Monopoly Utility Trails Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Monopoly Utility Trails Review

There are currently 33 Monopoly-themed games in our catalog, and Light and Wonder is responsible for 6 of them. With 2 Monopoly-themed releases in March 2021 alone, it seems clear that Light and Wonder’s obsession with the world famous board game is far from over. Monopoly Utility Trails plays out on an impressive 8x7 grid, but unfortunately, the pace of the gameplay is less impressive.

There is a rather annoying delay after pretty much anything that happens in this game, including wins and cascading wins. Generating massive wild clusters is central to the base game action, and all the while you build up to the 2 unique bonus rounds by collecting tokens. The math model is solid enough, but those expecting features that closely resemble the board game might be disappointed.

Monopoly Utility Trails Reel Screen

Monopoly Utility Trails Features

The Cluster Pays engine means that you form winning combos when 5 to 15+ matching symbols land adjacent both horizontally and vertically. Winning clusters are removed from the grid, and a fresh batch of symbols cascade down to fill the gaps. This Cascading Wins feature goes on as long as you keep landing new winning clusters.

There are 4 different tokens that serve as wild symbols in this game, and they all step in for the regular pay symbols.

The wilds are removed when part of a winning cluster. The golden locomotive wild triggers the Wild Tracks feature whenever you land 2 anywhere on the same reel or row.

All symbols between the 2 golden locomotive wilds will then be replaced by the silver carriage wild. If you land 4 golden wilds forming a square, the whole area will be filled with silver carriage wilds. If bonus symbols are caught between golden wilds, they will serve double duty as both wilds and bonus symbols. Carriage silver wilds turn into golden locomotive wilds if they remain on the grid after a Cascade.

You can land a 3x3 Community Chest symbol at random times in the base game.

It will open to reveal an instant cash prize between 5x and 1,000x, and then the mega symbol explodes to trigger a new Cascade.

The bonus scatters are the Water Works Tap and the Light Bulb symbols, and these are collected in their own meters. You need 15 of each to trigger their respective features.

During the Water Works Bonus, the reels spin until at least 1 winning cluster is landed. Any winning clusters become sticky for the duration of the feature, as non-winning symbols cascade. The taps above the reel set can become active, upgrading the sticky cluster win symbols in 2 different ways:

• If there are multiple sticky clusters with unique symbols, all the winning clusters are upgraded to match the highest paying cluster.
• If all winning clusters are of the same symbol, the symbol will be upgraded to the next tier in accordance with the paytable.

The Electric Company Bonus plays out with the 8x7 grid filled with 56 multiple-color tiles, Chance Cards and Property Cards. The Property Cards are worth between 0.25x and 25x your stake, and they become sticky whenever they land. The colorful tiles might generate non-paying clusters and be removed, and this doubles the value of any Property Cards with the same color.

You have 3 lives in this feature, and you lose 1 life if you land no color cluster, property card or chance card on any given spin. The Chance Card will flip to reveal either a house or a hotel, triggering the following respective multipliers:

• House - doubles the value of a random Property Card.
• Hotel - doubles the value of all Property Cards in view.

The feature goes on until you’ve either filled the grid with nothing but Cash Property Cards, or until you run out of lives. Either way, all your winnings will be summed up, and back to the base game you go.

If you manage to fill the entire grid with wilds in the base game, you win the Off The Rails Jackpot.

There are 2 ways to fill the screen with wilds. You either land 1 golden wild in each corner on any given spin, or you trigger the feature by landing 10 consecutive Cascading Wins. The Off The Rails Jackpot is worth 5,000x your stake either way.

The 200 Spins Monopoly Utility Trails Experience

We suggest you set the speed to 2x if you plan to watch our 5-minute highlights video. The reason is the lengthy pause between each spin this game comes with. It’s even annoying with double speed. Anyway, you can safely skip to the 2-minute mark if you want to avoid most of the base game.

We trigger the Electric Company Bonus around that time, and you can see how much we got away with by hitting the play button.

Review Summary

Nitpicking about a game’s pace might seem a bit fussy, but in the case of Monopoly Utility Trails, it’s merited. We get that 56 symbols can be a bit to take in, but nobody wants to stare at a non-winning grid for 3 excruciatingly long seconds, while hammering the spin button, before another spin finally commences. At least include a turbo spin option, less you wanna give players an ulcer.

The Wild Tracks feature adds excitement to the base game, not least since filling the grid to win the 5,000x jackpot is an ever-present possibility. The Electric Company Bonus didn’t impress us all that much, but the Water Works feature was more fun. All in all, this Monopoly effort from Light and Wonder Digital comes across as too rigid, stiff and mechanical, lacking the organic flow and pace that makes other grid slots so appealing.

Pros

• Cluster Pays & Cascading Reels
• Random Community Chest prize up to 1,000x
• Innovative Wild Tracks feature
• Off the Rails Jackpot worth 5,000x
• 2 unique bonus games

Cons

• Slow-paced and rigid gameplay

If you enjoy Monopoly Utility Trails you should also try:

Monopoly Round The Houses - is being released by Light and Wonder hot off the heels of the game at hand, and it features 3 games wrapped into one. The classic board game is at the center of things, and you can look forward to a classic 3x3 slot, as well as different Pick’em features for payouts up to 5,000x.

Monopoly 250k - is another feature rich Monopoly slot from Light and Wonder, and it comes with a £250,000 jackpot. All 6 bonus features are highly recognizable for fans of the board game, and you can even roll the dice to win while in jail.

Monopoly Megaways - is BTG’s popular Megaways version, and it comes with cascading reels and up to 117,649 win ways.

The Reel Adventure bonus mimics the board game perfectly, and you can win up to 15,000x your stake in the unlimited win multiplier bonus round.

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