Joker’s Revenge

Joker's Revenge: Slot Overview

Jokers are typically laugh-a-minute characters, juggling chainsaws in one hand, twisting balloons into poodles in the other. Not so in today's slot. With a title like Joker's Revenge, players had best be keeping on the good side of this bell-hatted harlequin, lest she dispense whatever it is that passes for vengeance amongst jesters. Then again, it's just a name, really, since nothing that happens within the game itself hints at any sort of retribution. Instead, Joker's Revenge spins off Pragmatic Play's long-running Joker's series, which has included such releases as Joker's Jewels Wild, Joker's Jewels Hot, and Joker's Jewels Hold & Spin.

Gamblers acquainted with those three slots will have a good idea of what to expect from Joker's Revenge on the front end. That is, classically presented action, as if an actual land-based machine is spinning away. Paytable information is nostalgically printed above the reels, and there isn't a lot more to the gameplay than what you can see there. It's all jolly stuff, completely predictable, and aimed at repeat players or those who enjoy reliving the good old days. Gamblers familiar with these releases will know before Joker's Revenge even loads what to expect, while newbies should be able to clock what's going on in about a microsecond.

Joker's Revenge's gaming machine is a 5x3 grid with 5 paylines, not many, but pay symbol combination values can be quite high. When choosing a stake, the lowest allowable bet is $/€0.05, rising to a maximum of $/€250 per spin. Math model volatility has been classed as low, while the max RTP is 96.51%.

Symbols play left to right on adjacent reels, from the leftmost side of the grid. Pay symbols are made up of Q-A, blue gems, red gems, joker shoes, juggling items, and lutes. Landing a combination of 5 OAK awards 15x to 500x the bet. Jokers are wild, and they land on the middle three reels, where they substitute for all symbols except the bonus scatter.

Joker's Revenge: Slot Features

The extras in Joker's Revenge are its free spins round, Bonus pay awards, and feature buys.

Bonus Scatter Symbol

Bonus scatter symbols appear on the three middle reels. Landing 2 of them awards 0.4x, or hitting 3 scatters triggers the free spins feature and a 1x the bet payout.

Free Spins

When triggered, players win 5 free spins. During the bonus round, wilds also substitute for bonus scatter symbols. Hitting 3 scatters or wilds in any combination awards +1 free spin. Also, when landing 2 or more bonus scatters or wilds in any combination, the bonus pay is awarded. The bonus pay increases in value on every spin from a starting amount of 2x the bet up to a ceiling of 10,000x the bet.

Feature Buy

There are no ante bets, but Joker's Revenge has three feature buys. They cost 40x, 180x or 1,000x the stake to trigger 5, 7, or 9 free spins, respectively.

Joker's Revenge: Slot Verdict

Mobile phones making a shutter noise when taking a picture, stylised cooling grilles on electric cars, or electric fireplaces that look like logs for aesthetic rather than functional purposes are a few examples of the skeuomorphic part of the world we live in, when old tech is incorporated in the new, even when unnecessary, in order to provide analogue comfort in a digital world. Pragmatic Play's Joker's slots are something like that. They use olden-timey visual aids to let gamblers take a break from the modern world, to step for a moment into a past where everything was less complicated, less nuanced, more straightforward and easy to navigate. Whether that sort of world ever actually existed is up for discussion, yet Joker's Revenge gives players a chance to indulge in some golden age thinking even if it is built on a fallacy.

Beyond the nostalgic facade, Joker's Revenge is ever so slightly more evolved than expected. Hitting a certain number of symbols to win a Bonus prize is a common feature, but progressing the prize on each successive free spin is a twist. For a Joker's slot. A theoretical map to the game's 10,000x win cap is clearly provided, though moving from 5 initial spins to 12, and then landing three scatters or wilds is no easy task. Feature buys provide a possible shortcut, though some may perceive laying out 1,000x for the premium feature buy as a ballsy move in a low-volatility game like this. Buying features can guarantee moving along the Bonus pay trail in terms of the number of free spins, but there is no guarantee of actually winning a Bonus pay prize when doing so.

Pragmatic Play's Joker's slots are not designed to take over the world or shock the online gambling community to its knees, and Joker's Revenge obediently follows suit. It comes across as either too dully designed and painfully old-fashioned to consider looking twice at, or the ideal haven for gamblers who want to take a step back in time, not think about scatter pays, splitting symbols, or more than 6 ways to win, but focus on a straightforward attempt to nab Bonus prizes, with potentially chunky line wins along the way.