Monkey King

Monkey King Slot Review

Molten lava cracks through dark volcanic rock, ember haze sits low over the reels, and somewhere in that fiery underworld the Monkey King is waiting. KA Gaming have taken Sun Wukong, the trickster immortal of Chinese legend, and set him in a cavern that burns rather than blooms, which is a sharper choice than the usual pastel treatment this myth tends to get.

Here’s the strange thing about the game they’ve built on top of it: the Monkey himself isn’t the richest symbol on his own reels. The wild outpays him at every step, doubles any line it completes, and then multiplies everything again in the free games. This is a slot that pays for substitution, not for symbol rarity, and once you notice that, every spin reads differently.

The frame around it is conventional: a 5×4 grid with 20 paylines, running at 96% RTP, with 15 free spins for three scatters and a retrigger ceiling of 250. Fans of Borderland, Donut City or Ghost Hunter will recognise the studio’s straight-talking house style; this one leans harder on its multiplier ladder than most of them.

Twenty Lines Through the Lava

All symbols except the scatter pay left to right across the 20 active paylines, and only the highest win on each line counts. That’s the whole of the base mechanic, and it’s a familiar one: line up three to five matching symbols from the left reel and collect. The 5×4 grid gives each line four rows of height to work with, so near-misses stack up visually even when the pays don’t arrive.

The paytable keeps a short ladder with two symbols on each of its steps. The Monkey himself and the golden peach share the top tier outright, paying identically at three, four and five of a kind. Both are worth twice a full line of anything else on the reels.

• Monkey and Peach – joint top payers, identical at three, four and five of a kind
• Green jade ornament – second tier, matching the gourd at three and five of a kind
• Gourd/bottle – second tier, pays a little less than the jade at four of a kind
• Royals – the low-paying filler between the themed symbols
• Wild – the richest single symbol on the reels, ahead of even the Monkey

Two things are worth noticing about that ladder. The gap between the top tier and everything below it is steep, so the themed symbols do the paying and the royals mostly decorate. And the wild sits above the lot of them.

That last detail shapes how you read every spin: a wild in the right place is worth more than the symbol it’s standing in for. At three of a kind the wild already pays double the Monkey, and the spread only widens from there, with five wilds worth two and a half times the game’s best themed line.

The Wild

The wild substitutes for every symbol except the scatter and pays 2x on any win it helps complete, though a line made of wilds alone doesn’t get that doubling. It’s a generous version of a standard mechanic, and it’s the main reason a base game win can jump out of the ordinary.

Scatters and the Trigger

The scatter is the yin-yang Bagua box, and it behaves differently from everything else: it counts anywhere on the reels rather than on a payline. Two of them is a tease rather than a trigger.

Three or more is what starts the real business of the game, and there’s no line requirement to worry about, which makes every scatter that lands feel like progress. With 20 fixed lines and four rows, there’s a fair amount of reel surface for them to turn up on.

Free Games and the Monkey King’s Attack

Landing three or more scatter symbols anywhere on the reels awards 15 free spins, played at the same bet as the triggering spin. The grid doesn’t change, but the backdrop shifts to a night mountain scene, and the maths underneath changes a great deal. Every win in the round runs through a multiplier the base game never applies.

• 15 free spins for three or more scatters, anywhere on the reels
• Retriggers available, up to a ceiling of 250 free spins
• All non-wild-substituted wins pay 3x during the round
• Wins on lines the wild helps complete pay 6x
• Wild-only line wins are excluded from the multipliers

That doubling on doubling is the engine of the round. A wild completing a paying line during free games doesn’t just stand in for a symbol, it turns a 3x multiplier into a 6x one. The wild’s own 2x base rule means wild-assisted wins were already the ones worth chasing before the round even started.

The exception matters too: a line of nothing but wilds pays its flat rate, so the boost rewards substitution rather than stacking wilds for their own sake. It’s a small rule, but it tells you what the round wants from you: mixed lines with a wild in them, not wild walls.

Monkey King Attack

On top of the multipliers, the Monkey King himself gets involved. At random during the free game he attacks, turning one or more random symbols into wilds. There’s no pattern to when it arrives and no skill to it, but the effect is that a mid-round spin can suddenly carry wilds nobody lined up for.

An attack that lands across several reels at once is where the biggest single wins in the game come from: wild-assisted lines are already paying 6x, and extra wilds multiply the chances of those lines forming at all.

Between the multipliers, the attacks and the retrigger path to 250 spins, the round has more ways to escalate than the base game’s flat 2x ever suggests. A single run that keeps retriggering can go on far longer than the original 15 spins imply, which is where the game’s ceiling lives.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.1/10

Playing Monkey King is a long smoulder punctuated by eruptions: the lava never quite goes out, but the base game rarely catches either. The one reason to sit down in this particular cavern is the free game, where everything triples and the Monkey King starts hurling wilds at the reels.

That round is the best thing here, and by a distance. A wild-assisted line paying 6x, boosted further by a well-timed attack, is a payout structure with real teeth, and the 250-spin retrigger ceiling gives a good run somewhere to go.

The weakness is everything between eruptions. The base ladder is shallow, the royals pay scraps, and there’s no published win ceiling to size the chase against. It suits players who enjoy the waiting as much as the fire, with a bankroll steady enough to see out the quiet spells. Sun Wukong walked out of the furnace stronger; a patient player here might do the same.

Monkey King FAQs

• What is the RTP of Monkey King?

  Monkey King runs at 96% RTP.
• How do you trigger the free spins in Monkey King?

  Landing three or more scatter symbols anywhere on the reels awards 15 free spins. The scatter doesn’t need to sit on a payline, and the round is played at the same bet as the triggering spin.
• Can free spins be retriggered in Monkey King?

  Yes. Free spins can be retriggered, stacking up to a maximum of 250 free spins in a single bonus run.
• What do the multipliers pay during Monkey King free games?

  During the free game, all wins pay 3x, and any win on a line the wild helps complete pays 6x instead. Line wins made of wilds only are excluded from these multipliers.
• What does the wild do in Monkey King?

  The wild substitutes for all symbols except the scatter and pays 2x on any wild-substituted win. A line consisting only of wilds doesn’t receive the 2x boost.
• What is the Monkey King Attack feature?

  It’s a free-game-only event. At random, the Monkey King attacks the reels and turns one or more random symbols into wild symbols, creating extra substitution chances on top of the round’s multipliers.
• How many paylines does Monkey King have?

  Monkey King has 20 fixed paylines on a 5×4 grid, with all symbols except the scatter paying left to right.
• Who makes Monkey King?

  Monkey King is made by KA Gaming.