Racing Joker: Slot Overview

Start your engines; Pragmatic Play is going full throttle with speedy cars and a dash of joker flair in the online slot Racing Joker. That intro was painfully corny, so we’ll keep the car clichés to a minimum from here. Fittingly, Racing Joker keeps plenty of things stripped back as well, while still offering free spins where low-pay symbols are removed and a straightforward hold ‘n win-style round with 3 jackpots available.

One area Pragmatic Play has definitely dialled down in Racing Joker is the presence of actual jokers. There aren’t many cracking jokes or adding much comedy at any point. Beyond a clownish character shown on the wild symbol, there’s basically nothing. The grandstands are just as lifeless too, with rows of empty seats flanking the reels. Maybe it’s a quiet practice session instead of race day? In a way, that sums up Racing Joker overall.

Under the bonnet sits a medium volatile math model (rated 3 out of 5) with a maximum return to player of 96.52%. The action plays out on a 5-reel, 3-row grid using 25 paylines, where wins land with at least 3 matching symbols; 5 OAK is the top result. There’s no ante bet or bonus buy in Racing Joker, so it’s simply a matter of choosing a stake of 25 p/c to $/€125 and spinning.

The base game features eight standard paying symbols, with fewer appearing in free spins, as covered below. The low end is made up of 4 flag symbols in black, yellow, blue, and red chequered designs, while the higher pays are a steering wheel, a wheel removal tool, a wheel, and a champagne bottle. If you land a 5-of-a-kind win line, the low pays return 2 times the bet, rising to 4-8 times the bet for the high pays. A racing car symbol serves as Racing Joker’s wild, substituting for everything except the scatter and the Money symbols.

Racing Joker: Slot Features

Driving the feature set here are free spins that remove certain symbols from the reels, plus a Money Respin feature.

Free Spins

Racing Joker’s scatter symbol appears on reels 2, 3, and 4. Hitting 3 scatters pays 1x the bet and awards 8 free spins. While free spins are active, all low-paying flag symbols are removed from the reels, meaning they can’t land, which should boost the odds of higher-paying hits. Landing 3 scatters again grants an additional 8 free spins, with no cap on how often this can occur.

Money Respin Feature

Helmets showing values on the visor act as the Money symbols. They can reveal a random value within a defined range limit, or display the Mini or Major Jackpots worth 30x and 100x the bet, respectively. Money symbols can show up in both the base game and free spins, and landing at least 6 of them will trigger the Money Respin feature.

Once triggered, you receive 3 respins on a grid that contains only Money symbols and blank spaces. The Money symbols that started the feature are sticky and stay locked, and any newly landed Money symbols do the same while also resetting the respin counter back to 3. The feature ends when repsins are used up or the grid fills completely. At that point, you’re paid the combined total of all visible Money symbols. If every position is filled, the 1,000x Mega Jackpot is awarded as well.

Racing Joker: Slot Verdict

The immediate thought after launching Racing Joker was: where are the jokers? Aside from the driver character on the wild symbol, that’s pretty much the extent of it. Anyone expecting constant joker-themed antics throughout will likely feel let down. No matter how you frame it, Racing Joker doesn’t feel like a Pragmatic Play slot that really explores the “jokering” idea. There is, at least, a decent amount of racing flavour, or at minimum, racing nods across the reels and in the backdrop.

That said, considering how massive racing and car culture is, it’s oddly surprising how few racing slots exist. It seems translating the huge adrenaline rush of absurdly powerful cars tearing around a circuit at hair-raising speeds into a reel format isn’t so easy. Even Nolimit City didn’t fully deliver with its car-themed slot Road Rage. One high-energy title that does spring to mind is Push Gaming’s brilliantly built Mad Max-style epic Mad Cars, though it may be too intense for some. Pragmatic Play’s Street Racer is another option, and NetEnt’s Drive: Multiplier Mayhem or Knight Rider could also fit the bill.

Racing Joker isn’t exactly a standout example of car racing in slot form. It’s fine, visually clean, and entertaining for a short session, especially in free spins where the low-pay flag symbols are removed from the strips. If you want a light racing-themed slot with only the faintest hint of jokers, Racing Joker might do the job for a spin or two. It also doesn’t state the max win or a win cap on the paytable, which is unusual for a Pragmatic Play slot. If the studio isn’t highlighting the win potential, it probably isn’t anything spectacular. After watching Racing Joker run for a while and sitting through the basic hold’ n win round, enthusiasm faded fast—like yanking the handbrake—and interest quickly returned to neutral.