plenty of AU wallets without pretending otherwise.
Watch for: Drought logic, especially “two hundred dead spins, something’s due.” Every spin stays independent, so the trigger odds do not move. Only the wallet takes the hit.
Decision branches:
- If the stake burns through the roll inside ~50 spins → drop it until the count looks like a proper session; hitting a feature at all beats reaching it richer but barely ever.
- If either feature fires early with the roll healthy → play it out, bank it, and avoid chasing another hunt straight away with the winnings.
Step 2 — File the Lion Reel under bread
Three Lion Reel symbols on reels 3-5 combine the first two reels into one reveal: instant cash worth 5x to 200x total bet, with no spins to ride and no choice involved. It is the feature the game shoves in front of players because it is easy to understand. Most reveals land close to the bottom of the ladder, though, and 200x is the firm cap. Handy top-up, sure. Session-maker, no.
Action: Treat every reveal as extra runway, then stick with the original plan. A 10x reveal paid for fifty more A$0.20 spins. That is the honest job it does.
Watch for: A near-top reveal, say 100x+, creating that feeling of “the machine is hot”. The two features run on their own clocks. A strong reveal does not tell you anything about when the drums will land.
Decision branches:
- If a reveal lands near its 200x top → a properly good hit; consider shutting it down if the session is already ahead.
- If reveals keep arriving small → normal ladder behaviour; they’re subsidising the wait for the drums, which is all they owe.
Step 3 — Judge transform rounds only at spin zero
The drums work another way. You get 10 spins, and every spin OPENS by changing all lions on the board into one random type, creating a re-pay across 1024 ways that rolls independently each time. A dead-looking first half proves nothing. One crowded transform on spin nine can carry the entire round, while retriggers add 10 more spins with no stated cap. This is the only path to the 2,700x splash figure.
Action: Let every spin and every retrigger finish before adding up the result. The round ends when the counter reaches zero, not when the action feels flat.
Watch for: How crowded the board is before each transform. A screen packed with lions going into the conversion is the paying setup, regardless of which type gets selected.
Decision branches:
- If the round starts flat → foundation, not verdict; the re-roll owes each spin a fresh chance.
- If a retrigger extends it → more trials at the same table; the exit decision waits.
- If the round closes big → that IS the session; Step 4 immediately.
Step 4 — Exit on the event, not on the theory
With no lever available, exit discipline becomes the whole skill component. Two figures handle nearly everything: the half-way line while the roll falls, and the banked event when it climbs.
Action: Close the tab after a transform round delivers a genuine session win, or once the roll falls past half without either feature firing. Entire sessions can pass with both features silent. Five bolts means five bolts.
Watch for: The temptation to raise the stake after a Lion Reel reveal because the game feels “warm”. A higher stake increases the dollar payout from both features. It does not improve the probability of either landing.
Decision branches:
- If a transform round banked the win → out; the base game’s next job is taking it back.
- If the half-way line arrives first → out equally; a full silent session is a normal five-bolt outcome, not a fault to correct with money.
- If a reveal tops up mid-drought → runway extended, plan unchanged, stake unchanged.
The maths that backs the playbook
No PAR sigma is public and no community sample exists, so the plan has to use what the game actually states: 96.5% on the demo config, with configs varying by operator, so checking the info screen is worth ten spins of anyone’s time; five bolts; a 20x base ceiling; and two features that divide the payback into very different shapes. The Lion Reel is an instant with firm boundaries: 5x-200x, most reveals near the lower end, and arithmetic that can steady a session without defining it. The transform round is the open-ended side: 10 spins that re-roll a board-wide lion conversion across 1024 ways, uncapped retriggers, and a 2,700x splash available only through chained transform re-pays. Put together, the design gives an honest message. Roughly 3.5 cents from every dollar cycled goes to the house on the demo config, and with zero input surfaces, no pick, no buy and no ante, variance management IS the strategy. Size the stake for the wait, treat reveals as runway, judge transform rounds only at zero and exit when the event says so. Anything more elaborate is just a story, and the machine is not listening.
What breaks the playbook
- Hunting a lever that doesn’t exist. No buy, no ante, no pick , staking patterns and rhythms are theatre against baked-in odds.
- Promoting the Lion Reel to session-maker. Its 200x cap is a fraction of a hot transform round; staking up after a reveal misreads which feature carries the ceiling.
- Writing off a transform round at spin four. The re-pay re-rolls every spin; early quiet is half the distribution, not a dud verdict.
- Believing the drums are due. The demo’s long blank stretch is standard five-bolt behaviour; droughts predict nothing.
