Joker Never Retires free demo

How it plays

The grid is five reels by four rows, set in a cosy living room with a TV and bookshelves behind it. The retired joker himself sits off to the left, hooked up to his drip, and he's the best bit of character design we've seen from this studio. On the reels you'll find the joker, pigs, blood bags, teeth and a cup, with A, Q and 10 filling in as the low pays. Twenty paylines carry the base game, and cascading wins do the heavy lifting: winning symbols clear away and new ones drop in, so a single spin can pay more than once. Something lands roughly one spin in three, which keeps the base game from feeling dead, though plenty of those hits are small. Wilds help fill the gaps and multipliers add weight to the better sequences. The free spins are where the medium-high volatility shows its teeth. Most rounds are ordinary, and now and then one catches and runs. The 12,000x ceiling is a genuine headline figure, a long way above what a typical session will ever see, but it tells you the game is built to spike rather than drip-feed. Stakes run from 0.1 to 75. There's a bonus buy for anyone who'd rather skip the wait, and with play money it's a painless way to see the feature several times in a row.

Bonus features

• Cascading wins
• Wilds
• Multipliers
• Free spins
• Bonus buy

Who it's for

Players with a taste for dark comedy and a bit of patience. The cascading base game keeps things ticking, but the real payoff lives in the free spins, and medium-high volatility means you'll sit through some thin spells to get there. It's a good one to try with the bonus buy in the demo, just to see how the round behaves before you decide whether the wait is worth it. If you prefer steady, predictable sessions, the swings will wear thin.