Catch the joker on the second, third or fourth reel with part of him still hidden, and the reel nudges him until he is whole, his multiplier ticking up a notch as it moves him. That trick is what Joker’s Wild Chaos is named for, and it is why this Mascot Gaming slot plays livelier than its spec sheet reads. Under the big-top dressing sits a coin collect slot at heart, and a wheel waits to gamble any win the moment one lands.
The Wild is the joker himself, and he shows up on the middle reels alone. He can copy any symbol but the Coin and carries a multiplier of his own, x1 to start with.
Land him partly cut off by the reel edge and the reel nudges him into full sight, adding a notch to that multiplier for each row he travels, to a maximum of x3. Whatever the number reads is applied to the win he completes, so a joker nudged to x3 returns it treble. It is a small touch, but it gives otherwise flat spins some extra potential, since one such joker can turn a dull result into a worthwhile win.
The Coin is the one symbol the joker cannot copy, and by itself it does not pay on a payline. It counts when a Collect drops beside it, a coin ringed in purple, sweeping every Coin value on screen into the win, and it counts for most in numbers.
Bring in 6 or more Coins on one spin and the Hold and Win kicks in. Every Coin locks where it sits, 3 respins go on the clock, and only the gaps keep turning. Each fresh Coin resets the respins to 3, so the bonus stays live while the Coins keep coming, ending when they stop or every space is taken.
The Coins land as fixed values, Collects and jackpot symbols, with the jackpots stacked down the left throughout. A Collect takes the value of every Coin in play as it lands and wears that sum as its own, while the coins it counted keep theirs.
When the respins run out, everything still sitting on the reels is totalled and paid as the round’s win, Collects included.
The Risk Wheel is the game’s gamble feature, offered after any winning spin. Stake your win and the wheel can multiply it, move you up a level with an arrow to a higher-value ring, or wipe the lot if it lands on a dead segment. At its peak, it can pay x1000 of the total bet. Each time the wheel stops, you can collect and walk away, so the extra gamble is always optional. Mascot uses the same wheel across many other games in its cataglue, and autoplay is the only mode where it cannot be used.
You can skip the wait for 6 Coins by buying the bonus outright for 75x your bet. The feature starts with 6 Coins already locked and the usual 3 respins ready to build from there, played at whatever stake is set at the time. It is the quickest route to the Coin feature, but at that price, it needs to work hard to pay for itself.
Wins here read from either side. A run of matching symbols pays whichever end it starts from, counted inward from the outermost reel, and only the best win on each of the 10 fixed paylines is kept. Five of a kind pays once, however you read it.
The smallest bet is £0.20 and the largest £10.00, with the joker, the Coins and the wheel all live from the very bottom, and every mode can be tried in free play first.
The return sits at 95.49%, rising to 95.58% once the wheel or a buy is in use, the reverse of how most games treat their extras. Volatility is rated High, and the most a game can pay is capped at 12,000x the bet, with anything past it settled at that mark.
The drums, rabbit and tent outpay the fruit by a distance, and even five grapes give back just 10.00 before the joker touches them.
| Symbol | 5 of a kind | 4 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drums | 500.00 | 35.00 | 5.00 |
| Rabbit in the Hat | 200.00 | 15.00 | 2.50 |
| Circus Tent | 100.00 | 9.00 | 1.50 |
| Apple | 50.00 | 5.00 | 1.00 |
| Orange | 25.00 | 2.00 | 0.50 |
| Cherries | 15.00 | 1.20 | 0.30 |
| Grapes | 10.00 | 0.80 | 0.20 |
Values are for a £1.00 spin, before any joker multipliers are added.
Joker's Wild Chaos earns its score on one feature. A joker caught partly out of view is pushed into place and can triple the line he completes, which gives the main game a pull most coin collectors do without. The numbers behind it are modest, a 95.49% return and a 12,000x max win, with the wheel and the buy carried over from elsewhere in the studio's catalogue rather than anything new. That trade lands it at 3.7, a shade off some of its deeper-paying stablemates.
The nudge is the reason to keep an eye on things between bonuses. A half-shown joker sliding up a reel and paying a win threefold gives a quiet game a pull its plain fruit could not, and it lands often enough to matter. The Hold and Win beneath is a clean, familiar coin round, and the show around it is a cut above, the winning symbols glowing brighter the more a spin pays.
The joker appears on only 3 of the 5 reels and tops out at x3, so there is a clear ceiling on how much he can lift a line win. Coins are just as conditional in standard play: unless a Collect symbol lands with them, even a high-value Coin is only decoration. That stings most when the numbers are large. The wheel is just as unforgiving: it can double a win or wipe it out entirely, which is exactly what happened to one of our gambles.
The reels stand under a red canvas canopy strung with lit bulbs, the jackpots stacked down one side, and the joker mugs and gestures from the splash like a ringmaster working a crowd. A jaunty circus band plays throughout, and when a win lands the winning symbols throw off orange and yellow sparkles, brighter as the total grows. It is a good-looking, good-sounding game that holds attention whether a spin pays or not.
In play, the nudge does what its name promises. One joker showing only its head on the middle reel took a pair of three-cherry wins of 0.30, lifted to 0.90 each at x3, 1.80 for the spin, while a clean x3 on the drums brought the best of our main game, 18.00 off a 1.00 bet.
Over this review the bonus was played 3 times, once on a natural trigger and twice bought. On the natural one, a Collect swept in on the second spin for 6.90, and the round ran on to 65.00. The bought pair split the difference. One stalled at 47.80, while the other reached just 8 of the 15 spots, the fewest of the three and with no Collect among them, yet landed heavier Coins, a couple of 30.00s and a 10.00, for our best of 73.90.
Across this review, we played the bonus 3 times, once from a natural trigger and twice through the buy. The natural bonus brought in a Collect on the second spin for 6.90 and eventually finished at 65.00. The two bought rounds were more mixed. One stalled at 47.80, while the other reached only 8 of the 15 spots, the fewest of the three, and did so without a Collect. Heavier Coins made the difference, though, with two 30.00s and a 10.00 helping it to our best bonus result of 73.90.
The Risk Wheel is where those totals went next. We left the first one alone, gambled the 47.80 and watched it double to 95.60 on an x2, then put the 73.90 up as well. That one caught an arrow to start, moved up a ring, then stopped on a blank, and the win was gone. One doubled, one came back empty, which sums up the wheel neatly.
Joker’s Wild Chaos is another Hold & Win slot dressed as a night at the circus, with a jazzy soundtrack underneath and a joker who can shove his way fully into view to create an extra multiplier. The demo is where to meet him, see how that nudge changes a spin, and find out what the wheel can do with a win before any of it is for real.
