Jester Bingo

Get ready to laugh your ass off playing Jester Bingo. Jesters are traditionally the kings of tomfoolery, prized for their silly japes and all-out comedy. Bingo on the other hand is a game best known for involving little more than watching a series of balls roll to a standstill before ticking off numbers on a card. The two disciplines couldn’t be further apart, except for when you’re playing Jester Bingo, which is when they’re one and the same thing. All the bingo and all the laughs...or at least so the theory goes.

That theory comes a little unstuck once Jester Bingo loads and you’re confronted with the reality of the game. As a concept, Jester Bingo is fine. The execution, not so much. Unfortunately this game comes courtesy of a developer who aren’t known for their design skills...or their spelling skills, or animation skills or indeed for having any skills whatsoever. Actually, that’s possibly a tad harsh: this game works, it just doesn’t work particularly well.

Best of the Jester

If you’ve chosen to play for real money, there is no difficulty level, otherwise everyone would be setting the game to its easiest setting and winning. Beneath this non-adjustable difficulty display is a quote applied to the Soft setting the game is set to. It reads “Like the soft ride? Day long amusement, but with one shot more excitement.” It’s a little odd, but then so’s everything else about this game. Click on the green Play button and the board will load, showing through the now-semi-translucent jester image. Before you can get in about and start playing, there’s one more thing to deal with: the overlaid text that reads “Avaliable [sic] denominations”. That’s right – this developer can’t spell.

Four Way Fun

Like all of the other bingo games by this developer, Jester Bingo allows you to play with four cards simultaneously. By default though the game starts with one. It might be an idea to get familiar with how the game works with a single card setup before you activate all four. That said, bingo isn’t known for its complexity so if you feel confident, by all means charge in and play with all four cards on the go. The cards that aren’t selected display the game’s title and the image of the same smirking jester. If you’re the sort of person who finds clowns scary, there’s a good chance that this game won’t do you any favours either. They’re sinister things, jesters.

Your bet is set at the minimum 1 coin by default but you can turn this all the way up to 100 if you like. Activate all four cards and you’ll now have the max bet of 400 coins per game active. Despite the fact that it’s called Jester Bingo, this game looks and works exactly the same as the developer’s other titles in the series such as Best Bingo. If you’ve played one of these games, you’ve played them all. That’s the bad news. The good news is there’s a certain pleasing familiarity with coming face to face with a board and playing controls you’ve seen before. Everything you need is right where you need it.

Your Number’s Up

The last ball that was drawn is displayed prominently at the top of the screen from the chute where the bingo balls are released. They cannon to the bottom of the screen rapidly before coming to rest in a long line, two deep. The whole process happens in a split second and the weirdest thing is that you can’t adjust the speed at all. Well, technically you can actually. Technically you can click on Menu and adjust the game speed, but in reality you’re not going to change anything as this control doesn’t actually seem to work. What sort of developer would create playing controls that have no effect? Probably the same developer that would misspell their games.

A Playable Jester

Provided you don’t suffer an irrational fear of jesters, Jester Bingo is a reasonably playable game. It’s not mobile-compatible admittedly, and if you’re playing it on desktop, Chrome won’t be too keen on it either. This aside, the game works reasonably well on desktop, but it’s still a frustrating title to play. Yes, you can win some big sums from it – as much as 150,000 coins if you were to fill every square on your bingo card with a correct number – but in reality this game isn’t going to hold your attention for long. It’s a game you might try once before moving on to shinier and more entertaining things.