GameCrafters

In 2021, Hacksaw Gaming released a Western slot that did something unusual with its bonus round: it built three of them, gave each its own scatter symbol, and in markets where feature purchase is allowed, put a different price on each. Wanted Dead or a Wild is a 5x5 grid with 15 fixed paylines, a published RTP of 96.38% and a 12,500x ceiling. Its real design idea sits in the gap between those three bonus rounds, and in what the price list says about them. One Symbol Doing Two Jobs Most of the game's character comes from a single symbol. The VS symbol carries a multiplier between 2x and 100x, and when it forms part of a winning line it expands to cover its whole reel as a Wild. The published rules add one extreme case: if VS reels cover the entire 5x5 grid, the whole grid is treated as Wild. That makes the VS symbol the game's volatility dial. A reel that turns Wild at 2x is a modest event. A reel that turns Wild at 100x on a grid where other reels have done the same is the ...

In 1997 Nokia shipped the 6110 with a game called Snake preloaded, and a generation learned one rule by heart: the snake grows each time it eats, and the game ends the moment it runs into its own body. Relax Gaming's Snake Arena takes that rule and builds a slot's free spins round around it. The result is a bonus that ends not when a counter runs out, but when its own success boxes it in. That is an unusual thing for a slot designer to choose, and it is worth looking at why it works and what it costs. Borrowing a rule, not a theme Plenty of slots borrow imagery from older games. Pixel art, chiptune sound and arcade cabinets are a well worn visual shorthand. Snake Arena does something different. It wraps the snake in a medieval setting, with a knight as its quarry, so the look is not the phone game at all. What it borrows is the rule set. On the base game the grid is a 5x5 layout with 30 fixed paylines, and both the Snake and the Knight act as Wild symbols. The snake sits a...

Somewhere in Microgaming's design of Mega Moolah, a number was settled on: 88.12%. It is the figure the game publishes as its return to player, and it sits far outside the band where most modern video slots live. Across the catalogue of slots I track, published RTPs cluster between roughly 94% and 97%. Mega Moolah is not a rounding error below that range. It is a deliberate design, and the reason is visible the moment the game's structure is laid out: this is a slot built to carry a jackpot, and almost everything else in it is scaffolding. A base game that was never meant to be the point Look at what Mega Moolah offers when the jackpot is set aside. A 5x3 grid, 25 paylines, African wildlife and playing card symbols. Three or more monkey Scatter symbols trigger 15 free spins, with every win in that round multiplied. The volatility is rated Medium. That is a conventional, almost plain, slot of its kind. Its published specification lists no cascading reels, no expanding grid a...