Primate King Megaways

Primate King Megaways: Slot Overview

As the home screen cries out 'The King is Back!', and the king in this instance is a big angry gorilla swooping through the undergrowth in Red Tiger's online slot Primate King Megaways. The reason he's back is because our gorilla buddy had already bounded about the jungle about 3 years before this one in Primate King, a game that made a favourable impression and received a glowing review. Time has passed, and Primate King has received a Megaways upgrade, revamping several of the features in the process.

One thing that has stayed the same is the rightmost reel starts the session locked, so symbols can't contribute anything from there, so it's basically a dead reel for all intents and purposes. This reel can be unlocked, though, by collecting Gold Coins from the other live reels. Death permeates the screen in other ways, too, as skulls ominously litter the foreground, building an atmosphere of dread, much like Skull Island in King Kong with the brutal locals, dense flora, and big dangerous primate. Visually, Primate King Megaways is another jungle feast for settling into to get the collection mechanic rolling.

The last Primate King slot was a 6-reel game as well, but this one has Megaways calling the shots, so 2 to 7 symbols may land on each reel, creating up to 117,649 ways to win when the grid is fully opened. Primate King Megaways is highly volatile and has a default RTP of 95.67%, which is down a bit from the previous game. The stake range is 10 c to $/€20, and there are no bonus buys of any sort, which was a little surprising since buying a Primate Wild could have been useful for some, not to mention we are well and truly in the era of Red Tiger feature buys, now. Maybe in the next instalment.

Winning combinations in Primate King Megaways must all begin from the leftmost reel. At the lower end of the paytable are chain-wrapped 9-A card ranks, paying 0.3x to 0.7x for 5-of-a-kind or 0.4 to 1 times the bet for 6 OAK. Then there is a dagger, a map, a skull, a compass, and a treasure chest as the premium symbols, paying 0.8 to 5 times the bet for 5 matching symbols or 1.2x to 20x for 6 matching symbols. Symbols in winning combinations disappear, making space for new symbols to drop that may create new wins. Chain reactions keep occurring until no new win is created.

Primate King Megaways: Slot Features

Collecting Gold Coins as part of the Primate Evolution feature unlocks the grid and beefs up the Primate Wild symbol. These extras are partnered with Chain Reaction wins and free spins.

Primate Wild

The Primate Wild is a fully stacked wild and always lands fully in view. One Primate Wild can land in a spin on reels 2, 3, 4, or 5. The Wild has a multiplier of x2 to x7, representing how many symbols it counts for in a ways calculation. If the Primate Wild doesn't participate in a win when it lands, it locks on the reel until it forms a win. When the Primate Wild participates in a win, it does not get destroyed; instead, its symbol multiplier increases by +1.

Gold Coins and Primate Evolution

A Primate Evolution bar with 3 stages is placed over the 6th reel. Until the last stage of the progress bar is completed, the game plays on 5 reels. When Gold Coin symbols land anywhere on the grid, they are collected towards the Primate Evolution. Collecting 30 Gold Coins completes a stage of progress on the progress bar. The rewards for completing each stage are:

• Stage 1 – one additional Life Point is added to the Primate Wild. With each Life Point added, the Primate Wild stays for one spin longer on the reels after it forms a win.
• Stage 2 – adds one more Life Point to the Primate Wild. Also, on the next spin, the Primate Wild will destroy the 9 symbol so it no longer appears on the reels.
• Stage 3 – adds one more Life Point to the Primate Wild and unlocks the chance to enter free spins.

When the last stage of the progress bar is complete, the bar is removed to free up the 6th reel, where only high-pay symbols or Gold Coins may land. From then on, Gold Coins only land on the 6th reel.

Free Spins

Landing a Gold Coin on the 6th reel while the Primate Wild is present awards 4 free spins. One extra free spin is awarded for each remaining Life Point the Primate Wild has at the time of entering, so up to 7 free spins. The Primate Wild remains locked to the reel for the duration of free spins. Also, at the start of each free spin, the Primate King may randomly remove the current lowest-paying symbols from the reels till the round ends.

Primate King Megaways: Slot Verdict

Primate King Megaways is one of those Megaways do-overs that does just about everything you could ask for. Red Tiger has revisited an already highly playable, high-scoring slot and kicked everything up a gear. The studio does like this unlocking-as-you-go style of play; Dragon's Mirror and 10,001 Nights are two which came to mind, and whilst this means a truncated gaming grid for a while, collecting Gold Coins will open up the 6th reel eventually. It also means a more potent Primate Wild symbol as the Primate Evolution progresses, and a free spins bonus round is available this time. Just the one Wild, though, unlike Red Tiger games with similar full reel wilds - Athens Megaways or Buffalo Mania Megaways, for example, where multiple full reel wilds could appear.

However, the Primate Wild has some useful tricks it can pull from its sleeve, even if it does do them solo. For one thing, it's nice the wild sticks around until it is used in a win, saving it from going to waste. One of the Wild's best attributes is the way its multiplier rises when participating in wins, and gaining a life to prolong this benefit is a nice touch. Removing 9s from the reels isn't a bad thing, either. Once the 6th reel is unlocked, free spins may finally be triggered. Four isn't a lot (though up to 7 is possible), but the Primate Wild is locked for the full duration, making the bonus round a potentially hard, fast, adrenal rush. What helps make it so is that Primate King Megaways is one of Red Tiger's higher potential slots possessing as it does a 30,000x the bet win cap.

In other words, Primate King Megaways' chest beating thunders through the jungle, making the original slot look like a playful juvenile by comparison. The original is still a good game, of course; it's just that Primate King Megaways turns up just about every dial it can lay its powerful hands on.