A 5×5 Kong is not a five-times-better slot
Kong Even More Money, the Kong slot Blueprint Gaming released on 29 October 2026, grows its Collect symbol from 2×2 to 5×5 inside the bonus round, and that growth changes how wins are gathered rather than whether the game pays. Bigger ape, bigger grid, bigger headline. None of that moves the maths in a player’s favour, because the size of a Collect symbol is a design choice that sits inside an already-set return figure, in this case a published 94% RTP.
The “biggest entry in the series” framing is accurate, though. Just for a different reason than most people assume. It is the biggest Kong because of what the bonus round can turn into structurally, not because of any payout promise attached to it.
What the Even More Monkey Bonus Round actually does
The bonus round opens with three spins and a 2×2 Kong Collect symbol, then uses Level Up symbols to expand Kong through four stages, adding extra spins and extra collection power as he grows toward 5×5. A Green Pot upgrade can push the whole round onto a larger 8×5 grid.
Read that sequence carefully and you see the real engine. Three spins is almost nothing on its own. Everything depends on whether Level Up symbols keep landing, because each one does two jobs at once: it buys more spins and it widens the footprint of the symbol doing the collecting. A 2×2 Kong covers four positions. A 5×5 Kong covers twenty-five. On an 8×5 grid, that footprint is suddenly most of the screen.
So the round is less “three spins and hope” and more a self-extending sequence that either stalls early or snowballs. Blueprint has built this kind of escalating collect mechanic before; this version simply gives the escalation more room to run.
Three pots, three scatter colours
Three Feature Upgrade Pots, filled by Red, Blue and Green Bonus Scatter symbols, shape how each session plays. The pots fill from scatter activity rather than from a single trigger, which means the base game is doing quiet work between bonus rounds even when nothing visible is happening.
The Green Pot is the one worth watching, since that is the upgrade tied to the 8×5 grid expansion. Blueprint has not detailed publicly how many scatters each pot needs or precisely what the Red and Blue upgrades deliver, so anyone wanting that level of detail should read the in-game paytable rather than a press release. That is not a complaint about the studio. It is normal for launch announcements to describe the headline mechanic and leave the thresholds to the help screens.
Where this sits in the Kong slot series
Kong Even More Money continues the line that began with King Kong Cash, the game that introduced Blueprint’s cash-collecting ape, and the series has become one of the studio’s strongest performers since. The pattern across the franchise has been consistent: each release hands Kong another way to gather wins.
That is the useful context. Blueprint is not rebuilding the series from scratch each time, it is iterating on a single recognisable idea, which is why the games feel familiar even when the grid changes shape. For players, familiarity cuts both ways. You already know roughly how a Kong bonus round feels, which makes the new one easy to pick up, and it also makes it easy to assume the new one must pay more than the old one. Sequels in any slot franchise carry no such guarantee, and the only honest way to compare two titles is to compare their published return figures and volatility ratings, not their marketing copy.
What Blueprint has confirmed about the specs
The launch information covers both mechanics and maths. Here is the split as it stands:
| Detail | Status at launch |
|---|---|
| Release date | Confirmed: 29 October 2026 |
| Bonus round structure | Confirmed: three starting spins, 2×2 Kong Collect |
| Kong growth stages | Confirmed: four Level Up stages, up to 5×5 |
| Grid expansion | Confirmed: Green Pot upgrade can move play to 8×5 |
| Feature Upgrade Pots | Confirmed: three, filled by Red, Blue and Green Bonus Scatters |
| RTP | Confirmed: 94% |
| Volatility rating | Confirmed: medium |
| Maximum win | Not published in the launch announcement |
| Bet range | Confirmed: 0.1 to 25 |
The RTP row is the one to sit with. RTP is the long-run share of total wagers a game returns, averaged over millions of rounds, and its inverse is the house edge the operator keeps, so 94% means a 6% edge, above the 4% or so that a typical 96% slot carries. Many studios also ship games at several RTP settings, so the figure shown in one casino’s lobby can differ from another’s, which is why the game’s own information screen is still the number that counts. Compare that with a title where the figures sit higher: Pragmatic Play slot Sweet Loot”>Pragmatic Play’s Sweet Loot publishes an RTP of 96.53%, medium volatility and a maximum win of up to 10,000x, and the maximum win is the one figure Kong Even More Money’s announcement leaves out.
What a growing Collect symbol does to the shape of a session
Concentrating value in an escalating bonus round tends to make a game swingier, not more generous. Volatility describes how payouts are distributed, not how much comes back in total; a high-volatility game pays less often and larger, a low-volatility one pays more often and smaller, and neither changes the underlying RTP by a single decimal point. Blueprint rates this one medium, which sits between those extremes.
In practical terms, a design where the good outcome requires repeated Level Up hits inside a three-spin starting window means most bonus rounds will end modestly, and the version everyone screenshots, 5×5 Kong on an 8×5 grid, will be the uncommon one. That is a feature of the design, not a flaw. It is also exactly why bankroll sizing matters more on games like this than on a steady low-volatility slot: longer dry stretches need smaller stakes to sit through, and with a bet range running from 0.1 up to 25, the low end exists for precisely that reason.
And this is the point where the standard advice stops being useful. The usual checklist tells you to look up the RTP and the volatility and judge from there. On a game built out of escalating stages, those two numbers tell you almost nothing about the experience, because they say nothing about how often a Level Up symbol lands, how often all four stages complete, or how often the Green Pot fills. Nobody publishes those rates. You cannot derive them from the paytable either, which means the honest position is that the frequency figures that would actually let you compare Kong Even More Money with its predecessors are not available to players at all.
The part you can decide for yourself
What you can do is check the help screen before the first spin, confirm the RTP your operator has configured matches the 94% Blueprint published, set a deposit or loss limit that assumes the 5×5 Kong never shows up, and treat the bonus round as entertainment with a cost rather than a target. Every slot keeps a mathematical edge for the house over time, and a larger Collect symbol does not dent it.
The open question is whether Blueprint’s escalation ceiling has room left. The series has grown by giving Kong more ways to collect, and this entry takes that to a full 5×5 symbol on an expanded grid. There is only so much screen to fill. If you ever feel a session stop being fun, the gambling support service in your country is the right next step, not the next spin.