Joker Gems Introduction

Swedes have a phrase about themselves – “landet lagom”, which loosely translates to “the land of just enough” and is sometimes used to sum up the Swedish mindset. ELK Studios is a Stockholm-based game provider that seems to live by that idea, delivering a catalogue of fairly decent titles that look fine, but, at least in our view, rarely bring much excitement.

Kaiju looked very promising at first, but ended up being more of a frustrating tease, Lake’s Five was simply “meh”, Birthday! we’d prefer to erase from memory, and Platooners felt like an unsuccessful attempt to do something different. It’s not easy to pinpoint exactly what’s lacking, but limited potential is certainly part of it. Another downside is the repetitive feel we often get when playing ELK slots, even though the themes and visuals change.

While providers like Quickspin, Push Gaming, Red Tiger and NetEnt have shown a clear desire to evolve and improve, ELK still seems content with “the land of just enough”.

So where does Joker Gems fit in? It’s a 5×5 grid slot built around the much-maligned cluster mechanics (which, in our opinion, only a few studios truly handle well). It’s also a fixed jackpot title, which is often a warning sign. As with other ELK releases, the bet range runs from €0.20 and €100, so nothing surprising there.

The Return to player sits at a comfortable 96.3%, and for volatility it has been rated 8 out of 10 by ELK themselves, which likely places it in the medium-high to high variance bracket. High variance paired with low potential (as you’ll see) isn’t a great combination, so the outlook isn’t particularly encouraging from the start.

On the visual side, the gameplay unfolds inside an interstellar dust cloud in deep space, otherwise known as a Nebula. Combining space imagery with jokers is certainly an odd mix and doesn’t really add up, but it’s at least a colourful ride.

Joker Gems Symbols, Mechanics & Features

The game includes 7 standard symbols – 4 low-value symbols made up of different gems, and 3 premium symbols shown as bars, sevens and jokers. As noted earlier, the base game potential is low (jackpots aside), with a maximum win of just 700x.

Mechanically it’s pretty simple: the larger the cluster, the bigger the payout. A cluster win is formed when three or more matching symbols connect, which then triggers a respin to give the cluster a chance to expand. Respins continue until no additional symbols join the active cluster or no new clusters appear.

There’s also a random feature called The Light Chaser Feature. When it triggers, it moves across the reels and stops on a random spot to award a cluster win of 4 to 5 matching symbols, followed by a respin.

Joker Gems Jackpots

Based on official information, around 15 and 20% of the RTP is allocated to the “pots” (which helps explain the low base-game potential), meaning the jackpots should land more often than the huge progressive prizes found in games like Mega Moolah and Mega Fortune.

There are three fixed jackpots on offer: small, medium and big, paying 10k, 20k, and 50k Euros respectively. All three jackpots can be triggered even at the minimum bet, although staking higher improves your odds of hitting one. On top of that, there’s no cap on how many times you can win the jackpots.

Jackpots are awarded when players hit one of three preset cluster patterns using identical symbols. The jackpot patterns are: the center 3×3 reel positions for the bronze Jackpot, the surrounding 16 reel positions for the silver Jackpot, and the whole reel grid for the gold Jackpot.

Joker Gems Conclusion

It’s difficult to say who truly invented the cluster mechanic, but NetEnt were clearly the studio that made it mainstream. We’ve seen plenty of cluster slots released recently from all kinds of providers, so it’s not exactly surprising to see ELK join in too.

There is a noticeable twist in their version of the cluster idea, which is nice, but personally we would have removed the fixed jackpots and used that space to increase the maximum exposure instead. A 700x max win in the base game simply isn’t enough, and too much of the wager seems to be funnelled into jackpots that are more likely to be hit by high rollers anyway. We’d gladly add a bit of unicorn dust to this piece if we start seeing €10,000 jackpot wins on €0.20-5 bets popping up on Youtube, but we’re not counting on it.

Is it fun? Do we think it’s worth risking your hard-earned money on? Everyone will have their own view, of course, but for us, we can’t even guarantee we’ll give it a single spin when it launches. We’ll wait for that Youtube clip first.