Monster Quest (Big Time Gaming) Slot Review & Demo

🗝️ Key Takeaways

• Monster Quest is a Big Time Gaming Megaways slot on six reels of 2 to 7 symbols, opening as many as 117,649 ways on a single spin.
• A Dragon, a Knight and a parade of Monsters land as Bonus Symbols carrying cash values, and six or more of them summon the Hold and Spin.
• The Hold and Spin is a battle rather than a collection, with a Knight who kills anything he can overpower, banks the value, and fights on three lives.
• Free Spins put the Knight on screen for the whole round, pair him with a Megaways Win Multiplier that climbs by one for every Monster slain, and can tip into the Hold and Spin mid-feature.
• Monsters carry values between 1x and 1,750x, while the golden Dragon is priced anywhere from 1,888x up to 28,888x the stake.
• The overall RTP is 96.49% at the top setting, and the paid routes edge even higher.
• High volatility maths sit under a huge 99,900x ceiling, though casinos keep the stake menu short.

A castle gate, a sunny sky, and a suspiciously cheerful chiptune melody bouncing along like the opening level of a game you played twenty years ago. Monster Quest sends a moustachioed Knight against goblins, orcs, serpents and one very expensive golden Dragon, and it does it all with a grin.

Big Time Gaming built the Megaways engine, and here the studio bolts a genuine combat system onto it. Symbols shift between two and seven per reel, values hang off every creature, and somewhere behind the castle walls a Dragon with a five-figure price on his head is waiting for a Knight brave enough to reach him.

The fight is the whole game. Below we walk through the shifting reels, the numbers, the lives system that makes the Hold and Spin tick, and the free spins buy we put our own money through.

⚔️ First Impressions

The reels are stone blocks stacked between two watchtowers, with the live Megaways counter mounted on the battlements and a row of banners above the grid that tracks the first six Bonus Symbols as they land. Gems in purple, red, blue, and green share the stonework with chunky gold-trimmed royals, a rainbow crystal Wild, and a shield Scatter set with a pink star gem.

The creatures steal the show. An orange orc, a blue serpent, a horned pink behemoth, a green goblin, the golden Dragon, and the Knight himself all arrive as picture panels stamped with their cash values, so the board regularly shows you exactly what a monster is worth before anyone swings a sword.

Then there is the sound, and it is a genuine departure. Instead of orchestral bombast, the base game runs playful, bouncy chiptune arpeggios and retro synth melodies, pure 8-bit adventure nostalgia, with crisp digital blips as the reels shift and coin-collect chimes on wins.

Trigger a feature and the music flips into an urgent boss-battle theme with rapid electronic drumrolls, exactly the way the old platformers did it.

🏰 Reels That Never Sit Still

Monster Quest runs the classic Megaways format. Each of the six reels shows between two and seven symbols on every spin, the ways count is recalculated live, and at full stretch the grid opens 117,649 ways.

Wins form on adjacent reels from the leftmost, matching symbols connecting regardless of their size on the reel, with the highest win paid per combination and everything landing together added up. Our opening spins came in at 5,040 and 5,184 ways, a fair picture of where the counter usually hovers before Power Play gets involved.

📊 RTP and Volatility

The top configuration returns 96.49%, a heav lthy figure by current standards, and the paid routes carry a small twist worth knowing. The Bonus Buy runs at 96.58% and Power Play at 96.55%, both fractionally above the base game, so paying for access is, unusually, the better mathematical deal.

Our RTP guide covers why differences that small still add up. The reduced builds deserve louder mention than usual.

Operators can load this game at 94.41%, 91.41% or a punishing 86.35%, one of the widest spreads we have seen on a major release, so open the game panel at your casino and make sure of the figure before the first spin. The volatility is rated High, and the design agrees.

The regular paytable is modest and the serious money hangs entirely off the Bonus Symbols and the two features, a recipe for patient stretches broken by sharp spikes. Our volatility guide explains how to size a bankroll for that shape of session, and the hit frequency guide is worth a read before you judge a quiet run too quickly.

💎 Symbols and Payouts

Every value below is based on a 1.00 bet and scales with your stake. Figures are shown for six, five, four and three of a kind in turn.

