POKERSTARS CASINO UNVEILS ELECTRIFYING ‘OLYMPUS STORM CONNECTIFY PAYS POWER COMBO™’ AS ITS LATEST SLOTLIST GAME TO STRIKE

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Behind The Slotlist: Bringing Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo to Life

It might be early morning in Reno but John Duffy, the CEO of Gold Coin Studios – the folk behind this month’s The Slotlist release, Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo – is already fizzing with energy and ready to unpack the creative journey in bringing this much-anticipated Ancient Greece-themed game to PokerStars Casino players’ screens.

Gold Coin Studios are a small enough entity in the iGaming industry, but have a big reach, thanks in part to their relationship with Games Global. And Duffy, with his 25- person team, are looking to shake things up further with the release of Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo.

Player First

Speaking with gusto and genuine fondness for the project, Duffy has clearly been involved in every aspect of the game’s production. From animation and theme choice, to sound design and promotion. But he also has a keen understanding of what players want to play now and, perhaps more importantly, what they want to play tomorrow.

“If we think there’s something we’ve got to do to the game that’ll improve the player experience, regardless of how hard it is, then we will do it,” he offers over a video call a couple of weeks out from the launch of Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo on

The Slotlist.

“Because you don’t want to release something that players don’t enjoy or understand right away.”

Gold Coin’s CEO continues: “Our tagline is ‘We make players’ favourite go-to games’.” “I’ve given many presentations over the years, and I’m always asked: ‘Who is your typical slot player?’ My answer is that players will try the shiny new toy, new games will come out, and they will try them but ultimately, they will go back to their favourite go-to game.

“We want a portfolio of players’ favourites, so they come for more than just the latest release. We aim to build a loyal player base that loves playing our games long beyond launch day”

Genesis of Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo So, what was the genesis of Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo? Ancient Greek themes are legendarily popular with slots players, but there’s a lot more going on under the hood with Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo, according to Duffy.

“Slot games are interesting in terms of how they come together,” states the studio CEO.

“We hold so-called ‘Blue Sky’ sessions, where we have the creative group come in and we brainstorm different ideas. For this one I extended it to the broader group for our Connectify PaysTM feature.

“Something we wanted to explore was creating a nice simple feature for the players where the game has just three straight lines. You must connect a specific symbol and all the different prize reels but we wanted to include lots of permutations to advance the simplicity a little.”

Gaming Trends

Gold Coin Studios are good at spotting trends and gauging what is working well – there’s years of experience within the business.
“We’re still early in the feature’s development but workshopping it with the wider team was energising – everyone got involved and we left with a long list of ideas. One clear theme was the surge in the Power Combo mechanic.

You see it everywhere, even on the floors of the brick-and-mortar casinos here in Reno. We regularly tour the land-based market to keep our finger on the pulse, and each visit we spot more Power Combo titles.”

He continues: “Our thinking was simple: pair the popular and much-loved Power Combo feature with Connectify Pays, a hit in our first titles, and bring them together.

We then developed three Connectify Pays variants that stack and combine into a single, unified feature.”

The Mechanic

This process of idea refinement continued, according to Duffy, leading to a more concrete mechanic for Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo.

“The first variation of Connectify PaysTM was the Connectify PaysTM Free Spins combination. As you’re playing, you’re landing a special symbol on the prize reel that gives you more spins throughout the feature. Then the next one was the X-LARGE Free Spins feature, which is where you have your normal grid for the Link&WinTM and you have rows that you can open up from there. Combined those two could work nicely together.”

He adds: “The third one is like a dual array, but we wanted to have a different take on it. Rather than having two separate grids we wanted to have both coming in from either side onto the one prize reel. And then again, you can put Free Spins and add extra rows on there and it would combine into one beautiful set of three features.

“You know, we go through lots of different discussions to get there, but I think we landed in a great spot here because the game combines the variations so well together.”

