Space Donkey Slot Review
If you’re a true gamer and sometimes feel nostalgic for old-fashioned 8-bit arcade entertainment, the Space Donkey video slot by the famous NoLimit City provider is made just for you. Not to mention the thousands of other Space Invaders and Donkey Kong flaming fans since the slot is a mix of these best classic arcade games of all time.
There are Avalanche & Hellfire features and the Abduction Wild special symbol prepared to let you reap good cash prizes during the base game, but truly jackpot madness starts when it comes to the quite novelly designed bonus games — Hide N’ Seek & Seek N' Destroy. Also, be aware this game is full of multipliers, ready to rocket your win into the sky. As a cherry on top of the cake, there is a x14,649 max win.
All you need to do here is kill all the invasion aliens and destroy their giant battle mothership with dozens of terrifying monsters. An arcade-styled soundtrack and familiar 8-bit game graphics make the atmosphere quite nostalgic, especially when it comes to bonus games, which are indeed like computer games from the 80s.
Space Donkey by NoLimit City Video Review
Space Donkey General Characteristics
- 46,656 pay lines
- 6 reels and 6 rows
- High Volatility
- RTP: 96.07%, 94.13%, 92.18%, 87.12%
- Bonus Frequency: 0.34% (1 in 298 spins)
- Bet amount: 0.2 EUR - 200 EUR
- Maximum win multiplier: x14,649 (1 in 10 Million spins)
- Maximum win value: 2,929,8000 EUR
- 11 main symbols
- Additional symbols: Abduction Wild, Chopper, Scatter
Space Donkey Bonus Features
There are a few of those in this slot. Moreover, some may seem quite complicated. Yet, a perusal reading of our review for sure will eliminate any possible ambiguities. So, let’s start!
Avalanche feature
The first thing you will face here are those disappearing symbols of winning combinations. That makes it possible to land new ones instead of those eliminated, due to which there is a chance to get more wins per single spin. Just imagine how heavily that increases your big cash prize-getting chances!
Abduction Wild
As in most slot machines, there is a Wild special symbol, which substitutes for any paying pics and lands only within the 2 — 6 reels. But here, it doesn’t disappear along with the other win symbols after partaking in its first prize combination but enhances for the next one. There is only one way for Wild to do that — abduct all the below-positioned symbols on the reel. Every absorbed picture adds +x1 to the multiplier value. So, the final Wild multiplier value correlates with the number of symbols below the activated Abduction Wild. The following participation of the Wild in the prize symbol sequence will make the UFO at last fly away.
Hellfire
It is the last bonus function in this list, belonging to the base rounds gameplay. Its triggering is bound to the Chopper appearing, a minimum of 3 of which in sight anywhere on the 2 — 5 reels gets you the Hellfire function activating. Immediately upon that, choppers start to fire in different directions, assigning its multiplier (x2 — x10) all the caught under the Hellfire symbols, including Wild ones. The more choppers, the more enhanced in such a way paying symbols on the playfield since if the 1st one fires in just one direction, the 2nd — in two, the 3rd — in three, and so on. There is no doubt that the Hellfire feature can drastically increase the winning result during the base game spin.
Scatter
There are time-bomb symbols in this game used as Scatters that, depending on their quantity in view on the reels, trigger one of two available bonus games — Hide N’ Seek or Seek N' Destroy. They are landing anywhere on the playfield without any restrictions.
Hide N’ Seek
To activate this game, you need 3 Scatters on the reels. Its gameplay is quite similar to most popular 80s arcade games — the space monkey traveling around the 6x6 playfield due to the ‘Up/Down’ or ‘Left/Right’ & ‘Number of Steps’ commands, displayed before every next bonus game round. All the monkey does is collect chest values and take advantage of other symbols (Magician, King, Princess, Stone Monster) upon reaching them. There are as many as 3 initial lives the hero monkey has. Those are displayed in the left corner, pictured as 3 bananas. Meeting with a trap, whose starting quantity is 3, or an alien takes one of those away. Luckily, there is a chance to get them back by unpacking the omnipresent grey chests. When there are no more lives, which the monkey can use to continue gathering multipliers, the bonus game stops.
Other symbols
There are a lot of symbols in this mode besides the space monkey. Let’s see their purposes:
• Traps. Those are just for one bloody thing — taking the lives of both travelers, by which we mean the hero monkey and the devious alien monster. Each one loses one life per meeting a trap. After the monkey gets a trap that one eliminates, setting a void place for a new symbol to drop — that one can be of any kind, except for the trap. But after the trap kills an alien, the catch symbol is still on the playfield.