- Bankrolling toward 2,700x. Splash-honest but far-tail , it needs a retriggered round chaining heavy transforms, and no stake size brings it closer.
The cut-off
Coverage law: the stake must buy 100+ spins, or it comes down until it can.
Half-way line: once half the roll is gone with neither feature fired, the session ends. Silence is an answer, not a debt.
Event bank: one paying transform round shuts the tab; a near-top Lion Reel reveal also ends an already-ahead session.
Flat law: the stake chosen on spin one remains the stake on spin five hundred. Reveals, droughts and transforms move the balance, never the bet.
Strategy by Dave Holloway , Floor Veteran. Last updated: 16 Jul 2026. 18+. Gamble responsibly. Gambling Help Online , 1800 858 858 | Lifeline 13 11 14.
Specs
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Provider | Pragmatic Play |
| Released | 2020 |
| Mechanic | 1024-ways base game, wild on the four right reels, drum-triggered free spins with a lion-transform re-pay, and a Lion Reel bonus that merges two reels into a direct-money award |
| Reels | 5×4 (five reels, four rows) |
| Ways to win | 1024 ways |
| RTP | 96.5% (read off the demo info screen: “The theoretical RTP of this game is 96.5%”) |
| Volatility | High (the in-game meter shows all five bolts filled) |
| Max win | 2,700x stake (from the game’s own splash: “WIN UP TO 2,700 X BET”) |
| Bet range | A$0.20 to A$100.00 total bet |
| Theme | Chinese lion dance and Lunar New Year; coloured lion-dance masks in gold, red, white, green and yellow, a ceremonial drum, gold coin-lanterns and a temple at night |
5 Lions Dance is a 2020 build from Pragmatic Play, but sharing a name with the studio’s older 5 Lions does not mean sharing its engine. Different machine. The 2018 original uses 243 ways and gives you a seven-option free-spins pick. This one runs 1024 ways on a taller 5×4 grid, with no pick screen whatsoever. So if you have played 5 Lions and arrived expecting to choose a spin count against a multiplier band, forget it. That setup is not here. Instead, you get a lion-dance festival skin, five coloured masks over a red-and-gold temple at night, plus two separate routes to the money. Both fire on their own. You get no lever to pull.
That is the honest shape of it. The base game is a 1024-ways video slot, mostly dripping small line wins that come in under stake. The real payback sits in two features: a drum-triggered free-spins round with a symbol-transform re-pay, and a Lion Reel bonus that swaps your two left reels for a straight cash award. Every number in the table above that I could check inside the live AUD demo, I checked in fun-play. The RTP, the 1024 ways, the high-volatility meter, the 2,700x splash figure and the A$0.20 to A$100.00 bet spread all came directly from the game’s own screens. Pragmatic ships this title in several RTP configs. The AUD demo returned the 96.5% version, so that is how it is labelled here: 96.5% demo/default, not the only number an operator can serve.
Symbols & paytable
Pragmatic lays out the paytable on the in-game Game Rules page, and the first rule matters for everything that follows: all symbols pay left to right on adjacent reels starting from the leftmost reel, with only the highest win paid on each way. Plain ways-pays. The symbol ladder puts a colour-coded pride of lions up top, then the basic card royals underneath. Gold lion leads the lot. Next come the white and red lions, level with each other. Then the green and yellow lions, paired as well. At the bottom sit A, K, Q, J and 10.
The cash values below were read from the Game Rules screen at an A$2.00 total bet. Divide each by the stake and you get the bet multiple. Pay attention to what the top symbol actually does, because it sets the tone for the whole machine: a full five-of-a-kind gold lion pays A$40.00 at that A$2.00 bet, equal to 20x the total bet. That is the biggest full-line hit available in the base game on its best symbol. Twenty times bet. Keep that in mind. It tells you, pretty plainly, that the base ways-pays are not where a session gets won here. They are the drip while you wait for a feature.
| Symbol | 5 of a kind | 4 of a kind | 3 of a kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold lion (top symbol) | A$40.00 (20x bet) | A$8.00 | A$2.00 |
| White lion | A$16.00 | A$6.00 | A$1.00 |
| Red lion | A$16.00 | A$6.00 | A$1.00 |
| Green lion | A$8.00 | A$3.00 | A$0.80 |
| Yellow lion | A$8.00 | A$3.00 | A$0.80 |
| A / K | A$6.00 | A$3.00 / A$2.00 | A$0.40 |
| Q / J / 10 | A$4.00 | A$0.80 | A$0.20 |
Three special symbols carry the game, and each has a reel rule you need to remember. Those rules are what make the two features work the way they do. The wild is the gold coin-lantern. It substitutes for every symbol except the drum bonus and the Lion Reel symbol, and it appears only on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5. Never reel one. That means a wild can extend or fatten a win already running from the left edge, but it cannot kick one off by itself from reel one.
