Jokers Jewels

Anyone who is familiar with the online slots industry can tell you that there are two main sub-genres: classic slots and video slots. What the Joker's Jewels slot represents, available at Pragmatic Play casinos, is a mix between the two that comes in such a way that both sides of the coin are shown in a positive light. While there are a lot of throwback-style games out there in the industry as a whole, this one stands out a little as not trying to overcompensate for going back to its three-reel roots, which gives it a style of play that really does capture what three-reel games are like.

Layout and Format

One of the hallmarks of the older styles of these games is that they didn't have a lot of paylines. A big part of the reason for that is that they simply did not have the screen real estate to support them. This title reflects that by only having five paylines. With that having been said, it still has the larger layout with five vertical reels and three horizontal rows. This presents the perfect crossover from a layout perspective of the two styles of these games.

When it comes to adjusting the wager sizes, you'll be able to change two specific controls. Neither of those is the number of paylines, which always pay left to right only, so you always have all five of them turned on. Instead, you'll be able to wager from one to ten coins on each of those lines, which results in a maximum of 50 coins per spin. Since the coin value range is $0.01 to $0.50, the minimum total bet is $0.05, which is well within the range of even penny players. The maximum becomes $25 per turn, which also covers about as high as the vast majority of players would want to bet.

Scattered Bonus Symbol

With only five paylines across a five-by-three grid of symbols, having a scatter symbol adds a tremendous amount of value because it gives you ways to get paid without having to hit symbols on a certain payline. The bonus symbol in this game is the red and gold crown, and it shows up on each of the five reels. You can get them anywhere in any configuration to get a payout, and that makes them the most flexible symbol in the game by far.

Five of a kind of this symbol pays 250x. This is multiplied by your total bet, just like all of the payouts we're going to outline here. It's not the largest individual payout in the game, but it's close in second place. Four of this scattered crown bonus symbol is worth 50x, and you can also pick up a 10x prize for three of a kind. These are some pretty balanced wins, and a lot of value comes from them because they're so much easier to get than the line bet wins because of the limited number of paylines.

Other Critical Payouts

The Joker symbol is the highest-paying symbol in this game with a 1,000x jackpot prize for five on a payline. You can also score 200x for four jokers, five of the mandolin or five of the juggling pins. Things drop down a bit to 40x for five of the pink shoes, the diamond, the octagon jewel or the circular jewel. What you should note is that this last symbol, the blue circle gem, will give you a payout of 1x for just two of a kind. It's the only symbol in the game that will pay you for just two of a kind on a payline, which is a pretty cool win since it basically gives you that spin for free, so any other payouts you get on those spins are just icing on the cake.

In Summary

Mixing the two major genres of slots has been done before several times, but Pragmatic Play has done it pretty well with the Joker's Jewels slot. They didn't give into the temptation to overcompensate by adding in too many features, which is a trap a lot of games with this type of throwback theme fall into. Instead, they added a scatter symbol to give the game some extra value and an improved hit-rate, and they let the rest of the regular pay table do the talking. That has led to a particular style of gameplay that a lot of players will love even though the graphics are a bit lacking.