High Paying (Gem Symbols):

• Purple Crystal: 20.00 / 10.00 / 5.00 / 3.00, and it pays 2.00 for just a pair.
• Red Crystal: 2.50 / 0.80 / 0.60 / 0.40.
• Blue Gem: 1.00 / 0.60 / 0.50 / 0.30.
• Green Gem: 1.00 / 0.60 / 0.50 / 0.30.

Low Paying (Card Royals):

• A and K: 0.60 / 0.50 / 0.40 / 0.20.
• Q: 0.50 / 0.40 / 0.30 / 0.20.
• J: 0.50 / 0.40 / 0.30 / 0.10.
• 10 and 9: 0.40 / 0.30 / 0.20 / 0.10.

Special Symbols:

• Wild (rainbow crystal): substitutes for everything except Scatters and Bonus Symbols.
• Scatter (star shield): three or more anywhere award 12 Free Spins, plus 2 for each extra.
• Bonus Symbols (Knight, Monsters, Dragon): carry cash values and trigger the Hold and Spin when six or more land.

The gap between the purple crystal and everything else is enormous, and it is the only regular symbol with real weight. Beneath it, even six-of-a-kind lines pay in fractions, which tells you the ordinary reels are the road and the creatures are the destination.

💰 Values Worth Fighting For

The Bonus Symbols carry the numbers that matter. The Knight enters with a random value between 8x and 15x the stake, Monsters land worth anywhere from 1x to 1,750x, and the Dragon holds between 1,888x and a monstrous 28,888x, the single largest prize documented anywhere in the game.

Stake limits are set by the operator rather than the studio. Most casinos open the menu at 0.10, the ceiling varies from site to site, and 6.00 is the widest we found.

Power Play then charges 8x whichever stake you choose in exchange for its guaranteed minimum of 10,000 Megaways. Whatever you set, no round can pay beyond 99,900x it, a ceiling almost four times the Dragon's own maximum, reachable only when the Knight stacks kill after kill beneath it.

🎁 Bonus Features

Two features share one combat system, and understanding the Knight is understanding the game.

🛡️ The Hold and Spin

Six or more Bonus Symbols anywhere on the reels start the battle. Every position becomes its own individual reel, fresh Monsters can appear from the shadows on each spin, and the Knight goes to work: he slays any Monster whose value is equal to or lower than his own, and adds what he kills to his total.

The lives system is what gives the round its pulse. The Knight starts with three lives, loses one on any spin where no new Monster appears or dies, and wins one back for every kill, capped at three.

The battle ends when his lives run out, when Monsters fill every space, or in the best case, when he grows strong enough to slay the Dragon itself, and his final accumulated value is what you are paid. It is a hold-and-win with actual strategy baked into the maths.

A cheap goblin is not just a small prize, it is a healing item that buys the Knight more spins to grow toward the serpents and orcs above him.

🌙 Free Spins

The shield Scatter opens the adventure, three of them anywhere being worth 12 Free Spins with every additional one on the triggering spin adding 2. The Knight takes the field immediately with his 8x to 15x starting value and stays on screen for the entire round, slaying any Monster he can match, and his final value is paid once when the feature closes.

Regular wins get their own engine here. A Megaways Win Multiplier applies to ordinary symbol wins, starting at x1 and climbing by one for every Monster the Knight slays, though kills made inside a Hold and Spin do not move it.

Land five or more Monsters at once and the Hold and Spin takes over mid-feature, folding the battle into the bonus, and three or more Scatters during the round add 4 extra spins plus 2 per additional Scatter. Our own test round is a fair sample of how the layers stack.

We bought the feature in the demo, the Knight opened at 15x, and a mid-round battle saw him enter the arena worth 33, cut his way through the ranks past 53 and 67, and finish at 77, with the multiplier standing at x3 by the close and the battle segment flashing a 47.60 banner on its own.

⚡ Power Play and the Bonus Buy

The two purple buttons beside the reels are the accelerators. Power Play is the toggle priced in the betting section, and it exists for one kind of player - the one who wants the board near its widest on every single spin and accepts the premium that buys it.

