Monkey Bonanza Slot by Northern Lights Gaming 🎰 Free Demo and Review

Monkey Bonanza Review

We know from before that Northern Lights Gaming has a knack for cartoon style visuals, and it really shows in Monkey Bonanza. The jungle setting comes alive in different ways, and you get a zoom effect when you’re closing in on the bonus features. The 5x3 grid is filled with frogs, lizards, parrots and, of course, monkeys, and there are plenty of features to keep you entertained as well.

Jumbo symbols can appear on the 3 middle reels at random times, and this can sometimes trigger the Monkey Bonanza feature. It’s a hold and win style round, but you can only win something on the final spin. The aim is to eliminate lower value pay symbols for that spin, as well as racking up sticky multiplier wilds to boost the win. You get jumbo symbols on every bonus round spin, which increases your Monkey Bonanza chances, and the max win is a decent 5,000x your stake.

Monkey Bonanza Slot - Reels Screen

Monkey Bonanza Slot Features

The premium animal symbols pay between 2.8 and 8 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, and the ‘W’ Wild symbol can appear anywhere to help complete and/or improve wins by substituting for pay symbols. The Wild symbol pays the same as the top-tier monkey symbol should you land 3 to 5 wilds on the same payline.

You can land a Jumbo Monkey symbol on the 3 middle reels in size 1x3, 2x3, or 3x3, and this means that it can fully or partially fill the 3 reels it appears on. This symbol can land both in the base game and in the bonus round, and you get a regular sized monkey symbol in the Banana Bonanza feature we’ll take a look at below.

The Banana Bonanza feature triggers when you land the Jumbo Monkey symbol fully in view to cover the 3 middle reels, and it’s a streak respins style feature that starts you off with 3 respins in the tally. Only regular sized monkey symbols, wilds, or blanks can appear in this feature, and the wilds can land with multipliers up to x5.

All the regular pay symbols are lined up in ascending order above the grid in the so-called Banana Splat Bar, and each monkey symbol that lands strikes out the lowest pay symbol still left in the line up. The feature and symbol elimination goes on until you run out of respins, and then you get a spin with sticky multiplier wilds and whatever pay symbols that have not been eliminated.

You can land Gold Coin symbols both in the base game and in the bonus round, and they come with values between 0.2 and 50 x your stake. You need the Collect symbol on reel 5 to collect the coin prize values in view, however, so these symbols do nothing but occupy prime “reel estate” if you don’t land the Collect symbol.

The Free Spins Bonus Round triggers from 3 free spins scatters on reels 1, 3, and 5, and this gives you 5 free spins. The 3 middle reels merge together for the duration of the bonus round, which means only 3x3 sized jumbo symbols appear on the 3 middle reels. They don’t always land fully in view, however, so you can get 2 different symbols sharing the 3x3 space. The monkey symbol will nudge in place to trigger the Banana Bonanza feature when it appears partly in view.

On a final note, non-UK players, and anyone living in an eligible jurisdiction, may take advantage of the Bonus Buy feature. If eligible, you can pay 45x your stake to be sure to trigger the free spins bonus round on the spin that follows. This is the only feature you can buy in this game, and there is no info about how the bonus buy feature may or may not affect the RTP.

The 200 Spins Monkey Bonanza Slot Experience

After a few near-miss bonus round teasers in the base game, we trigger the Monkey Bonanza feature at 0:35 into the 5-minute highlights video. You get to see a bit more of the base game, before we trigger the free spins round at 2:04 into the video, and we got the Monkey Bonanza feature within the bonus round as well. You can check it all out for yourself by hitting the play button below.

Review Summary

We found Monkey Bonanza to be a charming, cartoon-style game that’s easy to like, but it doesn’t really make a lasting impression. The near-miss free spins teasers can get a bit annoying after a while, as the game makes a pretty big deal of them each time. We do like the jumbo symbols though, and the jungle theme comes across as lively and engaging all the way. There is nothing really new to see here, but you get a mix of decent features.

The Monkey Bonanza hold and win style feature comes with an original twist, as you don’t collect prizes or win jackpots like is usually the case. Instead, you “collect” sticky multiplier wilds up to x5 each, as well as eliminating as many lower value symbols as possible for the final spin that actually pays. It will often trigger up to several times in the free spins round, and the overall 5,000x potential is decent as well. We might not return for more, but we still had a good time testing Monkey Bonanza.