Play Jester's Follies for Free

Back in the days of medieval kings and renaissance queens, jesters were the go-to people for day-to-day entertainment. Even common people on the streets were treated to comical performances of juggling, singing and dancing. Well, it's not as if people had the Kardashians or Coronation Street to keep themselves entertained. They didn't even have Youtube back then. Imagine that!

Spinners can get a taste for the kind of jokes and japes that court jesters had to offer by spinning the 5 reels of this Merkur Gaming slot machine. The stage is set quite literally with the reels being positioned upon a stage within a drawn curtain, allowing the perfect space for the jester's props to fall and tumble as the reels spin. There are juggling balls, juggling clubs, an accordion, a medieval lute, and a monkey dressed in a Jacobean ruff. As you do.

Spinners of Jester's Follies can expect to be bombarded with plenty of colour in this novelty slot machine. Each symbol is presented in the boldest possible colour with many primary shades of red, blue and yellow to give the game a simplistic, childlike appearance to match the clown aspect of the theme. The game's symbols are shown as two dimensional cartoon illustrations which further helps to draw out the novelty atmosphere of the slot machine, although it does make the game seem a little bit rudimentary in design when compared to contemporary 3D games.

Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of this slot machine is the fact that players can win some prizes whenever those symbols line up into rows upon the paylines. All 10 paylines are fixed into position, meaning that punters simply have to think about how much they will place as a total bet, with the following wagers available: 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1.00, 2.00, 5.00, 10.00 and 20.00. Once spinners have settled on a total wager that best suits their strategy, they need to divide the number by 10 to work out the bet per line value. The reason why this is necessary is because all of the wins in the game are awarded as line bet multipliers, as you can see in the table below:

As well as being the slot machine's most lucrative symbol in terms of payout value, the jester icon in Jester's Follies will help players to achieve more frequent line wins by substituting for all other symbols in the game. This wild symbol also appears in stacks of three, meaning that it could easily trigger multiple line wins at any one time.

Let's be honest, you're not going to hit those big wins with every spin of the reels. However, with a couple of gamble games available, you have it in your hands to boost smaller wins up to a maximum gamble value of 140 credits. The first of these gamble side games presents punters with a ladder of prizes, allowing them to climb and fall indefinitely until they reach the top prize, hit the bottom step of 0.00, or cash in their wins.

The other game is a straight up 50/50 gamble in which players can double their wins or lose it all by guessing the colour of a playing card.

If you're after a video slot which serves up a bit of fun novelty action, then you can't go wrong with Jester's Follies. The theme is inherently colourful, and players can enjoy a unique historical twist with some medieval style sound effects to transport them into another era entirely. However, video slot fanatics who like their games to be jam-packed with bonus games might be a bit underwhelmed by the lack of free spins and side games.