Roxy Palace Casino Review: A Guide to This Operator

A Textbook Selection from Microgaming

Roxy Palace is well-stocked with online slots, blackjack and roulette tables. Tabs for jackpot games and high-limit games make it easier for those chasing big wins at high stakes to find their poison of choice. The overall game library will be familiar to anyone who has ever browsed a Microgaming casino before. What that means, essentially, is that you can expert high-quality slots that look and feel amazing. With such a rich selection of fantastic slots, concessions are made in other areas. Roulette fans might feel a little short-changed with only a handful of options available, but then again roulette players tend not to like the formula being messed with too much. There are loads on offer for blackjack players here, with than 25 variants available.

The casino staples are covered well, then. But the glaring omission from this game library is the smaller tables games and the once niche titles that are booming in popularity right now. I’m talking about casino poker, Sic Bo, video poker, baccarat, craps and much more. Roxy covers the classics well but falls behind the competition that has already started to diversify.

Let’s, for a minute, dig into the specifics then. Microgaming has a record of delivering gorgeous looking slots that really push the boundaries of what we expect our games to look like, how we expect them to be animated, and how they sound. At Roxy Palace casino, games such as Moby Dick, Forbidden Throne and So Much Sushi look and feel great. There is also a nice section of recognisable licenses here too. The Phantom of the Opera online slot is a particular treat, whilst Halloween (the Michael Myers one) and Jurassic World join from the world of Hollywood. For fans of classic UK television, Bullseye offers nostalgic charm.

For jackpot hunters, Roxy Palace offers a few options. The now world-famous Mega Moolah is there for those who fancy going after the really big money. The RTP might not be great, but there are few slots that payout £1 million plus prizes as often as this Microgaming hit. LotsALoot, the five-reel version, is another popular choice for players at Roxy Palace online casino. At the time of writing, the progressive jackpot stands at a whopping £8,474. The only real drawback of this slots library is the lack of diversity. With all games coming from just one software provider, players are limiting themselves somewhat by choosing Roxy Casino, and missing out on some of the more innovative, smaller developers’ products.

Live Dealer Games at Roxy Palace Casino

The live casino is delivered by Evolution Gaming, and that means one thing – it’s great. Evolution leads the live dealer casino market, in my opinion. The live casino suite at Roxy Palace is actually delivered by 32Red, of which Roxy is a fully owned subsidiary. If you’d like to read about what to expect from this product, have a read of my 32Red live casino review.

Roxy Palace Mobile Casino

Mobile optimisation is such a key area of the online casino market these days. In fact, 32Red has reported that 42% of its Roxy Palace revenues are being drawn from mobile devices. Given that the mobile app is such an important part of this overall package, I decided to write a special, dedicated review of Roxy Palace casino, where I evaluate the Roxy Palace mobile service thoroughly.

Table Limits – A Quick Overview

Why care about table limits? They’re so dull, right? Well, actually, table limits are a crucial part of evaluating any online casino. The minimum and maximum bets allowed during a game of blackjack or roulette, for example, hugely affect the effectiveness of certain strategies. The issue is not so big with slots, which are fixed odds games. It doesn’t matter if you spend 20p or £200 on a spin, your chances of winning the progressive jackpot are the same. The regular payouts are scaled, of course, but your percentage chance of a win does not change.

Most of the roulette games come with a minimum bet of £1. The actual per bet stake is often as low as 20p, but you will need to risk at least £1 before you are allowed to spin. Bets on red and black, or similar even money bets, will come with a higher lower betting limit. Blackjack is available for as little as £1 per hand, although, Evolution Gaming’s live Blackjack Party can be played from 50p per hand. For slots, minimum bets per spin range from 5p to 50p, but the average seems to fall around the 20p mark.

On the upper end of the spectrum, the High Limit section of Roxy Palace casino provides a haven for high-rollers. High Limit Roulette allows total bets up to a massive £30,000. High stakes blackjack can be played for as much as £20,000 per hand.

Roxy Palace Casino Payouts Overview

Whenever I’m reviewing an online casino I like to dig into the payout rates, or RTPs (return-to-player rates) as they are known in the business. Firstly, it’s important to make a clear distinction. Payout rates are not chosen by online casinos themselves. The games are made by the software developer. Built into the games are random number generators that determine the payout rate of a particular game. For slots, these can be as high as 98% or as low as 75%. For roulette and blackjack, where the odds are not fixed – players make decisions in these games that change the chances of winning and losing, and thus altering the payout rates – we calculate payout rates by determining how big or small the house edge is.