Characters

The Greek theme became an important part of the underlying mechanic of the game, as well as being an obvious crowd favourite.

“Obviously Zeus is big, but the key thing with the theme is, how does it tie into the game design?” explains Duffy. “With the Power ComboTM, we had to have three characters. We went with Zeus, who may trigger the X-LARGE Free Spins feature, Artemis who may trigger the X-ARRAY Free Spins feature and Hades who may trigger the X-SPINS Free

Spins feature. Behind the scenes work

Empowering his team to be creative and opening up the floor to all thoughts and ideas has borne fruit for Gold Coin Studios. There’s a strong team of important people working hard behind the scenes according to Duffy.

“I’m the key producer of the games, but I’ve got a truly great guy helping me out, Matthew Parker, who’s just amazing. His knowledge is growing rapidly and he’s always got great ideas. He’s just a phenomenal support to me.”

“We’ve got two mathematicians, and I want them to feel empowered to pitch ideas, not just run the numbers. And they come up with great ideas as well. For example, the mathematician who did Olympus Storm had a lot of input into the game there.”

The studio CEO is keen to applaud the work of the team and support functions in getting Olympus Storm Connectify Pays Power Combo to market. “It’s not just me, there is great team effort here. We do a lot of that initial design work and the math behind it. When moving on to the art process, we’ve got a small team of artists who do a phenomenal job. The artists that worked on Olympus Storm Connectify

Pays Power Combo have done a tremendous job – the artwork is just beautiful. I just love it and the reaction to it from everybody has been amazing.” Duffy continues: “There’s technical art involved in creating a game as well, including the animation that comes into it once you’ve got the game in reasonable shape.

“We extend the game review to external groups for their individual reviews to get those fresh eyes on it to avoid making assumptions because we are so close to the game. This way we avoid somebody else playing the game and their eyes glaze over and go, ‘what on earth did you just do there?’ It’s a sense check to see if there’s any improvements needed before the game is ready to launch.”

“Then the last part of that puzzle through that development process is our sound engineer. I’ve worked with him for a long time because I worked with IGT for 25 years before coming over into this space. Our sound engineer is fantastic and creates great music and sounds for our games.”

Quality Assurance

Gold Coin Studios approach to quality assurance is equally robust and intense, according to Duffy.

“Once the game’s built, our internal Quality Assurance team goes beyond the rulebook. They try to break it, flip orientations, mash inputs, run wild edge cases, anything to surface issues. When everything checks out, we give it the green light.”

“Then there’s an external process with Games Global where we go through their testing department for the full approval which includes a lot of moving parts. We’ve got a couple of technical project managers that that keep us on board there.”

Getting the game noticed in an incredibly crowded and creative industry is where having a ‘cheerleader’, or someone willing to go to bat for you to get the game noticed, becomes a vital component.

Duffy nods in agreement: “The last piece of our puzzle is Elio Zirilli, Business Development Manager at Games Global, and getting him trained up on the game and understanding the game, so he can go out there and promote and sell it.

For Duffy, getting the support from Games Global was massive: “Their distribution is great. They’ve got the whole testing and approval process covered. To have the support of a big company like Games Global has been phenomenal”, he offers.

Speaking separately to Elio Zirilli, he backed up Duffy’s insistence on giving players what they want as being key to this project, saying: “The players are our main focus, so our aim is to deliver the best, most engaging experience possible for them.”

One last question for Duffy – what are his thoughts on being included in The Slotlist? “We’re honoured to be on The Slotlist”, the Gold Coin Studios CEO says. “You know, it’s fantastic, getting a game to the most visibility we possibly can so more players can enjoy it. This will generate that player exposure that you can only dream of, so hopefully this is the first of many.”

The post POKERSTARS CASINO UNVEILS ELECTRIFYING ‘OLYMPUS STORM CONNECTIFY PAYS POWER COMBO™’ AS ITS LATEST SLOTLIST GAME TO STRIKE appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.