The online slots industry is a highly competitive one with hundreds of game suppliers battling for the attention of astute gamblers with sophisticated tastes and a voracious appetite for innovative gameplay. To succeed in this environment requires a lot of hard work and creativity as each year thousands of new slots are released into the market. In this context, game studios are working tirelessly to create titles that stand out from the crowd.
In this article we highlight two of Malta’s leading lights in the online slots industry in 2020.
New studios on the scene
The last five years has seen a new crop of young developers enter the fray and challenge the supremacy of industry top dogs like NetEnt and. The charge was led by Big Time Gaming whose expanding reels Megaways™ engine has been a game changer in the industry, laying down the gauntlet to all their competitors to tear up the rule book and bring new ideas to the table.
Browsing through the lists of new games at popular review sites like The Slot Buzz the influence of BTG on the market is easy to spot. It’s there in the creative approach taken by their Australian counterparts, Reel Play, Swedish innovators like Yggdrasil and Thunderkick, and also in two developers who are based in Malta and licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority – Nolimit City and Relax Gaming.
NoLimit City and the xNudge factor
Nolimit City in particular have been making a mark on the scene thanks to a series of super-high variance slots games released in 2019 and 2020. Their brand of gameplay owes much to the high-powered super volatile engines developed by Big Time Gaming which create a very choppy and unpredictable distribution of payouts. Typically, as a player you will experience long periods with little of no return as the frustration builds, before an intense period of high value win sequences driven by clever tricks and features like multipliers and stacked wild symbols.
Nolimit add to this mix their own xNudge feature, a bespoke piece of gameplay which borrows from traditional offline slots games. When xNudge is in action, a stack of Wilds will nudge up or down until it is occupies all visible positions on a reel. With each nudge a progressive multiplier value increases by 1x. The multiplier is applied to the total win once the feature has played out completely.
This clever feature has been used in slots like Deadwood and Warrior Graveyard, and it is one of the reasons Nolimit City are turning into a cult favourite amongst slots fanatics.
Relax Gaming and level-up gameplay
Another game developer with their licence and offices in Malta who are making waves on the scene is Relax Gaming.
Like Nolimit City they are building a reputation for slots that have unique qualities of graphics, gameplay and narrative. Some of the highlights from their 2020 releases include Hellcatraz, a 28-bit graphic style slot with a backdrop and theme similar to the real-life prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, and TNT Tumble, a game that uses a Cascading Reels engine like that of Big Time Gaming’s famous Bonanza slot, and also allows users to choose the level of variance they play at in the free spins round.
Perhaps Relax Gaming’s best new slot for 2020 is Hero’s Hunt, put out on their Silver Bullet platform and developed in partnership with Fantasma Gaming. It is another slot that shows how clever innovation is driving the slots market forward.
As well as being a Megaways™ game, Hero’s Hunt also uses the same gamification model that social game developers have made so successful – the more you play, the more features you unlock, and the bigger the prizes you can win. New features come in the form of Heroes who each have their own super-powers like Expanding Wild symbols and multipliers. These powers are unlocked by landing special symbols during the base game.
Gamification like this is becoming more common in the world of video slots and we can expect a lot more of it in the months to come. And in a year in which many new Megaways™ slots have been released, and many have disappointed with generic gameplay and a feeling the developer has aimed for the safe ground, Hero’s Hunt is a slot that illustrates why developers must break new ground and take the fight to the big guns if they are to stand out from the crowd.
Nolimit City and Relax Gaming are doing just that and in the future we expect them to become market leaders. You’ll find their games at pretty much all casinos with a Malta Gaming Authority licence in 2021 and beyond.
Disclaimer: Play responsibly. Players must be over 18. For help visit https://www.gamcare.org.uk/.