All casino games have a house edge. The player is always at a disadvantage, and statistically at least, will lose money over time. However, I still find it useful to look at these figures to work out which games are suited to which type of player. Gambling has to be considered a pay-for service. As a player, you need to work out how much you are willing to lose, or pay, to have the enjoyable experience of playing the games. Of course, not every player will lose, but responsible gamblers are prepared for this eventuality. Choosing to spend your gambling currency at games with a low house edge, or a high RTP will prolong the time you can spend playing and allow for a more enjoyable overall experience.

As you can see from the table above, classic slots and video slots provide one of the best payout rates available at Roxy Palace casino. A payout of 98% means, in theory at least, that for every £100 you put into the slot machine, you will receive £98 back in winnings. Depending on how long it takes you to stake the £100 of course, you can work out how much you are going to have to pay to play the game. Remember, these numbers are not water-tight, they are theoretical. You could land a million-pound jackpot after spending just 20p on a progressive jackpot slot game, as several have done in the past. The overall sentiment to take away is that these figures are calculated by analysing the data from millions of players over millions of hours of play. Where you fall in the statistics is chance. I guess that’s why they call it gambling.

Roxy Palace Casino Software

Roxy Palace online casino draws on two major software providers to deliver its casino. Microgaming handles all of the non-live-dealer stuff. That means, slots, blackjack, roulette and other casino games are handled by the software giant. Microgaming is considered one of the ‘big three’ in this industry, along with NetEnt and Playtech. If I am being completely honest, there is really not much between these three goliaths in terms of overall quality. Sure, Playtech has some nice licenses and NetEnt is probably the most progressive in terms of innovations, but Microgaming puts the biggest emphasis on aesthetics, and has the prettiest looking games. It’s all about personal preference. One thing I will say though is that Microgaming casinos like Roxy Palace tend to have a huge focus on big budget slots. Roulette and blackjack are also well served, but there is a distinct lack of casino poker games at Roxy Palace casino that you simply wouldn’t find with a Playtech powered-casino. Another thing that is common with Microgaming casinos is that they tend not to have a diverse range of software providers. Roxy Palace, for example, offers exclusively Microgaming games. There are casinos out there these days, such as LeoVegas, which offer games from multiple software developers both big and small.

All of Roxy Palace’s casino products are available directly through your browser. The option to download casino software into your laptop or PC is becoming harder and harder to find. There are still some old-school operators out there who offer this option, such as bwin casino, but they are becoming few and far between. To be honest, it’s not something I would suggest is worth losing sleep over. HTML5 technology, paired with Flash, is so good these days that your browser is capable of things you wouldn’t have dreamed of 10 years ago when online casinos started flooding the UK market. My main issue with the functionality at Roxy Palace though is the lack of demo or practice play. Nobody is suggesting that people want to log onto an online casino website and just spin slots for the hell of it, with no chance to win real money, but practice play options allow players the opportunity to see how a game looks in action before committing to real money bets. It’s a baffling omission for Roxy Palace, given that Betway, another Microgaming casino, has demo play available. Microgaming has been in the casino business since 1994 and has picked up several awards over the years. The EGR Awards are the crème de la crème of this industry and Microgaming picked up RNG Casino Supplier of the Year awards in both 2010 and 2012. Ok, we’re in 2017 now, but the software developer has continued its winning streak, picking up the Product of the Year Award at the 2015 Global Gaming Awards for its Terminator 2 slot game. The company now has more than 800 titles in its portfolio and continues to deliver first-class online casino products to this day.

More on the Company Behind the Casino

Roxy Palace was born in 2002 and currently has more than 230,000 players across six different countries. Based in London and licensed in the UK and Gibraltar, the company reported net revenues of £10.1 million with a gross profit of £3.4m for 2014. That kind of woke up the industry to what it was doing and Roxy Palace was swiftly purchased by 32Red for £8.4 million in July 2015. Today, 32Red owns the Roxy Palace database of players, all of its intellectual property, and all of its assets. Roxy Palace does not have its own live casino, rather, players are redirected to the Evolution Gaming run live dealer suite at 32Red. For more information about the 32Red group, check out my main 32Red review.

