Monkey Mania Slot by Playtech

The reason to load this one up is the Jackpot Mania respin round, and it triggers at random on any spin. Once it fires, the reels clear down to nothing but monkeys and empty spaces, and you get three respins to work with. Every monkey that lands locks where it sits and carries its own cash prize, and each new one resets your respins back to three. So the round only ends when you run out of fresh monkeys or the whole board fills up.

Filling it is the goal, because a full grid pays one of two progressive jackpots, Mega and Grand. Both read as "Not Available" in the free demo, so they only ever pay in real-money play, the pools are shared and there's nothing to award in practice mode. Without them the feature tops out around 131x your bet, which is low, so the progressives are what you're actually chasing here, not the cash monkeys on their own.

The base game is small and old-school. Eight betways pay left to right across a compact bamboo-bordered board, and the top symbol is a Wild that stands in for the paying icons and returns up to 175x the line bet for three. Under it sit grinning cartoon monkeys, one in shutter-shades with a gold dollar chain, one in a safari hat chewing a banana, one in a green Hawaiian shirt, plus a palm tree, a coconut, a banana and retro green 3-BAR, 2-BAR and 1-BAR symbols, all against a sunny jungle backdrop. It's a simple, dated slot with no free spins and no buy button. One real plus, though: it hands back more over time than most slots do. If the format clicks, the busier sequel builds on the same monkey-locking idea.