Joker Pro Slot – Free Demo

Bar-room symbols under neon

Starburst and Spinsane sit on the same shelf, both NetEnt classics. Joker Pro might be the most pared back one of the bunch, and at first look you'd be excused for supposing you've strayed into a pub cabinet from thirty years ago that someone has buffed up. I played 390 spins of it at a 1.50 stake. But no, don't tweak your set. All of the symbols and pictures here are the vintage bar-room fittings, new from the fruit machine, diamonds, sevens and bars, and for plenty of players that will be a fine thing too. The Scatter keeps to reels 2, 3 and 4, and it is the only symbol on the reels that starts anything. Contemporary slots can be demanding. Or is the resulting slot a little too plain? Across those 390 spins the Joker Pro Re-Spins arrived four times. Let's look.

What the screen does when the round starts

Joker Pro can be a shock when it first loads, if you haven't been pre-warned. It's not just vivid and vibrant. The game world is also built entirely of glass and neon, or chrome, as it is also known, and there is a retro arcade mood going on, like a jukebox, or something equally offbeat. During the Re-Spins that furniture is replaced by a "Re-Spins played" counter and a "Total win" counter down the right-hand side. Yet, on the other hand, the layout is as ordinary as it gets with 5 reels and 3 rows in effect. Once the feature starts, reels 1 and 5 are drawn as solid Wild columns for the length of the round. In another rare quirk you don't see much anymore, paylines are not alterable at all with 10 fixed lines in play. On a win the Big Win screen counts up in coins rather than money — one captured frame reads 585 while the balance bar underneath it shows a 29.25 win at a 1.50 bet. The game arrived on July 12, 2016.

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How often the reels paid across 390 spins

For now, let's get a couple figures out of the way beginning with volatility. NetEnt has held the volatility at a medium 3 out of 5, and it's frequently the case that plain little games have a sting hiding nearby. In my session 120 of 390 spins paid, and 66 of those returned less than the stake. With Joker Pro, the RTP could scarcely qualify since it's up a touch from the usual average at 96.80%. The longest run I had without a win was 12 spins, ending on spin 16.

The diamond at 200 coins a line

On a more upbeat note the game has a vibrant paytable. The clover, horseshoe, bell, bar, red seven and diamond are the six symbols that pay a line. It feels like hunting for a prize in a sweet shop, and you don't see fruit machine symbols much. Joker Pro's begin with the clover at 40 coins and the horseshoe at 50, which make up the low pays, while the high pays carry on with more hardware such as the bell at 60 and the bar at 80. Those figures are per bet line and in coins, not multiples of the stake. The reel king, however, is the diamond. It pays out a sizeable 200 coins for five of a kind on a line, with the seven behind it on 100. My best base-game spin was spin 107, which paid 120.00 at a 1.50 stake, 80 times the bet.

When it comes to winning combos, wins pay left to right from the leftmost reel, and only the highest win on each line pays, while assisting win combinations is the Wild. It substitutes for any of the pay symbols except the Scatter. So a Wild can never stand in for a trigger. Wilds only ever appear on reels 2, 3 and 4 in the Re-Spins.

How the Joker Pro Re-Spins run

The Scatter is useful as a trigger. One is enough to start the round. It too keeps to reels 2, 3 and 4, and in this role, when one or more Scatters are in sight they start the Joker Pro Re-Spins feature. It triggered four times in my session, on spins 140, 211, 226 and 368. Landing them converts reels 1 and 5 into full Wild reels and opens three Hot Spot positions in the centre of reels 2, 3 and 4. The two counters on the right-hand side take over the interface while that is on screen. It also freezes the triggering Scatters into sticky Wilds before the reels re-spin. That means the round always starts with at least one Wild already held in place. What perks up the round is that any new Wild that lands grants another Re-Spin and sticks where it fell for the remainder of the feature. The round runs on those retriggers alone, and it ends on the first re-spin that lands no new Wild.

The Hot Spot Win that never came out

The biggest thing inside the round is the Hot Spot Win, which is triggered when three Wilds occupy the Hot Spot positions in the centre of reels 2, 3 and 4. Those three positions are the middle row of the three centre reels, which are also the only reels a Wild can land on. When it lands, the game pays 1,000 times the bet. It never landed on me, and nothing in the session reached 1,000 times the stake. The round finishes there and then. Since the Hot Spots only exist inside the feature, there is no route to that win from the base game.

Final Minty Score: Four Joker Pro Re-Spins rounds paid 951.00 of the 1,333.80 this session won, 71% of the total, and the largest of them returned 479 times the stake on a spin whose base game paid 1.50. Nothing across the 390 spins reached the 1,000 times the bet the Hot Spot Win carries.

Where the 951.00 came from

You've got to hand it to these pared back slots, which, as I noted before, frequently conceal what is going on beneath the surface. In the case of Joker Pro, this applies to potential. The four Re-Spins rounds I hit paid 951.00 between them, 71% of everything the session won. It goes without saying that the diamond is the symbol you want to land, and with the Wild reels either side of it during a Re-Spin, wins can pile up quite quickly. The round on spin 226 paid 718.50, 479 times the stake, while the base game on that same spin paid 1.50.

For example, three Wilds resting in the Hot Spots is worth 1,000 times the bet right there. The next best round I had, on spin 368, paid 154.50, or 103 times the stake. Potential doesn't go crazy when you start doing the maths.

The sparse theme might turn some players off, then again, Joker Pro's unique look could be a lure for others seeking something vintage to spin, and the re-spins aren't poor either, especially the sticky Wild build up. The gaps between my four rounds ran 71 spins, then 15, then 142. Those kinds of feature used to come as standard on slots back in the day. I finished 390 spins on 1,748.80 from a 1,000.00 start, having been as low as 918.55 on the way. But it gets an extra jolt with Joker Pro when paired up with the Hot Spot positions. The peak balance came on spin 372, at 1,759.30.