The drum is the bonus. It is labelled “SCATTER” right there on the reel, although the Game Rules text calls it the bonus symbol. Same drum, two names. It lands only on reels 1, 2 and 3, pays 1x total bet on its own, and three of them trigger the free-spins round. Then you have the Lion Reel symbol, the money symbol, appearing only on reels 3, 4 and 5. Land three and the second feature fires. Two symbols. Two doors. Completely different payouts. Learn which is which before you spin, because they do not do the same job.
Game rules
Base game and the 1024 ways
The base game runs on a fixed 5×4 grid, five reels by four rows, with 1024 ways to win. There are no paylines to switch on and nothing to trim back. All 1024 ways stay live on every spin. A way pays when matching symbols land on adjacent reels from the leftmost reel, wherever they happen to sit in the rows, and only the best win on each way counts. Your only lever is the total stake. The live demo confirmed a spread of A$0.20 to A$100.00.
- Five reels, four rows, 1024 ways live on every spin, with nothing to toggle.
- Symbols pay left to right from the leftmost reel, and only the highest win on each way is paid.
- The total stake is your one and only lever, A$0.20 up to A$100.00, with no bonus-buy button anywhere in this build.
The gold coin-lantern wild
The wild is the gold coin-lantern, and its placement rule is the base-game quirk to watch. It appears only on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5. Never reel one. It stands in for everything except the drum bonus and the Lion Reel symbol, so it cannot substitute its way into either feature and it cannot start a winning way from the far-left reel. Paying symbols have to begin the job. The wild joins them afterwards.
- Reels 2 to 5 only for the wild, so reel one never carries it.
- It substitutes for all standard symbols but not the drum bonus and not the Lion Reel symbol.
- With no fixed multiplier attached to it, the wild’s job is coverage: filling gaps across the four right reels to complete more of the 1024 ways.
The drum trigger and the transform free spins
Three drum bonus symbols across reels 1, 2 and 3 pay 1x total bet and trigger the free-spins round with 10 free spins. This is the feature that builds towards the 2,700x ceiling, and it carries the mechanic pushed on the splash screen. Once you are in, the reels shift to a dark night background. At the start of every free spin, all lion-head symbols on screen transform into a single, randomly chosen lion type, then pay again using the new symbol’s values. For a moment, every lion is the same lion. On a 1024-ways board, that can line up a much bigger win than the mixed base game normally allows.
- Three drum bonus symbols on reels 1, 2 and 3 award 10 free spins, and the drums themselves pay 1x total bet on the trigger.
- At the start of each free spin the lions transform to one random lion type across the board, then the spin pays on that symbol, which is where the 1024 ways can turn into a large synchronised win.
- Landing three more drums during the round retriggers it for 10 additional spins, with no stated cap on retriggers, so the round can run long.
The Lion Reel direct-money bonus
The Lion Reel bonus is the game’s second, more obvious payout route, and it behaves nothing like the free spins. Land three Lion Reel symbols on reels 3, 4 and 5, and your first two reels merge into one fully expanded reel containing only cash awards, shown as multiples of your total bet. That merged reel spins once and reveals a single value. No picking. No building. One reveal, done.
- Three Lion Reel symbols on reels 3, 4 and 5 trigger the bonus, merging reels 1 and 2 into one direct-money reel.
- That reel spins once and awards a single random value from 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 75x, 100x, 150x or 200x total bet.
- The award is a flat cash multiple of your stake, so a bigger total bet scales the payout in cash but does not change which value you can land or how likely it is.
Max win
The game puts its own ceiling on the intro splash: “WIN UP TO 2,700 X BET”. That is the figure used on this page, read directly from the machine rather than lifted from a listing. It sits way out in the tail, built when a retriggered free-spins round chains large transform re-pays across the 1024 ways. An ordinary session does not go anywhere near it.
- The 2,700x stake ceiling comes from the game’s own splash screen, not an external catalogue.
- It sits right at the wild end of the high-variance scale, mind you, and realistically you are chasing it through the free-spins transform round with retriggers, not the base game.
- The Lion Reel bonus tops out at 200x total bet on a single reveal, so the 2,700x headline comes from a free-spins result, not a Lion Reel hit.
Screenshots
The three shots below are our own captures from the live AUD demo, so you can check the mechanics in fun-play yourself. The balances shown on screen are demo credit. Not staking advice. Each caption spells out what is happening in that frame, including the middle shot, which is genuinely a free-spins round running. It is not the base game.
