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It’s All About the Queen Bee
If you play Evoplay’s new slot, Honey Royale, you’ll quickly notice something unusual: the regular symbols are almost worthless. Even if you land the best possible combination, five golden thrones, you only get your bet back five times over.
Instead, all the real money in this game is tied to one specific symbol: the crowned Queen Bee. She’s the key to unlocking the prize tiles on the board, and without her, the game doesn’t pay out much at all.
Honey Royale is a 5×3 slot with 15 fixed paylines, set to release on September 3, 2026. It has a standard Return to Player (RTP) of 96.03%. Interestingly, the game doesn’t list its volatility anywhere, so you’re left to guess how swingy it might be.
The Queen Bee’s VIP Seat
The Queen Bee acts as a wild symbol, but she doesn’t just land anywhere. She has a dedicated VIP seat: the middle square of the third reel, which is highlighted with a gold frame so you always know where to look. She’ll substitute for regular symbols, but her real job isn’t making standard paylines, it’s opening locks.
As you spin, you’ll see gold coins (worth 1x to 5x your bet) and honeycomb padlocks (jackpots) land on the screen. By themselves, they do absolutely nothing. They just sit there until the Queen Bee lands in her special spot. When she does, all the locked tiles pop open and pay out whatever is written on them. It’s simple math, no complicated multipliers, it just adds the values together.
Because waiting for her can take a while, the game has three mini-features to help out:
- Queen Bee Spin: Guarantees she lands and throws a bunch of prize tiles onto the screen.
- Queen Bee Rewind: If you miss her, the middle reel might magically rewind to drop her into place.
- Jackpot Rewind: If she’s already on the screen, other reels might rewind to drop more cash tiles for her to open.
Without these features, she doesn’t show up very often. And if she shows up when there are no coins on the screen, it feels like a waste.
Cash, Jackpots, and a Confusing Max Win
The prize tiles come in two flavors. The gold coins are common and give you small bumps to your balance. The padlocks are the jackpots, and they are fixed multipliers based on your bet: MINI (10x), MINOR (20x), MAJOR (50x), MEGA (100x), and GRAND (1,000x).
Here’s the funny thing about the game’s maximum win: the paytable claims it is 5,000x your bet, while the intro screen promises “win over 3,000x”. The intro screen is the one closer to the truth. The real ceiling is 3,144x, and since the GRAND jackpot is only 1,000x, reaching that ceiling means a screen absolutely packed with jackpots and coins all opening at once.
Free Spins: The Queen Stays Put
Above the reels, you’ll see two clay honeypots. Filling them randomly triggers the free spins, one pot gives you 6 spins, both give you 12. You can also retrigger more spins while playing, with no limit.
The free spins round does exactly what you want it to do: the Queen Bee gets locked into her spot for the entire round. That means every single coin or padlock that lands is instantly collected.
We bought the 6-spin bonus round for 39x our bet. The very first spin (the trigger spin) dropped the Queen Bee and a bunch of tiles, paying out over half our total winnings instantly. The rest of the round was okay, but keep in mind that even with the Queen Bee locked in place, you’ll still have plenty of “dead” spins where no coins land at all.
The Bonus Menu
If you don’t want to wait, you can use the bonus menu. You can pay extra on every spin to boost your chances of hitting free spins (Booster costs 2x your bet, Super Booster costs 5x). Or, you can just buy the free spins outright: 39x your bet for 6 spins, or 77x for 12 spins.
Be careful with the Super Booster, paying 5x your bet on every normal spin will drain your wallet incredibly fast if you aren’t paying attention.
Also, the menu itself looks a bit weird. While the rest of the game is beautifully drawn, the bonus menu looks like a gray, unfinished prototype screen.
Cute Art, Boring Regular Spins
The game looks like a charming children’s picture book. It’s set in a honey-colored bee village, and the “royal” items are funny things like a watering can and a honey dipper. It’s cute, and the dark background behind the reels makes the bright yellow and orange symbols easy to read.
But again, those regular symbols barely pay. A full line of the lowest-paying flowers gives you a fraction of your bet. The game is designed this way on purpose, all the money is hiding in the locked tiles, but it makes the regular spinning feel like a bit of a grind.
Pros and Cons
What works:
- Easy to understand: The coins show exactly what they pay, and the jackpot amounts are always visible on screen.
- Endless free spins: You can keep retriggering free spins with no cap.
- Cheap bonus buy: Buying the bonus for 39x your bet is a really fair price compared to most modern slots.
- Great art: The cartoon-bee theme is charming and knows exactly what it wants to be.
What doesn’t:
- Boring base game: Because regular symbols pay so little, standard spins are mostly just waiting around.
- Rare Queen Bee: Since she only lands in one spot, you don’t get to collect coins very often unless the game throws a random feature at you.
- Expensive boosters: The 5x Super Booster will eat your balance alive if you forget to turn it off.
- Confusing stats: The game doesn’t tell you the volatility, and the paytable lies about the max win.
The Verdict
Honey Royale is a game of waiting. Because the regular spins pay pennies, you are basically just biding your time until the Queen Bee lands on a screen full of coins.
The coin-collecting mechanic isn’t new, but locking the Queen Bee to one specific spot gives the game a unique feel. If you are the kind of player who likes to skip the grind and just buy bonuses, the 39x price tag is incredibly tempting and offers good value. Just expect most of your winnings to come in one big burst rather than a steady stream.
If you prefer to spin normally, however, you might find the base game a little too boring to sit through for long.