A Joseon queen who once tasted street food as a child, and a palace kitchen trying to recreate it for her birthday: that is the story PG Soft gives The Queen's Banquet, released in April 2022. The reels serve the menu, from ginseng chicken soup and bibimbap to kimchi and bean sprouts. Under the dishes runs a feature you will see on every spin: two to four of the middle reels are synced and land the same symbols. I played 100 demo spins at 12.00; the best two paid 199.20 and 194.40, and the session finished 206.40 down.
United States
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Same game, real money
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A banquet table of six reels
Six reels of five rows stand on a low table, and an extra horizontal reel runs along the bottom under reels two to five. On the middle reels a dish can fill two, three or four rows yet count as one, and the ways plaque swings between 2,025 and 32,400 as the cascades change the board.
The queen herself is the wild, on reels two to five, and the taegeuk drum is the scatter. Framed dishes follow the Wilds-on-the-Way route: a silver frame that wins comes back as a random dish in gold, and a gold frame that wins becomes a wild.
Synced reels: the feature that is always on
At the start of every spin the game picks two to four neighbouring reels among reels two to five and makes them identical for the whole spin. The bottom reel is not affected. Identical reels multiply matches: one symbol that lands on all of them counts on every synced reel at once.
My best spin, the 93rd, shows the effect. Reels two, three and four were synced, each with a kimchi bowl at the top and another at the bottom. With three bowls on reel one, two on each synced reel and one tall bowl on reel five, kimchi had 24 ways across five reels.
Five kimchi pay 12 points per way, so 24 ways made 288 points. I played the 12.00 default, size 0.30 on level 2, where a point is worth 0.60: 288 points came to 172.80. Two smaller cascades followed, and the spin ended as a Mega Win of 199.20, over sixteen stakes.
Bibimbap for 180.00
The 12th spin needed the cascade. A first round of aces paid 14.40, the board refilled, and a second round of bibimbap bowls paid 180.00. The spin closed at 194.40.
Below them came 74.40 (spin 61), 51.00 (spin 38) and 40.80 (spin 20).
The menu and what it pays
The soup leads the menu and the cards bring up the rear. Each value is paid per way; the right column compares six of a kind with the 20-point base bet.
| Symbol | 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 | Six on one way vs stake |
|---|---|---|
| Ginseng chicken soup | 30 / 40 / 60 / 80 | 4x |
| Bibimbap | 20 / 25 / 50 / 70 | 3.5x |
| Kimbap | 10 / 25 / 40 / 60 | 3x |
| Tteokbokki | 8 / 15 / 20 / 30 | 1.5x |
| Stir-fried side dish, kimchi | 6 / 10 / 12 / 15 | 0.75x |
| Bean sprouts, A | 4 / 6 / 8 / 10 | 0.5x |
| K, Q, J | 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 | 0.2x |
The kimchi that paid my best spin sits in the lower half of the table. On this board the number of ways matters more than the dish, and synced reels are what multiply the ways.
The Queen's Banquet FAQ
What is the Synced Reels Feature?
How many ways does The Queen's Banquet have?
What starts the free spins?
Which dish pays the most?
Free spins with a growing multiplier
The banquet's bonus needs four drum scatters for 10 free spins, plus two for every drum after the fourth. The multiplier begins at x1 and goes up by one after every winning round; the rules set it to x1 only when the feature starts, so it keeps climbing through the round. Synced reels stay active in the free spins. I never saw four drums on one board, so the bonus is described from the help screens. A close relative of this board, with the extra reel on top and a wild that counts its uses, is Dreams of Macau.
Release, RTP and my session
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Provider | PG Soft |
| Released | April 2022 |
| Board | 6 x 5 plus a bottom reel under reels 2 to 5, cascades |
| Ways | 2,025 to 32,400, base bet 20 |
| Synced Reels | 2 to 4 neighbouring reels among 2 to 5 identical on every spin |
| Wilds-on-the-Way | Silver frame, gold frame, then wild |
| Free spins | 10 for 4 scatters, +2 per extra; multiplier +1 per winning round |
| RTP | 96.70% |
| Max win | 100,000x |
| My 100 spins at 12.00 | 993.60 back from 1,200.00 |
RTP and maximum win are the figures on PG Soft's game page. I left the demo on its 12.00 default for the whole session. More of the studio's games can be tried free from the PG Soft slot list.
A feast that depends on the sync
The Queen's Banquet differs from PG Soft's other big-ways games mainly through the synced reels, which turn one lucky symbol into several reels of it. In my session the sync produced the best spin, kimchi across three identical reels worth over sixteen stakes, while most of the hundred spins paid back little. Without the free spins the session ended in a loss, and the game's large wins are meant to come from the bonus round, where the multiplier keeps climbing.