Two features, and which one actually drives the maths
Most Pragmatic pokies from this era hang everything on one bonus. 5 Lions Dance has two, and honestly they play very different roles. Better to separate them properly than throw everything under one label like “the bonus”. The base game will not swing your session either way. Its best full-line hit is the 20x gold-lion combination, while most base spins come in under stake. The cash is sitting in the two features, but they arrive at different rates and pay in completely different ways.
The Lion Reel bonus is the easier one to see. Land three Lion Reel symbols on reels 3, 4 and 5, and the two left reels combine into one straight cash reveal worth 5x to 200x total bet. The cash is locked in as soon as it triggers. No build-up, no extra steps, just one number. That makes the feature look pretty friendly, and sure, it is the one the splash screen pushes hardest. But look at the ceiling: 200x total bet is where it stops, while most reveals land well below that. A 5x or 10x Lion Reel hit only covers a few rough base spins. So this is the steadier little boost. It is not the thing that carries a session.
The free-spins round is a completely different beast. You get only 10 spins to start, and plenty of runs will fizzle out, but the transform payouts are where the 2,700x ceiling is actually built. Every free spin changes all lions into one random type and pays from that result, so a lion-heavy 1024-ways board can line up into a seriously chunky hit. Retriggers then add more spins, with no stated cap. This is the high-variance side of the pokie. It shows up less often than the Lion Reel and can leave you cold, but when retriggers arrive and the board fills with heavy transform lions, that is the only path to the headline number. Simply put, the Lion Reel is the steady bite, while free spins are the long shot. Knowing that keeps you from calling a small Lion Reel hit “the big one”.
High volatility, and what the base game is really for
Pragmatic’s in-game meter has all five bolts filled, putting this pokie firmly in the high-volatility bracket, and the demo played exactly that way. Over a long run of base spins at the A$100 maximum, the balance kept sliding through plenty of small line wins before a feature finally appeared. That is the pattern. Long dry patches, then the occasional Lion Reel top-up or the much rarer free-spins round. With the 20x gold-lion full line as the base ceiling, the base game is not the main event. It is just the waiting room.
For an Australian punter, the practical takeaway is pretty boring, but it saves a few bucks. Expect the drip, well. Those little sub-stake line wins do not mean the pokie is heating up, and they do not mean a feature is coming, because it is not. They only slow the drop. That is all. Treat the drip as momentum, lift the stake because of it, and you can empty the wallet faster before either feature turns up. In the live run captured for this page, a free-spins round paid A$1,480.00 at an A$100.00 total bet, equal to 14.8x the stake. Solid enough. It was not picked to make the pokie look scary either. The result shows the shape clearly: a feature can land below stake or explode, and 14.8x is a decent middle result, nowhere near the 2,700x tail.
Punters mix up RTP and volatility all the time, so keep them separate. The 96.5% is the long-run return across a massive sample, basically the game’s cut over time. The high-volatility rating tells you how rough the ride gets before you are anywhere near that sample, and on this title most of the pain comes from waiting through the base game between features. One number shows the long-run cost. The other shows the punishment getting there.
The 1024-ways transform maths
The 1024-ways engine and the free-spins transform are built to click together. Understanding that link is about as close as you get to “reading” this pokie, even though you cannot control a single spin. In the base game, four rows and five reels create 1024 ways, but the symbols are spread around, so a normal win usually hits only a small section with one lion type. That is how it is designed. The transform changes the picture. At the start of every free spin, each lion on screen becomes one random lion, so a scattered group of matching ways can suddenly turn into the same lion covering four reels across several rows.
That is where the big number comes from. A gold lion transform on a packed grid can pay across a huge chunk of the 1024 ways at once, and the more lions sitting there before the transform, the bigger that linked payout can become. There is no multiplier building here. The coverage is what grows. Retriggers matter because they give you more chances at a packed board landing with a top-paying transform lion. None of this can be controlled. The transform lion is random, and the free-spins count starts at 10 plus retriggers. Still, it explains why free spins hold the ceiling, while the Lion Reel, limited to one 200x reveal, never reaches it.
Provider context
Pragmatic Play is a Malta-headquartered studio and one of the biggest distributed slot makers reaching Australian players, usually through offshore casinos. 5 Lions Dance is a 2020 release from the studio’s Asian-fortune ways-pays line, sitting alongside plenty of its other festival-style builds with feature-heavy designs. The legal side is the same as it is for any offshore RNG studio. It is worth saying plainly, because access and currency questions pop up on almost every AU-facing title under the Australian Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (IGA 2001).
