Bigwinboard meets Big Time Gaming CEO Nik Robinson for an exclusive chat about Royal Mint Megaways.
We spent the whole day playing your new slot Royal Mint Megaways and had a lot of fun doing so. First impression – Lil Devil with a touch of Opal Fruits, and the volatility cranked up to 11. Would you agree?
Royal Mint has the DNA of Bonanza, Opal Fruits, and Lil Devil. The base can be fairly forgiving, the Triple Reaction ads extra wilds to the base game while opening up the potential for crazy retrigger action in the free games, allowing up to 24 extra spins on a single retrigger. Royal Mint does not necessarily have to be a grind, players can hit the feature at any time, and as we’ve seen with Lil Devil, standard features can be just as rewarding as HeartStoppers. HeartStoppers are value-added; if you go the course, then you may get an extraordinary win; however, you also may be left with 10x! It’s all down to luck at the end of the day.
The production quality is excellent, and the game has a nice vibe to it, but what in the world is a ”Royal Mint” and what inspired the theme?
We wanted to do a banking theme, but there are so many bank themed slots in the market that I decided to take a different approach. A Mint is an industrial facility that manufactures coins and notes. I think it will go down well with the team at CasinoDaddy who love to start up the printer when they stream our slots; they’ve had some Lil Devil wins over x20,000 on a live stream, so I’m sure they’ll be booting up the royal printer regularly!
We know you’re usually personally involved in the development of the games, was that the case with Royal Mint as well?
Yes, I don’t think that’s ever going to change, I’ve got a burning passion for slot development, and each game gets my full attention. Royal Mint was conceived as a Triple Reaction back in June 2017; however, we decided to push Opal Fruits first to test out the Triple Reaction. Otherwise, it may have been too complicated for players without Opal Fruits as a stepping stone. Royal Mint had been baking a long time on a slow heat, Triple Reaction, I guess is the icing, and the HeartStopper is the Cherry on top! Excitingly, the minimum density of Royal Mint is 1024 with top and bottom wilds, creating a real beast under the bonnet. There’s a lot of commentary action to read and report in terms of the gameplay because you can see wins queuing up on the top and the bottom with new reactions forming more potential for new symbol matches than ever before, the perfect storm for Twitch commentary.?
In our opinion, the Heartstopper feature is one of your best innovations since Megaways. It adds an extra dimension to the game which is something many developers struggle to do. In Lil’ Devil, the enhanced spins give you either an additional sticky wild or a higher win multiplier depending on which bonus option you choose. Can you tell us what the benefit is in this game?
HeartStopper was born out of my biggest bugbear in slots, is when your heart races for the final scatter and then nothing, HeartStopper gives you something, it might not be much, but it rewards you, and when you hit the top there’s an entirely new game to play.
With Royal Mint, we’ve taken HeartStopper to another dimension altogether, as you know with Lil’ Devil, we added an Extra Symbol for the Angel feature and a higher multi kickoff for the Dynamite Lovers! So, in Royal Mint, which is genuinely a long slog, we’ve taken the multiplier of Bonanza, but instead of going up by one, it goes up by two, so… x2,x4,x6,x8,x10, etc. with every reaction, I’ve had an? x56 multi, but it can go way higher! A word of warning, to put this feature into perspective, you need to think about how frequent the bonus is on Danger and then extrapolate that to Lil Devil. Before you start playing Royal Mint, you might want to do the same equation using Bonanza to get the feel of where the HeartStopper sits with Royal Mint. Not so much an excursion as an expedition! Less of a long haul, more like a flight to Mars.
The volatility is obviously higher than what we had with Lil’ Devil. Royal Mint seems more like an all or nothing slot, which we have to admit suits us as hardcore gamers quite well. What kind of potential are we speaking of?
40,000x plus in a single spin which you could get multiples of in the free spins as the multiplier keeps on increasing by 2 for every win, so if you do get up and over x50, four ways of purples alone will pay x10,000.
Royal Mint is going to be a hit for sure. What else do you have going on at the moment?
Our next game of the year is going to be another colossal brand. After that, we have something brand new; it’s possibly one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. We’re currently going all out with U.S. patents at the moment to give a new concept as much protection as possible. Still, at the same time, I think it’s so insanely complicated, it will keep the copy cats at bay for some time to come, saying that though like all our games, it will be super simple to play. I really cannot wait to share this one with your readers, as it brings so many new things into play!
From our understanding, Megaways will hit One hundred games in the next couple of months! The impact of Megaways has been huge, and it doesn’t even seem to be slowing down. What are your thoughts on that?
I will say that the providers that have taken on the license and built on the strength of the Megaways format have had great success. It has put many new providers on the map and allowed monolithic businesses like SG and, more recently, NetEnt to refresh their product lines; it’s also fascinating to see how our licensees bring their twists to the Megaways format.
Bonanza so happens to be the highest-scoring online slot in the history of Bigwinboard.com with a near-perfect score of 99%. It’s such an iconic slot that marked the beginning of a whole new era in the world of iGaming. Do you think you’ll ever be able to beat that score?
Let’s revisit that in May, nothing’s perfect, but BTG will undoubtedly be taking a rifle shot at a 99% score again for the previously mentioned thang!
Thank you for allowing us to have a chat with you, and we can’t wait to see what’s in store next!
Thanks Bigwinboard, and I look forward to catching up again soon!