• Grey Chests. These may have nothing or one of those — an extra life, a random multiplier, or an entry to the Seek N’ Destroy bonus game.
• Golden Chests. These propose only generous multiplier rewards.
• Teleport. This symbol can be found in one of the Grey Chests and immediately starts the Seek N’ Destroy bonus mode.
• Magician. Upon the meeting, it awards to the space monkey the sum of all Golden Chests in sight on the reels.
• King. It increases all the Golden Chest values by a random multiplier amount, ranging from x2 to x10.
• Princess. This one collects the values of all adjacent chests in all possible directions and simultaneously kills the adjacently positioned alien.
• Stone monster. The last symbol in this list makes the Golden Chest values double, Grey Chests open, and an alien gets killed.
Alien
The only purpose of an alien in this mode is to take the monkey’s life. So, within the duration of the bonus game, that green man is focused on moving toward the monkey. Besides that, the alien can increase its value due to reaching the chest or Magician/King/Princess/Stone Monster symbols. The first situation will add to it all the chest value, while the other is only +x1.
Since the alien has only 1 life itself, after that mission's completion, it disappears. As a consolation prize, the monkey receives the multiplier value accumulated by the alien during its chase for him. In case of the alien death caused by reaching the trap, the green man leaves a Golden Chest behind, the value of which is retained safely upon this or, on the contrary, equally spreads amongst the adjacent chests of the same type. The same thing happens when an alien gets to death by the Princess or Stone Monster. Despite the alien's death, there is still a chance to respawn for him through the avalanche mechanics.
Seek N' Destroy
There are only 2 eligible possibilities to get this highest-level bonus game triggered — by getting 4 Scatters on the reels & revealing the Teleport through the Grey Chest within the Hide N’ Seek mode. Those both are somewhat rare, and there is a reason for that — this kind of bonus game provides numerous opportunities to let the space monkey, in a few moments, make you filthy rich.
Every additional Scatter landed during the base game over their minimal needed number of 3 grants +1 shield to protect the space monkey from alien attack. The same is true for every life, starting with the second one, among those available at the moment of the Seek N' Destroy bonus game activation through the Teleport within the Hide N’ Seek mode. So, the 3-lives total score will guarantee you as many as two protecting shields.
There is a 5x6 playfield grid available, which we need to look at more precisely. On the rightmost side, there are launch tubes in the amount of 5, managing the constant flow of alien invaders waves — each one by one bloodthirsty monster per round. Every single one of them arrives on the warpath with some multiplier value (x1 - x20). Above the 2 — 6 reels, there are extra multipliers, additionally increasing the alien’s multiplier values but just for one single round duration & strictly within its column. After the single game round ends, the alien’s multiplier value resets up to the initial size to be multiplied with a new column multiplier during the next round. They can be in the range of x1 — x10. Apart from the alien-monsters zoo, there are also Booster-symbols time-to-time launched by those tubs. The last ones can upgrade a monkey's weapon or grant it an extra shield.
On the leftmost side, there is an elevator that lets the space monkey move from one row to another in a random way every single round. Upper the elevator, there is a weapon table, demonstrating the randomly chosen arms used by the monkey to kill all those alien invaders. This time, the space monkey doesn’t move left & right, just up & down, every single round firing through the open elevator doors a volley out of the currently granted weapon.
There are as many as four different weapon types that the monkey can use:
• Link Gun. It kills all the invaders of the same kind of species. If there are no monsters, Link Gun attacks two launch tubes. Capable of upgrading, which makes it possible to shoot twice.
• Laser Gun. No upgraded version of this lethal weapon ruthlessly destroys all the aliens in a single row. Yet, the upgrade makes it possible to do the same on adjacent rows.
• Nuke. This one kills invaders of one column. If there is no alien, the launch tubes will suffer. The completed upgrade makes it possible to use it twice.
• Rail Gun. If upgraded, it makes it possible to use it twice.
Usually, it needs just one shot to kill the alien, but some of those have more than one life. Launch tubes have their live-counters. Those values are the next, starting with the topmost positioned: 3/4/5/4/3. Every shot, using whatever arms kind, takes just one life of an alien or a launching tube. Killing the monster lets the monkey get its multiplier value while destroying the whole launch tube brings much more — a reward of x100 to the current bet and additional demolition of an alien crowd on adjacent reels with awarding their multiplier values. Once ruined, the tube will never be able to produce alien troops again during the current bonus game.
