Journey to the Gold - Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Introduction

Journey to the Gold is an online slot created by the team at Ganapati, a mobile app developing company founded in London in 2013. With a Chinese theme, the attractively designed slot has an RTP of 96.82% and medium variance. It's a 5x4 slots game with a total of 40 paylines, meaning you have up to 40 chances to land a winning combo with each spin. The game's biggest selling point is probably its varied special features. There's a free spins bonus round complete with sticky wilds and a wild reel, and a separate bonus game and re-spin feature in the base game.

Theme, Graphics & Soundtrack

The game is based on a classic Chinese novel that was published all the way back in the 16th century. The novel Journey to the West features as its main character Sun Wukong, also known as the Monkey King. He and two other characters, Sha Wujing and Zhu Bajie, are sent on a mission by Buddha to escort a young monk on his journey to India, where he must get some secret Buddhist texts and bring them back to China. Perhaps it's a slightly deeper theme than many slots games on the market, but it's delivered in a fun and cartoonnish way. The graphics are excellent, and the animated symbols when they form part of a win is a nice touch.

The game's soundtrack is traditional Chinese music, and there are no irritating sound effects that start to get on your nerves after a while. This is a fairly calm slots game that manages to be enjoyable and entertaining without becoming annoying. Check out some other free play Ganapati slots if you enjoy Journey to the Gold.

How to Play

This is a very easy slots game to play. All you have to do is set your bet size and you're good to go. Because this is a fixed-payline slot, there are no complicated options to adjust before you get started.

How to play Journey to the Gold

1. Amend the bet size by using the plus and minus buttons alongside the bet display. The total bet amount jumps up in increments. When you're happy with the total bet amount displayed, you're ready to play.

2. Hit the spin button and watch the reels spring into action.

If you prefer to use the autoplay option, you can do this by pressing the autoplay button. A pop-up menu allows you to choose how many spins you wish to set up. You can choose from five up to 100 spins or set the game to play an unlimited number of spins. After the spins start, you can stop the autoplay feature at any time if you change your mind.

As you can see, this is a very simple slots game to play but no less enjoyable. Another slot you might enjoy if you like this one is Journey to the West online slot.

Journey to the Gold Bonus Features

There are several bonus features in this slots game and they can be triggered at any time, adding excitement to every single spin.

The special features start in the base game with the game wild and scatter. The wild substitutes for all other game symbols except the scatter, giving you more chances to make some winning combos. The scatter also appears in the base game and triggers the free spins feature. Three scatters land you five free spins, four get you seven, and five scatters award you nine free spins. Here are the main bonus features in detail:

Monkey King's Re-spins

Wild symbols in the base game contain different coloured crystal balls - green, red and blue. These balls are collected in the collection panel. Each ball colour activates a different Chinese character when the collection panel is full. These characters trigger re-spins and the feature can be re-triggered, giving you up to three additional re-spins.

Journey to the Gold Free Spins

Three, four or five scatters trigger the free spins bonus feature, giving you five, seven or nine free spins respectively. In this game, reel 5 is wild for the duration of the free spins. In addition, the wild symbols are sticky and remain in place until the end of the feature. As you can imagine, there is huge winning potential here! The collection panel is still active, too, meaning it's possible to trigger the Monkey King's Re-spins in the free session.

Zap a Bull Demon King Bonus Game

This additional bonus game is triggered when the collection panel (the one that collects all the coloured crystals from the wilds) is fully activated and all the colours are full. You'll get the chance to select bulls from a line-up and will be awarded a cash prize for each one.

If you are a fan of special features, slots with multipliers might also appeal to you.

Our Verdict

9/10. This game scores highly because of its fun special features and charming animations. It's a very simple game to play but rarely gets boring thanks to the animated symbols and numerous special features. The base game features are great, and the free spins game can be extremely lucrative if you get lucky with the sticky wilds.

Max-win 750x

Volatility Low

Top RTP 96.82%