“When you play an Armadillo game you can see the unique signature”
Armadillo Studios about US gaming market, recent innovative slots, and future releases
We had a please to talk to David Stoveld, COO of Armadillo Studios, about the uniqueness of the studio’s games and the dedicated team behind them. We also discussed recent releases and asked to shed light on the upcoming games. A quick overview of the US market by Armadillo Studios, and how products of this up-and-coming US-based company perceived by players abroad was also touched upon.
Q: Hello David! Thank you for sitting down with us. Could you please introduce our readers to Armadillo Studios and what makes it unique?
The talent and drive of the team to create world class games is truly outstanding. Everyone works passionately together to make all the important components harmonize together - the creative flair and execution of the art direction, the unique mechanical innovations, the math and the gameplay animations and sounds fitting together. When you play an Armadillo game you can see the unique signature. We know gaming entertainment and how to positively stand out – we’re experts on the rules of slot creation and allow us to comfortably think outside the box.
Q: You have worked with NetEnt, Yggdrasil, and other companies, so you know European players well. How do the gaming preferences of US players differ from European ones?
So far the USA market has a lot more variety of games as in addition to big European providers breaking into the market with the games we all know, there seems to be dominance in land based providers like IGT as they continuously push their legacy brand spins offs like Wheel of Fortune as well as their classic top slots (quite happy to see Lobstermania 2 in the lobby as my nostalgic favorite) in the same likes of SG taking their top games inherited form Shuffle Master like 88 Fortunes and 5 Treasures or WMS classics like Raging Rhino.
Aside from everyone leading their USA portfolio launches with their all time performers in the rest of the world, new games with cash collection games seem to be very popular and working well at the moment with games like Gold Blitz taking top positions, and naturally some simple lines games have done well to address a lot of the new players entering the igaming USA space. There is a huge breath of game going from even 1 line stepper replicas to the more complex bonanza cascading megaway multipliers. These new types of simple games like 10x minimum are great ideas as well, literally just paying the player the number they see the slot create in terms of times their bet win.
Lots of big animal type games as expected, but also seems more sports brand slots coming out, which tend not to be the best performers, so will be interesting to see if this trend holds in the USA.
The list goes on, and I even left out all the progressive jackpot games rolling out.
Q: How are games of Armadillo Studios accepted beyond the US?
While our goal is to create a blockbuster hit in the USA, we understand slots can work in various markets as ours of course do. Much as Lightning link because a hit first in Australia and then the rest of the world, we aim to have a hit in the USA and would not be surprised to see the same game work wonders elsewhere.
Q: If you could choose one game from your portfolio that describes Armadillo Studios the best, what would it be?
The next one that will be even better ; ). Aladdin’s Rollover Respins is a great choice to show the kind of unique innovation we are going for in different slots - the team is always pushing to create the best experience possible, and the way we can not only create innovative content but also keep the user experience as clean as possible really says a lot.
Q: Fairy Fantasy Exotic Wilds slot captivates players with magical settings and non-trivial features despite a common gameplay with five reels and three rows. Does your latest release Aladdin’s Rollover Respins follow the same pattern and have unique features implemented?
Aside from having great visuals and telling a nice story within our mechanic, Aladdin’s Rollover Respins unique mechanic is different in the sense that it is going into quite unknown territory albeit on an equally magical setting. It’s common knowledge that link, hold and respin and all these game mechanics as well as regular respin games work, but to combine this with limitless leftward cascading on a non traditional ‘all scatters pay game’ where symbols can pay anywhere on top of different multiplier adding and multiplying logic on different symbol types with an expanding genie multiplier, well, it’s a lot to take in. Thanks to a determined team working around the clock to ensure all this complex gameplay is as intuitive as possible for the player, the calculated risk paid off and we expect the next rollover respins release to capitalize off this success even further.
Q: What is in the pipeline for the second half of 2023 for Armadillo Studios? Is there any new mechanic in plan or Rollover Respins will play the leading role this year?
Proud to say we have a lot of games on their way this second half of the year, a combination of simple releases and new mechanics as well.
It is also worth mentioning in addition to expanding our mechanical breadth that also within each mechanic we are still carefully refining and innovating based on data. When you compare the Exotic Wilds mechanicreleases of Fairy Fantasy with random fairy appearances to our release on Aug 15, Tiki Time Exotic Wilds, you will notice important nuisances such as the Exotic Wilds in Tiki Time also can be cash collectors for the coin awards and prizepots, a similar type of mechanic that as mentioned earlier works in US but of course with our Armadillo twist on it.
