Jungle Gorilla: Overview

Pragmatic Play invites players on a bit of wildlife spotting with its nature-driven slot Jungle Gorilla. And there’s no mystery about who the star of the show is. The intimidating (here, rather happily grinning) gorilla has already made plenty of appearances across slot games.

From a visual standpoint, it’s hard not to notice that the team seems to have taken cues from NetEnt’s smash hit Jungle Spirit. Even the title, Jungle Gorilla, echoes that classic NetEnt release. Coincidence? Possibly. Still, it only takes a handful of spins before the two games start to feel quite different. With essentially one main mechanic doing the heavy lifting, Jungle Gorilla is a much more straightforward experience.

With stakes from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin, Pragmatic Play has built Jungle Gorilla on 5 reels and 3 rows, with 20 fixed paylines. The setting is appealing: a dense rainforest filled with ruins, fluttering butterflies, and drifting leaves. The audio is pleasant as well, featuring a calm African synth melody layered with ambient jungle sounds. You could almost treat it like background audio for relaxation/mediation practice to the clear the mind and draw in positive vibes from the universe if you’re into that sort of thing. It would fit right in at a crystal shop.

As is often the case with Pragmatic Play, and usefully so, the volatility is shown clearly, so players know what to expect. For Jungle Gorilla, the 3/5 rating places it in the medium range, while the default RTP is solid without being exceptional at 96.57% – nothing to complain about there.

The paytable features 10 standard symbols, a golden gorilla scatter, and a wild. The regular symbols begin with stone J-A icons wrapped in ivy, then move on to chameleons, parrots, elephants, tigers, and gorillas. This slot leans strongly on multipliers, so base payouts are fairly restrained. Among the premium symbols, five of a kind pays from 2x for the chameleons up to 4.5x for the gorillas. A wild is also part of the mix, substituting for all symbols except the scatter. It can also be enhanced by the game’s mechanic, so let’s get into that next.

Jungle Gorilla: Features

It’s something we’ve found ourselves repeating lately, but Jungle Gorilla doesn’t come packed with features. In fact, there’s just one, and Pragmatic Play hasn’t even given it an official name. For convenience, we’ll refer to it as the wild multiplier feature. This is how it operates:

Positioned above each reel is a progressive multiplier that starts at x1. Each time a golden gorilla scatter lands, it jumps up, raising that reel’s multiplier by +1. The multipliers aren’t unlimited, though; each one tops out at x5 – even if loads of gorilla scatters land before it gets triggered.

When a wild lands as part of a winning combination, the multiplier from its reel is applied to that symbol. If a win line contains more than one wild multiplier, their values are multiplied together rather than added. Once the win is paid, any reel multipliers that were used drop back to x1. Changing to a different bet level resets the multipliers to x1, but any progress you’ve made is retained when moving between bet levels.

Jungle Gorilla: Verdict

Jungle Gorilla brought back memories of a few older slots. Another NetEnt title, Gorilla Kingdom, also sprang to mind after a short session. A lot of that comes down to the Harambe lookalike taking centre stage. The scatters drifting around in Jungle Gorilla also feel similar to Gorilla Kingdom’s bonus game. That’s where the similarities stop, though. Jungle Gorilla is the simpler of the two, which is likely exactly what Pragmatic Play was aiming for, as it’s clearly built for players who prefer to fire and forget, relax, and watch the scatters roll in.

The mechanic has its strengths, but does it feel like something is missing? Perhaps a bonus round where the multipliers weren’t limited to x5? At times, you’ll hit an x5 on a reel and then watch it sit there for spin after spin, taking more scatters that don’t add anything. If it could keep building while you waited, it might unleash a much bigger moment when it finally connects.

There were some enjoyable surprises, with the occasional 100 to 250x win landing unexpectedly. Still, much of the testing felt like a steady march toward bankroll oblivion. ‘Be fickle, fortune’, said Juliet, and worthwhile payouts do exist in Jungle Gorilla. Single line wins are capped at 500x while Pragmatic Play quotes overall potential of up to 2,800 times the stake. It’s a reasonable number considering the limited toolkit.

If you do decide to play Jungle Gorilla, it may be better approached at a slower tempo. That lets you appreciate the multiplier build-up and the tension of waiting for them to come into play. On the flip side, if you like things to move faster or you’re after more depth, you’ll probably want to give Jungle Gorilla a wide berth.