Monkey Bonanza: Slot Overview
After diving into a few online rabbit holes, it came to our attention that monkeys in the wild don't really eat bananas. Or at least not in the way they are often portrayed in pop culture. Monkeys will eat them for sure, but apparently, since edible bananas are a domesticated fruit, wild monkeys are unlikely to come across them unless they are milling about where humans have planted them. On a similar note, Paignton Zoo Environmental Park in the UK actually stopped feeding bananas to monkeys due to the high sugar content. Still, this perspective came from the internet, so who knows?
Anyway, speaking of wild monkeys, here's Monkey Bonanza from Games Global partner Northernlights which gets up to all sorts of monkey business. A bright and cheerful game, its leading character is one of the brightest and cheerfullest primates you'll find in an online casino game. Its setting is a jungle spot full of butterflies going about their business, slowly waving palm trees and pretty flowers. Accompanying the friendly visuals, Monkey Bonanza's soundtrack fits like a glove, too, full of jungle noises and music that sounds a little like a reggae rendition of Over the Rainbow and brought to mind Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's soulful version. A pleasant scene, in other words.
If you'd rather gamble on Monkey Bonanza than give it a hug, though, then stake selection is the first order of business, and the game has bet levels of 10 p/c to $/€40 per paid spin. Once selected, hitting the play button sets the 5-reel, 3-row gaming grid into motion, where there are 10 fixed paylines for landing regular line wins. With four RTP configurations ranging from 96.06% down to 86.79% for the German market, all are highly volatile, except the 94.12% version, which for some reason, is medium volatile.
With a hit rate a little shy of 1 in 3, Monkey Bonanza comes with eight normal pay symbols. Four are plant-covered J-A symbols, worth 0.5 to 2 times the bet for a five-of-a-kind win, while the remaining four are a frog, a lizard, a parrot, and another primate, paying 2.8-8x the bet for a line of five. The big 'W' is wild and appears on all five reels. Wilds substitute for all normal pay symbols and possess the same value as the highest paying symbol if making wins of itself.
Monkey Bonanza: Slot Features
Monkey Bonanza has quite a few features, so why not kick back, maybe peel a banana if you'd like a healthy snack, while we work our way through them? Here you'll find Monkey Symbols, Banana Bonanza, Super Monkey Spin, Piggy Bank & Win, free spins, and a bonus buy.
Monkey Symbol
The regular Monkey symbol appears in the Banana Bonanza feature (see below), but the Jumbo Monkey appears in the base game or in free spins up to 3x3 in size.
Banana Bonanza and the Super Monkey Spin
When the Jumbo Monkey lands fully in view, the Banana Bonanza is activated. It begins with 3 respins on reels where only Monkey symbols or wilds can land. When new symbols hit, they reset the respin count and wilds are locked to the board. Wilds can have multipliers of up to x5. Landed Monkey symbols knock out the lowest current pay symbol from the Banana Splat Bar. When respins end, a Super Monkey Spin takes place. For this spin, any position on the grid not taken up by locked wilds will only land symbols that have not been knocked out from the Banana Splat Bar.
Piggy Bank & Win
Gold coins may land bearing values of 0.2 to 50 times the stake in the base game or during free spins. If coins land at the same time as a Collect symbol on reel 5, then their values are awarded to the player.
Free Spins
Free spins symbols are present on reels 1, 3, and 5, and landing all 3 of them in the base game awards 5 free spins. For free spins, reels 2, 3, and 4 merge together, so they land only Jumbo symbols. All symbols can land in jumbo size except the Collect symbol.
Lastly, should you not be willing to land the free spins feature organically, it's possible to buy the free spins round from the base game for the cost of 45 times the stake.
Monkey Bonanza: Slot Verdict
Even if Monkey Bonanza completely sucked, it's so darn xharming it'd be hard to completely hate on. The bright colours, friendly critters, and chilled soundtrack made a warm first impression. Although, an initial perusal of the paytable and a bunch of preliminary spins forged an impression that despite the abundance of wild animals, Monkey Bonanza lacked a slavering, snarling bite, despite a max win of or around 5,000x the bet.
Instead, Monkey Bonanza felt pitched at gamblers who might appreciate kicking back with adorable audio-visuals to experience gameplay which is both familiar and slightly more original in other areas. The familiar bits are the coin collects and the merged middle reels in free spins - which felt a little like a monkey version of Wolf Gold. Perhaps the most intriguing part of Monkey Bonanza from an evolution of online slot perspective is the Banana Bonanza and the Super Monkey Spin sequence. Fair dues, there were times when the symbol knock-out idea coupled with the build-up of sticky wilds could be quite fun. The limited number of paylines and modest symbol values provide a hand brake of sorts, though some wilds do get multipliers. Overall, the Super Monkey Spin is a welcome addition, and as it triggered fairly often during free spins, it helped elongate the five awarded spins.
For those looking to play a laid-back, charming animal slot, Monkey Bonanza shouldn't have too much of a struggle delivering all of those things. It has an easy-going feel, offering features both familiar and relatively new(ish) while being high on charm factor. If all of that sounds fine and dandy, then Monkey Bonanza might be a hoot. However, if the mass of online slots grouped together constituted a metaphorical animal kingdom, Monkey Bonanza would be pretty far down on the pecking order, let alone being an alpha.
For those looking to play a laid-back, charming animal slot, Monkey Bonanza shouldn't have too much of a struggle delivering all of those things.
