About Loco the Monkey Slot
Starting the new year of 2021 in the same way that they went through much of 2020, with the variance cranked up to the high mark, Quickspin have produced a slot that has their style written all over it – cute and friendly graphics and a beguiling central character and gameplay featuring lots of sticky wilds, re-spins and free spins. It’s friendly enough on the surface, but in truth this is a game that will be tricky to crack.
The artwork is beautifully produced, as you would expect from a studio like Quickspin. It uses their trademark oranges and fine illustration style. The backdrop to the reels is a thick jungle, with a broken down car turned over to the left of the set, and lots of wildlife, including snakes, peeking out at you from the scene. What it all means is anyones guess, but there is a sense here that we might just be lost in the depths of the rainforest, and Loco might be ready to do a number on us!
It’s all happening on 50 fixed paylines across 5 reels and 3 rows, and you’ll need 3 or more matching symbols across the reels from left to right on a payline to hit a win. Play starts from 25p per spin. Let’s find out more …
RTP, Variance and Top Payout
 Loco the Monkey is in the higher variance range of Quickspin slots, so the distribution of wins will be pretty uneven here. Don’t expect slow, regular payouts – more than likely you’ll be sitting though periods of frustration here, but those can be punctuated by short sharp bursts of payouts where the re-spins and multipliers drive up the prizes. The RTP is set to a pretty average 96.15% and the top wins are advertised as 6,829x.
Symbols and Paytable
In Loco the Monkey, the low value symbols are represented by the cards, 9 through to Ace. The high-paying premium icons meanwhile, could make a tasty fruit salad, with pineapples, berries, limes and mangos, which deliver from 3x to 4x bet for the maximum combination of five on a payline. The sweetest of them all are bananas, rewarding players with 10x stake for five of a kind.
Look out as well for Loco himself who acts as the Wild and will replace all regular icons to form wins. He appears on all reels but the first. Finally, there is The Golden Monkey statue that lands on reels 1, 2, and 3 represents the scatter required to trigger the free spins round.Â
Gameplay and Features
Anyone who has observed wildlife shows will know that monkeys can be a little unpredictable. It seems that Loco is no exception – in fact he can be particularly crazy in some cases, but his wild nature will benefit you and bring you out of the funk of a slow base game session from time to time. When it happens you’ll be helped along by the Loco Wild itself, as well as the Free Spins round which is where all the good stuff happens. Here’s how it all works
More Monkeys! Respin Feature
Every time you land four or more Loco Wilds on the reels, the More Monkeys! Respin feature will be triggered. The triggering Wilds will be locked on their positions, while all the reels except the first perform a re-spin.
If a new monkey Wild appears on the reels, another re-spin is rewarded. Respins will continue until there are no more new Wilds on the reels. At this point, the total wins are added up and credited to your balance.
Monkey Frenzy! Free Spins Feature
The Golden monkey scatters land only on the first three reels. If you can land all of them on the screen at the same time then you will trigger the Monkey Frenzy! Free Spins feature. This starts with 10 free spins with Sticky Wilds available too.
Now, every time a Wild lands on the reels, it will be locked in its position until the feature ends. The tension is cranked up still further by the introduction of multiplier wilds of up to 3x. These occur when a new wild lands in a position already occupied by a Sticky Wild. Each time this happens the original wild increases its multiplier by 1x. Here, the opportunities for big wins are created as the game screen has potential to fill with 3x multipliers wilds that stick for the duration of all your spins.
Finally, three additional scatters landed during the feature will get you 5 extra free spins.
Our Verdict
Loco Monkey is a solid start to the new year for Quickspin. It’s a pretty fine-looking game with classic Quickspin visual stylings, whilst the gameplay is pretty tasty too. The variance is not as high as some of the real monster slots doing the rounds at the moment but it will still be a real tease, so be ready to put up with some tense and frustratingly slow times if you do decide to take this one for a spin. Of course, the flip side to that is that Loco Monkey could conceivably produce some short, sharp electric moments where the locked wilds and multipliers provided some mega-boosted wins. So as ever, have fun, tread carefully and gamble responsibly.
