Monkey Bonanza Slot – Free Demo

Ten fixed lines under a jungle skin

Northern Lights Gaming is an up and comer with capacity to become a genuine top-flight contender, and with the launch of Monkey Bonanza the studio has displayed considerable eagerness to advance and astonish players with rewarding features and sticky wild multipliers. The sticky wilds belong to Banana Bonanza, where they hold on the reels across the respins and pay up to 5x when they substitute. Those are two elements. Hardcore gamers are seeking them in games these days. The same feature runs a Banana Splat Bar, and each Monkey that lands knocks a symbol off it, working bottom to top.

Monkey Bonanza is a jungle themed slot. Wins pay left to right from the leftmost reel, on adjacent reels only. The layout is 5x3 with only 10 fixed paylines. I ran 160 spins at 2.00 a spin, all of them from the base game.

It's very plain in both configuration and gameplay, as animal slots normally tend to be. The extras sit on top of that: Jumbo Monkey blocks on the centre reels, the Banana Bonanza respins, Piggy Bank & Win coins and a five spin free spins round. It arrives with the same sort of vivid cartoon skin that I've seen quite a few times by now. A Buy Bonus is offered in the base game at a price shown for the current bet, though I never used it.

The Banana Splat Bar

The game has 8 standard symbols composed out of the Mandrill, the Parrot, the Chameleon, the Frog and the card ranks A, K, Q and J. The Wild sits above the Mandrill at the top of the paytable. A Wild replaces everything except Monkey, Coin and Collect. It turns up in the base game and again inside Banana Bonanza, where the reels hold nothing but Monkey and Wild symbols. The main game is not the hollow shell it appears like, either. The balance opened at 100,000.00 credits and the highest figure I saw was 100,187.20, at 13:52. Over 160 spins at 2.00 a full 3x3 Jumbo Monkey landed on the centre reels twice and unlocked Banana Bonanza. The block can also arrive as a 1x3 or a 2x3, and a partial block may nudge at random to the full 3x3 that triggers the feature. The better of the two finished on a Super Monkey Spin worth 74.40, or 37.2x the bet. Two wilds held there at x3 and x2, and the counter climbed through 28.48 and 29.98 before it settled. Piggy Bank & Win shouldered the rest, coins arriving with cash values on them. Those values run from 0.40 up to 100.00. They pay nothing at all unless the Collect piggy shows up on reel 5 in the same spin. Seven collects landed in all, and four of them came in under 11.20. The biggest collect was 49.20, on a spin worth 51.60 in all, and thus, on to the free spins...

What five free spins produced

Free spins are activated by landing 3 Free Spins symbols on reels 1, 3 and 5. The bet and the lines from the triggering spin carry over into the round. That grants 5 free spins, and the aim here is to land the Jumbo blocks on the centre reels, which break into separate symbols to pay lines. Every symbol has a Jumbo version except Collect, so a Jumbo Coin can land here as well. A full 3x3 Jumbo Monkey activates Banana Bonanza inside the round as well, and my lone entry in 160 spins did precisely that twice and paid 245.20 in total, 122.6x the 2.00 bet. The two rounds paid 194.40 and 36.80, and the last free spin added 14.00 when a Jumbo Coin filled the grid and the Collect piggy landed on reel 5. The game can pay over 5000x the bet, according to the banner that cycles above the reels. Banana Bonanza itself starts with three respins, and any Monkey or Wild landing resets the counter back to three.

Minty Slots Verdict: One free spins round in 160 spins paid 245.20 against a 2.00 stake, and the two Banana Bonanza rounds that ran inside it accounted for 231.20 of that. The base game kept filling with coins it had no piggy to pay out.

Waiting on the Collect piggy

But to be honest, the jungle theme and cartoon colors are growing a little bit repetitive by now, and it would probably not have hurt to attempt something a little different. The 10 lines are fixed, so there is nothing to adjust but the stake. The biggest drawback, however, is the wait. Line wins were small and frequent, nearly all at or below 5.00, and nothing sat between them and the features. Coins were on screen far more frequently than the piggy that pays them, with a 100.00 coin resting there unclaimed and 40.00 coins going the same way more than once. This could have been a respectable slot by letting the base game land more of what it keeps showing you, although I grasp the Collect is what gives Piggy Bank & Win its suspense. The single free spins round, all 5 spins of it, was still the largest event of the session at 245.20. Thank's, but no thanks, and I'll just wait for the next game in line.

Monkey Bonanza across all Northern Lights Gaming casinos.