- Pragmatic Play is not licensed under the Australian Interactive Gambling Act 2001, because, well, no offshore RNG slot studio is. AU players only get its titles through offshore-licensed casinos.
- Using an offshore casino is not itself a criminal offence for the player under the IGA 2001. What the Act blocks is operating or advertising real-money online slots to Australians locally.
- The demo on this page runs in AUD fun-play, so you can test the 1024-ways base game, the transform free spins and the Lion Reel bonus yourself before deciding if the high-variance profile suits you.
RTP versions
Pragmatic distributes several titles, including this one, in more than one RTP configuration. The operator picks which build gets served. So, honestly, the number on the info screen is not guaranteed to match the one every casino runs.
- The AUD demo used for this page returned the 96.5% configuration, read directly from the Game Rules screen (“The theoretical RTP of this game is 96.5%”).
- Lower configs do exist for this title in Pragmatic’s catalogue, so a real-money version at a certain casino may return less than 96.5%. Check the specific game’s info screen with the operator before assuming the demo’s number carries over.
- The demo config is the fairer one in the range, and sure, that is one decent reason to test the mechanics in the AUD fun-play build first.
Game series and comparisons
5 Lions Dance shares its name and festival theme with other Pragmatic Asian-fortune pokies, but the engine here is its own beast. You get 1024 ways, a transform free-spins round and a merge-reel money bonus. On this site, the two clearest comparison points sit on either side of it.
| Title | Provider | Engine | Key difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Lions | Pragmatic Play | 243-ways video slot | The 2018 original that shares the name: a 243-ways board with a seven-option free-spins pick and wild multipliers up to 40x, so it gives you a real pre-round choice this 1024-ways build does not |
| 5 Frozen Charms Megaways | Pragmatic Play | Megaways | A newer Pragmatic build on a variable 117,649-ways Megaways grid with tumbling reels, rather than this fixed 1024-ways board with no cascades and no player-facing free-spins pick |
Pick based on mechanics, not the shared “5 Lions” name on the loading screen. Want the version where you choose the free-spins shape before the round kicks off? The 2018 5 Lions is that one. Want a bigger grid with tumbling action and variable ways? 5 Frozen Charms Megaways takes that route. All three come from Pragmatic’s back catalogue, so the choice comes down to feature style, not the studio.
Demo notes
The demo embedded on this page runs through Pragmatic’s own demo gateway. Every load starts with fresh fun-play credits, not a real balance, making it a clean spot to see how the machine acts before any outcome counts. Let the base game run. Land three drums for the free spins and watch the lions transform each spin, or hit three Lion Reel symbols and see reels 1 and 2 merge into the direct-money reveal.
The gateway served the game in AUD and showed A$ throughout, while the bet stepper confirmed the full range from A$0.20 minimum to A$100.00 maximum total bet. Two things need clearing up, honestly. First, the demo shows 96.5% RTP, but Pragmatic ships this title in several configs, so treat 96.5% as the demo/default figure rather than a universal one. Second, the game runs as a full WebGL canvas with no DOM controls. That means the symbol values, the wild and bonus reel rules, the 1024 ways and the Lion Reel ladder were read from the game’s own info and paytable screens, not pulled from a listing.
FAQ
Q: What are the two features in 5 Lions Dance? A: Straight up, there are two. Three drums on reels 1 to 3 award 10 free spins with a lion-transform re-pay. Three Lion Reel symbols on reels 3 to 5 merge your left reels into a direct-money reveal worth 5x to 200x total bet.
Q: Is this the same game as 5 Lions? A: Not really. It just shares the name. The 2018 5 Lions uses 243 ways and has a seven-option free-spins pick. This 2020 build runs 1024 ways with transform free spins and a Lion Reel money bonus, with no pre-round pick at all.
Q: What is the max win? A: Quick one. The game’s own splash says “WIN UP TO 2,700 X BET”, so the 2,700x total bet figure comes straight off the machine. It is a far-tail result built through the transform free spins with retriggers, not the Lion Reel, which tops out at 200x.
Q: What is the RTP and how volatile is it? A: Look, the info screen says 96.5%, although Pragmatic ships this title in several configs, so treat that as the demo/default. Volatility is high. The in-game meter shows all five bolts, and the live run played exactly that way: long dry stretches, then a feature.
Q: Can I choose the free spins like in the original 5 Lions? A: No. There is no pick screen here. Three drums simply award 10 free spins with the transform mechanic, while retriggers add 10 more. The choice-driven seven-option round belongs to the 2018 5 Lions, not this one.
Last updated: 5 Jul 2026 Reviewed by Mark Henderson, Senior Slots Analyst
Demo embed · played in fun-money mode. No real-money play here.