Jewel Journey review

Theme and Storyline

Jewel Journey sets out to paint a picture of a jungle adventure deliberately evoking the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark in its design. Unfortunately, the evocation falls flat, with their version of Indiana Jones looking more like one of the villains than a hero.

The symbols include treasure maps, wild animals and various bits of adventuring equipment like canteens and backpacks.

Graphics, Sounds and Animations

The first problem Jewel Journey presents to the player is visual. Very few slots have such technically well-drawn assets that are still somehow so ugly. The hero is a moustachioed professor with an old man’s fishing cap and granny glasses, the font on the buttons is literally papyrus, and the gemstones look like they came from a totally different game.

The animations and sounds are clunky, having been copied over from other slots, and there is no background music to create an atmosphere.

All in all, the slot is an audio-visual mess.

Gameplay

Jewel Journey is a basic five by three slot. The player has the option of playing any number between one and twenty-five win lines, which gives players excellent control over volatility and bankroll. Which is good because the range of bets is kind of low and the volatility is very middling (see below for details).

The makers have created four seperate bonus games for Jewel Journey, but none of them are of much interest and all fail to overcome the dire state of the visuals.

Wilds, Bonuses and Free Spins

The Wild symbol substitutes for all symbols except the three Scatter symbols. Wins with a wild earn a two times multiplier.

Three or more Wilds anywhere on the reel trigger a simple picking bonus. The player picks gems until two match and then wins the value on the matching pair.

The Great Escape bonus triggers when three or more Tiger Scatters land on the reels. The Great Escape offers the player a three way picking game with a maximum of a x100 win.

Three or more Map Scatters triggers the Treasure Map bonus. This is another picking game. In this one, the player chooses one of five gems with a randomised value under each.

The final bonus is a Free Spin bonus triggered by the Professor Scatter symbol. Three, four or five Professor Scatters gets the player six, eight or twelve free spins respectively.

Bet Sizes, RTP and Variance

The return to player of this game is 95.21%, this is well below our yardstick for average of roughly 96%. This alone makes it very hard for us to recommend this slot.

The range of bets on the site we tested ran from a minimum bet per spin of $/£/€0.25 (when playing all twenty-five lines) up to a maximum of $/£/€15.00 per spin. This might put off some of the higher rollers out there but should be sufficient for any low to medium stakes players.

The volatility of this game is medium, which makes it a weak match for our preferred slot machine strategies. We instead favour high volatility slots where possible.

Conclusion

There is very little to recommend Jewel Journey. The slot is ugly, badly designed, and tiresome to play. The three of the four bonuses are very similar picking games and so fail to add the variety they claim.

Then, just to add insult to injury, the RTP is very low. We do not recommend this slot.