The Bonus Buy sells both features outright, the Hold and Spin for 35x and the 12 Free Spins for 90x, with a separate Free Spins Stake control deciding the stake each purchased spin plays at. Our 90x buy at a 1.00 stake came back at 91.20, a near-perfect wash that flattered the price only because the Knight survived deep into his battle, and a reminder that the buy is a coin flip dressed in armour.

🤔 Is This Slot For You?

Monster Quest suits the player who wants a bonus round to feel like something they are watching unfold rather than a tally being counted. The lives, the slay-to-survive rhythm, and the Dragon sitting at the top of the food chain give the features a story arc most value-collect games never attempt, and the retro soundtrack carries the charm through the quiet stretches.

For more of the studio's mischief on our shelves, the Danger High Voltage 2 review turns the energy up in a very different direction, while the Boo review haunts a gentler corner of the Big Time Gaming catalogue. Give it a miss if fractional line pays frustrate you.

Outside the purple crystal the ordinary symbols deal in coins rather than notes, and a session where the creatures stay away leans hard on patience.

🌟 VistaGamble's Honest Assessment

Big Time Gaming has taken its own most famous engine and given it a combat system, and most of the gamble lands.

➕ The Positives

• A Battle, Not a Tally: The Knight's kill-and-heal loop makes every Hold and Spin spin a decision the maths resolves in front of you, and no two rounds play out the same.
• The Dragon at the Top: A documented prize reaching 28,888x gives the feature a summit that is visible on the reels rather than buried in fine print.
• Shortcuts That Pay Their Way: Paying your way in is never a worse deal than waiting here, which almost no studio allows.
• A Soundtrack With Identity: The retro synth work and its shift into battle music are a genuine pleasure in a genre drowning in generic orchestras.

➖ The Negatives

• Fractions on the Reels: Beneath the purple crystal, even full six-symbol connections pay less than a stake, so ordinary spins rarely matter on their own.
• A Knight Can Die Early: Three lives sound generous until two blank spins in a row end a battle that never got started, and short rounds sting after a 35x entry.
• The Premium Toggle: Power Play's 8x price per spin burns through a balance quickly for a guarantee that improves the odds without promising a thing.
• Values Hide the Wait: Long gaps between creature landings can feel like walking an empty map.

🔒 Conclusion

Monster Quest is what happens when a Megaways studio remembers that its players grew up on adventure games. The Knight's lives turn a familiar hold-and-win into an actual fight, the Dragon gives it a final boss, and that bouncing arcade score ties the whole thing together with more personality than the genre usually bothers with.

The thin regular paytable and the sting of an early death are the toll for entry, but anyone who plays for the feature will find one worth reaching. The thin regular paytable and the sting of an early death are the toll for entry, but anyone who plays for the feature will find one worth reaching.

If the Knight's crusade wins you over, the rest of the studio's arsenal lives on our Big Time Gaming provider page.

Frequently Asked Questions❓

What is the RTP of Monster Quest?

Monster Quest returns 96.49% overall, and the paid routes do a touch better, 96.58% for the Bonus Buy and 96.55% for Power Play.

How does the Hold and Spin work in Monster Quest?

It starts when six or more Bonus Symbols land anywhere, turning each position into an independent reel, and the Knight cuts down any foe he can match or overcome while managing three lives. Whatever he has banked when the battle ends is yours.

How do you trigger the Free Spins in Monster Quest?

Landing three Scatters opens the round with 12 spins, each extra one on the trigger is worth 2 more, and a retrigger inside the feature hands over 4 plus 2 per additional Scatter.

Is Monster Quest high volatility?

Yes, the game carries a High volatility rating, and with the regular paytable kept small while the creatures hold the real values, sessions lean on rare heavy moments rather than steady returns.

What is the maximum win in Monster Quest?

Wins are capped at 99,900x the stake. The Dragon is the richest single symbol, anywhere from 1,888x to 28,888x, and the Knight claims it only by out-growing the beast before his lives run out.

How much does the Monster Quest bonus buy cost?

The Hold and Spin costs 35x and the 12 Free Spins cost 90x, with a separate Free Spins Stake control setting the stake each purchased spin uses.