Customer Support

Currently, Roxy Palace caters the UK, German, Italian, Swedish, and Canadian markets, and thus offers extensive customers support in several languages. When I’m looking at how good the customer support is at an online casino, I always seek out the live chat option first. Who doesn’t love a live chat these days? Customer support without having to hold, without having to talk awkwardly on the phone, without having to read out codes in the phonetic alphabet, with the ability to send and receive links – it’s just the quickest, most flexible option one could wish for, and at Roxy Palace it works great, as it is available 24/7. Other options include a 0800-phone line for free support, an email address, a contact form and a pretty good FAQ page. I found all the agents I dealt with during my time at Roxy Palace casino to be professional, efficient and polite.

Licensing and Other Credentials

Look, let’s not beat around the bush here, the UK licensing and regulation surrounding the gambling industry is watertight. With the UK Gambling Commission, The Competition & Markets Authority and the Malta and Gibraltar-based licensing authorities to contend with, a dodgy operator simply isn’t going to last five minutes in this industry. Plus, there is absolutely no reason for an online casino to cheat you. Online gambling operators are grossing a total £13.8 billion a year. The CEO of Bet365 gets paid £217m a year thanks to profits from this industry. Online casinos make plenty, legitimately, and are not about to risk the mountains of cash available to pinch a couple of extra quid from customers or earn a buck or two selling your data to a third party. Roxy Palace has everything in place regarding licensing, data protection and encryption because, frankly, if you were making this much profit, so would you.

Additional Bonus Points

Roxy Palace casino was a really solid performer in a lot of areas. Its Microgaming games provide a strong platform for covering all of the expected areas well. The welcome bonus offer is certainly not the worst I’ve seen in this market, but it’s not the best either. However, there were still some areas that Roxy Palace performed well in that I think it deserves a couple of extra bonus points for. The Microgaming awards, for example, are worth a couple of additional points. I can’t award anything for special games, as Roxy lacks in this area, but I can give an extra point for the presence of a loyalty scheme.

• Awards.2/3
• Promotions.1/3
• Special Games.0/2
• Loyalty Scheme.1/1
• Extras.1/1
• Bonus­­ Points.5

In terms of extras, I could not award another point in this case. The Microgaming games are excellent, but the lack of a second software developer restricts the game library. Some additional titles from the smaller developers making moves on the scene, such as Play N’ Go or Felt Gaming. If you are interested in learning more about casino games available in the UK casino market, check our my casino poker hub for a look into one of the quickest developing sectors of gambling games.

Roxy Palace Casino Review Summary

Roxy Palace is a really solid online casino product that should be seriously considered by fans of Microgaming games. There’s loads of great slots here, a nice selection of blackjack tables and more than enough to satisfy roulette players. The lack of some of the more interesting casino poker and baccarat titles is a shame, and has to go down as a mark against this operator. Roxy Palace does the basics very well, but rarely goes beyond that.

I struggled with how to rank the live casino for this review. That’s not to say that Roxy Palace’s live casino isn’t good. In fact, it’s excellent. However, it not really Roxy’s live casino, it’s 32Red’s. If you are signing up with a strong intention to play the live games, I don’t really know what you are getting here that you can’t get with a 32Red account. It’s also my biggest concern with this operator on the whole. The fact that it is a subsidiary of 32Red leads me to believe that bosses have kept this brand separate in an attempt to capitalize on the reputation and goodwill that the Roxy Palace brand had previously built. If that begins to fall, I would not be surprised to see Roxy Palace’s customer base merged over to 32Red completely. Who knows what the future will hold for this operator, but for now, it’s a solid choice for someone who wants a basic, well-run online casino with no additional extras.

Frequently Asked Questions

If there is something you feel that was left unanswered in this Roxy Palace casino review, please let me know. I try to update the information on this on a regular basis, but this industry moves so fast it can be a big task. If you have any questions relating to this or any other topic on the website, you can contact me at contact@online-casinos.com.

How do I download the Roxy Palace casino software?

You can't. modern day online casinos are moving away from this practice and sticking to browser-based services. Trust me, you should be too.