Joker Bombs: Slot Overview

Known for their mobile-first approach, Hacksaw Gaming dial back the wild experimentation for Joker Bombs, resulting in a slot that will feel familiar to plenty of players. Joker Bombs borrows heavily from Pragmatic Play’s earlier scatter-pays hits, Sweet Bonanza and Gates of Olympus in particular. As with those titles, it’s a pay-anywhere game built around cascades and multiplier symbols, driving wins that top out at comparatively modest levels by Hacksaw standards.

The action takes place at a bright fairground: a Ferris Wheel sits behind the reels, a roller coaster track streaks past, and balloons float to the left of the 6×5 game panel. It brings to mind the Super Silly Fun Land scene in Despicable Me, where Gru obliterates the Space Killer game to snag a unicorn plush. Joker Bombs may look laid-back at first glance, but it doesn’t take long to see it’s as serious as most other Hacksaw releases.

It’s not the harshest game in the Hacksaw catalogue, but the volatility (officially 3 out of 5) still deserves respect. RTP is variable, which is common, so it’s worth checking the setting before you play. The top configuration returns 96.48%, though it can be adjusted notably lower. Hit frequency sits at around one win in four, or 23.54%, helping to bridge the gap until free spins arrive – or you can purchase them, where permitted.

With stakes from 20 p/c to $/€100 per spin, wins land in the same style as the Pragmatic Play games mentioned above: you need at least 8 matching symbols anywhere on the grid, essentially like scatters. The paytable starts with five balloon symbols, which can return up to 5-15 times your stake when 15+ appear. Next come four candy-like premium symbols paying 50-200x the stake for 15+ on the reels. As expected for a scatter-pays setup, there is no wild symbol to assist, which could have added an extra twist, leaving joker scatters and multiplier bombs to round out the symbol set.

Joker Bombs: Slot Features

Jokers and bombs act as the key special symbols and can show up throughout the game. The base game leans on cascades and bomb multipliers, while the free spins round follows the same formula but is designed to feature more special symbols overall.

Cascades

Whenever wins appear, the contributing symbols are removed from the reels, and the remaining symbols drop down to fill the empty spaces. This can chain into further wins, and cascades continue until a drop produces no additional winning combinations.

Multiplier Bombs

On each spin, the value of any winning combination is displayed at the top of the screen as a pending total. If one or more bomb symbols lands, their multiplier values are combined. Once the cascade/win sequence ends, the multiplier values are added or multiplied and then applied to the overall win amount. There are three types of bombs:

• Normal Bomb – appears with its multiplier shown. Possible outcomes are x2, x3, or x4. These values are added to the win multiplier.
• Revealing Bomb – lands with a question mark and reveals x5, x10, x25, or x50. These values are also added to the win multiplier.
• Epic Bomb – lands with an ‘X’ and reveals values of x2, x3, x4, x5, or x10. Unlike the other two bombs, this value is not added to the win multiplier but multiplies it.

Free Spins

Hit at least 3 jack in the box joker symbols in the base game to trigger 10 free spins. In this mode, more multiplier bombs can appear, and there is a higher chance of landing the higher value ones than during regular play. The feature can be extended when 3 joker symbols land anywhere on the grid, granting +5 additional free spins.

Bonus Buy

Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the option to buy free spins in Joker Bombs. If available, the price is 100x the base bet and it runs with a slightly lower RTP of 96.46%.

Joker Bombs: Slot Verdict

Imitation happens everywhere, and it’s especially common in online slots, but it was still surprising to see Hacksaw Gaming echo another studio’s work this closely. Typically, Hacksaw takes players somewhere different, delivering ideas that may not always redefine the genre but usually feel distinct and offbeat. Joker Bomb is a bit of an outlier. The bubblegum visuals and soundtrack bring plenty of quirk and reinforce the carefree theme, yet once the reels get going, the experience can feel anything but relaxed.

In practice, that made Joker Bombs a highly erratic ride. Multiple bonus buys were oddly hard to turn into strong outcomes, even though the reels are supposed to contain more special symbols in the feature. Maybe it was just a rough stretch. Either way, the standout seems to be the Epic Bomb. Landing one alongside one or two Normal Bombs was the most reliable way to pull something worthwhile from Joker Bombs. If you manage to extract the absolute maximum, the top payout is 5,000x the bet, which is solid, though a little low(ish) compared to some of Hacksaw’s more recent releases.

Overall, Joker Bombs was a strange one to assess from Hacksaw, mainly because it doesn’t carry their usual high level of originality. Nothing is outright wrong with it; it plays smoothly like Sweet Bonanza while also offering base-game multipliers in the vein of Gates of Olympus. Scatter-pays slots aren’t exactly everywhere, so it does add another choice if that’s what you’re after. In the end, Joker Bombs is fine, just not among their strongest efforts.