Crazy Monkey

Crazy Monkey Slot Machine Review

Crazy Monkey is a slot game from casino developer Igrosoft. Comprising five reels and nine paylines, the title is an old-fashioned video slot that should be familiar to many long-time players as it has been around since the days of the Soviet Union. The game features wild symbols, solid payouts and bonus games. With the promise of a 5,000 coin jackpot, it’s certainly worth a look.

Crazy Monkey, as the name suggests, follows the exploits of a wild-eyed monkey who follows streams of genetic code to do what monkeys do: namely, pick bananas and climb trees. Needless to say, the Crazy Monkey symbol is the hero of the game and the highest paying symbol. But more on the pay table later. For now, let’s take a look at the visuals.

Cheap and Cheerful

It’s safe to assume that Crazy Monkey’s budget wasn’t exactly eye-popping. The design is on the simple side, with bright colors, simply drawn icons and rather simple animations. The reels appear against a background of some kind of jungle. Sure, there’s grass and the odd flower poking out of the side of the screen. In addition, a monkey appears below the reels, grinning, rolling his eyes and waving a banana. It’s hardly the most visually stimulating tableaux, but we’ve seen worse games on the market. Ultimately, what happens on the reels is what matters.

At the bottom of the screen you’ll find all the usual buttons: you can choose to play one, three, five, seven or nine pay lines. This is also where you’ll find the Bet, Quit, Help and Start buttons. Unfortunately, Crazy Monkey does not have an autoplay feature.

In the game, you can bet a minimum/maximum of one coin per line. The minimum coin value is one and the maximum is 25. This means you can wager anywhere from one to 225 credits on each spin of the reels. To increase the bet on each line, simply adjust the values using the Bet button.

Monkey Business

The symbols in Crazy Monkey include items you’d find in any tropical forest. There are bananas, pineapples, lions, butterflies, monkeys (of course), snakes and… er… anvils. OK, maybe you won’t find an anvil in a tropical forest, but that’s beside the point: we’re in a slot machine, not a tropical forest.

The wild symbol in this game is the golden skull. It substitutes for all other symbols (except the monkey) to complete winning combinations. It’s also quite a high paying symbol on its own. Get five of them on an active payline and you’ll claim 2,000. Four pays 500 and three pays a ton. Five crazy monkey symbols, meanwhile, pay 5,000 for five and 1,000 for four. Five lions pays 500, five pineapples 200. After that, the payouts drop rather steeply.

Bonus Game

Crazy Monkey includes a bonus game. All you have to do is get three monkey symbols anywhere on the reels. The bonus game actually consists of two separate parts. In the first part, the player has to help the monkey pull ropes. Some of these ropes are connected to bananas, while others are connected to anvils. If the anvil falls on the monkey’s head while he is walking across the forest floor, the bonus round is lost (along with, presumably, the poor monkey). However, it is possible to advance to the second round if you manage to scoop up all the bananas. In the second stage, you’ll be shown two boxes, each with a question mark. One of them contains a substantial cash prize, and it’s up to you to guess which one it is.

Risk vs Reward

Similar to many slot games, Crazy Monkey offers players the chance to double their money by winning a simple 50/50 guessing game. Anyone who wins in the main game will get the chance to double their money. Of course, once you get to the gamble screen, you can always back out, but once you start playing, you’re stuck with what the cards say.

In the playoff game, you must choose one of four face-up cards. If your card is higher than the dealer’s, your winnings are doubled. If your card is equal to the dealer’s, it stays the same, and if it’s lower, you lose your winnings.

Monkeying Around

Crazy Monkey is a solid if unspectacular video slot. Some people prefer titles with more paylines – 20 or 50 – but if you’re a fan of nine-line games, you could probably do worse. One downside to this game is that there are no scatter symbols, which usually trigger free spins. However, the inclusion of risk and bonus games keeps things moderately interesting.