There are just 2 scenarios for ending this bonus game. The first one — not happy for the monkey and all other mankind — reaching the leftmost edge despite the intensive weapon firing, an alien meets with the space monkey to kill him or destroy its shield. If there are no shields, the monkey immediately dies since there is just one life per game. Upon that, aliens have no barriers to colonizing all the people of the Earth.
The second one is a little bit more happy — taking all the Mothership lives lets you save mankind and even make a lot of money. Let’s observe this scenario in more detail.
Monkeypendence Day
When all the launch tubes are ruined, the Mothership blows. Immediately after that epic Battlestar destroying, there is a random multiplier chosen from a short list of x5, x10, x15, and x20 to increase the current multiplier value for getting the final win amount.
Buy Bonus Feature
To not wait long to start such tremendous bonus games, it is just possible to buy their activations. There are 3 provided options here, diversifying by the cost:
• x79 — Hide N’ Seek.
• x272 — Seek N' Destroy.
• x143 — Lucky Draw (Hide N’ Seek — 33.33% & Seek N' Destroy — 66.67%).
Let us remind you that the organic Bonus Hit Frequency is about 1 in 298 spins.
Our Experience Playing Space Donkey
We’re sure you already want to taste playing this game and especially to know what it proposes in the sense of possible wins. That’s why we took that mission on our shoulders to make a revealing video slot test drive on a 300-spin gambling session with just €200 on the balance alongside the stake of €1 per round.
Despite a High Variance slot status, already the first three spins were a win, bringing us a total of €4. Overall, there were 34 wins, ranging from €0.2 to €12.85. And just 15 of them turned under the current stake of €1. During the first hundred spins, there were also 23 Wild landings, which tremendously helped us to earn prizes. No other bonus feature, unfortunately, didn’t trigger, including the Hellfire one we looked forward to. The lengthiest non-wins period in the base game was 23 spins. The final balance after the 100th spin finished was not that bad — €188.55.
Within the second hundred spins period, there were 30 wins (€0.1 — €12.1), including 11, becoming less than the chosen bet amount. Luckily, this time, we got the Hide N’ Seek bonus game triggering. Sadly, that didn’t earn more than €15. So, upon the 200th spin was out, there was just €189 amount on our balance account.
The final hundred spins didn’t trigger any elaborate bonus feature, except for Abduction Wild. That still fell on the reels with enviable regularity. Partly due to that, we had as many as 25 wins, varying from €0.1 to €17.35. This time, just 8 of them became lower than the stake. As a result, the final game balance totaled €174.75.
Here’s all the corresponding statistics concerning these 300 spins in Space Donkey:
Space Donkey Verdict
We are sure that it is one of the best 8-bit Arcade game-styled video slots out there. Despite its clear orientation onto the bonus modes, which are outstandingly rich in features & win possibilities, there are quite often big cash prizes available also during the base game. And not least, thanks to the Abduction Wild with the multiplier up to x5 and Hellfire function, generously spreading multiplier values from x2 to x10 all around the playfield onto paying symbols and Wilds. As our sufficiently short experiment demonstrated, those are well enough to stay afloat while waiting for one of the bonus games to trigger. The only possible flaw here is in low Hellfire activating frequency since we did not make it even once, whereas the Wild is a quite often guest on the playfield.
The Hide N’ Seek & Seek N' Destroy modes give players simply incredible experience, well able to make them forget that they are still playing the gambling slot machine but not the beautifully elaborate classic-like typical Arcade game. So, you are getting two-in-one — the extraordinary pleasure of the playing process & extra money in case of a lucky win. For instance, to illustrate how generous they can be, let's give an example. There are walking alien monsters within Seek N' Destroy mode with an initial multiplier up to x20, increasing for every round with the help of extra column multipliers up to x10. Killing them lets you abduct their multiplier values. So, just one single space monkey's shot theoretically can bring you a prize up to x200 by the stake. And that is just in case only one alien has died. As we've already established, the ape has an extensive arsenal of deadly weapons at its disposal, capable of destroying them in bulks.
As you have seen, both the bonus game modes seem complicated when you read about them, but they are not as elaborate as they may seem at first glance. You only have to play a round or two to see that. So, if you are a true fan of well-designed, generous high-wins or old-times-8-bit-games-like slots, that is a perfect choice, which will make you purely thrilled due to the countless incredible adventures, including colossal jackpots.
