A Standard Layout to Follow
In terms of layout, although hectic the website does adopt a pretty standard format. At the top ofthe page you’ll see the brand logo and a background image of a crudely rendered cartoon landscape. Just below those, there are several click through options in a row of menu links – Register, Promotions, Games, Winners, Affiliates, Our Blog (which, thanks to the decision to use a particular font, actually looks like it says Our Bloc – something that would mean a very different area of a site altogether), and, finally, Contact Us.
The next level ofthe page has one box claiming that if you sign up for an account you will ‘Get the best Welcome bonus’ – play with £25 in exchange for a £10 deposit. Alongside this, there’s a small table of ‘Winners’, showing user names of people who have won recently, but offering no information about when they won, or, more importantly, how much they managed to walk away with. And, added to this row, is a third box out, advertising a Jackpot amount, although againthere’s not much clarification as to what the jackpot is for.
The bottom ofthe page is dominated by a Latest Games box, which when we tested the site only showed two games in play, one opening at 11.18am, the other at 20.30pm, suggesting there’s not actually that much gaming going on behind the scenes here. Next to this is a Top Games box, which again only has a limited offering- just one game is displayed, which doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence that there’s going to be loads to keep you occupied once you sign up.
Let’s Have a Closer Look
If you click on the Games option on the menu row things begin to get a bit easier to understand. The first games shown to you are, understandably, the bingo games, which come in three forms – 90-Ball, 75-Ball, and High 5. We’ve seen all ofthese many, many times before, but we’ve also seen many more options on other sites, many, many times before.
It’s strange to thing that someone would build a bingo website and only focus on three types of bingo, albeit three ofthe most popular types, and you can’t help but feel that this is missing a trick or two. Or indeed three. Online bingo is a particularly competitive business amongst the websites offering this form of digital gambling, and as such only the strong, or plentiful, will prove to be real success stories. Loquax doesn’t feel like one of those. At all.
Coverall and Progressive Jackpots, Too
The next option inthe Games area is for Coverall Jackpots. This brings up a table that shows you every day ofthe week, and what jackpots are on offer at what time ofthe day. To be honest, there’s a lot ofinformation, but to the uninitiated, the use of symbols is a bit perplexing. Yes, there is a key to what these mean at the bottom ofthe page, but really the developers should be looking to make this as quick and easy to understand as possible, which does not mean cross referencing.
The website also includes a host of Progressive Jackpots for you to dive inand play, although these are only available at particular times of day, andthe times vary depending on what day ofthe week it is. There needs to be a more concise format for these, in our opinion, because at the moment it’s far easier to forget or get confused as to what is available and when, than it is to remember what’s available and when.
Featured Games Should be Slots
The fourth option inthe games area brings up what the website refers to as ‘Featured Games’, but these are in fact slots, from what we can see. Again, the criticism here centres on why these are not clearly labelled as slots, as for some people this won’t be that obvious when they first take a look. Could do better, in other words, although there are a decent number to go at – far less than many sites, but we’ve come across some that only have five or six to choose from. Loquax is much better.
A Helpful Hand
If there’s one thing that Loquax does do quite well, it’s offering simple guides on how to play all its games, andtheins and outs of using the site itself. Click on How To Play inthe Games area and you’ll immediately see there are various walkthroughs guides for this. Granted, they could be done better – perhaps with simple animations which wouldn’t be that difficult to create cheaply – but at least they are here.
Sadly, Loquax isn’t as forthcoming when it comes to letting you get in touch. There is a free phone number for UK residents, which is in operation between 9am and 1am, but it would be nice to have options like online or Skype chat to supplement this, and something other than a simple hello@ email address.
Deals, Deals, Deals
Another area in which Loquax comes up trumps is inthe deals on offer, or rather Promotions as the site phrases it. These range from the Weekender, whereby you have the chance to claim more than £700 in real cash prizes on Saturdays and Sundays, to ther Late Night Show, which lets 50 lucky people play for £100 real money after a certain time of night.
Overall there are 11 different promotions ongoing at Loquax, and this doesn’t include the Welcome offer we mentioned inthe opening of this review - which means you deposit £10 and get to play with £25. That’s not actually the best welcome deal ever, as the homepage puts it, but it’s not bad, andthe overall number of promotions is relatively high up against many other bingo websites.
