Monkey's Money Pokies
Monkey’s Money is a classic example of a 3-reel, single payline pokie from Microgaming, who are something of the experts in this type of game. While the features may not be particularly original, it manages to be an entertaining and potentially quite rewarding Poker machine that’s easy to play and comes with a jackpot of up to 3000 coins that should be enough to make players go ape when they land the right symbols.
Anyone who has played a Microgaming 3 reel pokie will be familiar with the layout of Monkey’s Money, as the company has clearly taken the view that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Everything is set against a simple yellow and red backdrop that doesn’t have anything to do with monkeys at all, but looks fine and at least it doesn’t distract from the main task of spinning the reels and trying to land the biggest wins.
So we see the reels themselves up in the left corner of the game, and below them is the game title and a cheeky monkey looking very pleased with himself, dressed in sunglasses and a suit and waving his big banana around.
The right side of the game is taken up by a payout table that lists what prizes are up for grabs when the line is filled with certain combinations of symbols, with the table divided into 2 columns that reflects the fact that players can choose to play with 1 coin or 2.
To decide this, they need to head to the control buttons below the main part of the game where they can adjust the value of a coin from 0.25 to 5.00. This will highlight the first column of payouts, while players have the option of doubling their bet by activating a second coin, which simply doubles the amount won and therefore has no real advantage except for in the case of the jackpot prize which is tripled in value.
Monkey’s Money
Unable to connect to MySQL: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory
So there’s an incentive to play with 2 coins which can be done for just 0.50, but really, it’s up to how much players wish to stake per spin. It’s certainly better to have small stakes and 2 coins in play than a big stake on just a single coin however.
Symbols include a lovely bunch of bananas and players just need to land a single example on the payline to win a prize equal to the bet amount, while 2 bunches on the line will pay them 3x their stake. Single, double and triple bar symbols are featured here, and if any combination of them lands right across all 3 reels on the line, players will win 5x their bet back, next up is a full line of the bananas that’s worth 10x.
Landing 3 of the single bars will pay 15x the bet and the double bar rewards them with a prize equal to 40x. The triple is the highest value bar icon and it’s worth 100x the amount staked on a spin. A red 7 will be a nice treat when it stops across the line, as players will be in for a prize of 300x the amount bet, but the monkey himself is the highest value icon and also a wild symbol.
This means that he can act as any other symbols if that will complete, a line, which will boost the frequency of winning spins. While there’s no multiplier payout for wild substitutions, he has another important job to do in this game, as he is also the jackpot symbol. Landing a full line of the monkey when playing with 1 coin will be worth 1000x, but if players have chosen to activate 2 coins then an enhanced jackpot of 3000 coins will be paid out.
The Verdict
Monkey’s Money is very typical of Microgaming’s 3-reel offerings, but none the worse for it. People decide which of these games to play based on the design, so if the looks appeal, then the overall game will appeal.
There’s nothing wrong with how it plays, and it’s only missing out on the wild multipliers that a number of similar titles feature, but the payoff is that big jackpot prize which can be played for with as little as 0.50 per spin.
Maybe a bigger maximum wager would have been nice to see, and some players will be put off by the fact that they can’t stake more than 10.00, however most will be quite comfortable with that limit.