The Songs of China (Zhong Guo Hao Ge Sheng) on SKY777: the talent-show slot and its expanding wilds

The Songs of China (on the logo: 中国好歌声) is a 40-line slot dressed as a TV singing contest: red stage lights, a gold hand holding a microphone, and four contestant-style portraits on the reels. The lobby spells it Zong Guo Hao Ge Sheng.

How it differs from a normal card-symbol slot

There are no card letters here. The small symbols are three coloured word tiles, each a music genre with a four-character tagline:

• 摇滚 (rock), 激情狂野, "wild passion": 200 / 50 / 9
• 情歌 (love song), 深情动人, "deeply moving": 150 / 40 / 6
• 舞蹈 (dance), 节奏旋律, "rhythm and melody": 100 / 20 / 5

Above them sit the four portraits. The man in the black jacket pays 4000 for five, 333, 33 and 6 for two. The long-haired woman pays 3333 / 333 / 33 / 5, the man in glasses 450 / 70 / 20, and the woman with the short bob 350 / 60 / 10.

Those four rows are identical to the warriors in The Curse Of The Hammer, and the wild rule and 40-line layout match too. It looks like the same maths with a different costume, so if you know one you know how the other pays.

Wild, scatter and the free spins

The WILD is the microphone symbol and lands on reels 2 to 5 only, standing in for everything but the scatter. The SCATTER is a red drinks can marked 加宝.

Three, four or five scatters give 5, 10 or 15 free spins. This is where the game gets its own identity: during free spins an expanding wild can appear on reel 2 or reel 4, and every win it helps make is multiplied by 3.

The bottom panel

This game uses a different control layout from most SKY777 slots. Everything is on one bar: an i button, DENOMINATION (0.01), LINE (40), BET (1), TOTAL BET, WIN and a big red SPIN button with HOLD FOR AUTO SPIN under it. A FAST SPIN tab sits just above SPIN. The balance is tucked into the lower-left corner in small print.

Above the reels is the lobby's rotating jackpot box, showing about 2,378 on the King Jackpot and about 169 on the Mighty one, nearly the same figures as in Magic Hammer on the same day.

Pacing

At 0.40 a spin most wins come from the genre tiles and are small. The session really turns on reaching free spins, so it is better to keep the bet low and spin longer than to raise it and chase. More titles are on the SKY777 overview, and you can get a SKY777 game ID if you do not have one.