Slotsjudge x Lucksome Exclusive Interview

Hello Bryan! Can you please tell us a bit more about yourself and your duties in Lucksome?

Well, I run the studio, which means I do lots of bits and pieces, including taking the rubbish out! I just give these guys an environment to keep going in, and I'm a game designer myself - Voodoo Temple was my game, for example.

I’ve been in the gambling industry all of my professional life which is around 16 years now. I started out as a game artist, then gaming designer, studio lead, product management and then C-Level management. With Lucksome I’ve gone back to my roots (and possibly having a mid-life crisis). Always been in the Casino games and systems side of the industry, and have worked in land-based from Vegas, to online here in Malta. I’ve had the privilege to work at companies like OpenBet, Inspired, IGT and NetEnt where I looked after the Games Development and Product strategy there.

Lucksome was born when Matt Cole of Blueprint asked if I’d start up a studio distributing onto their technology and build games, and I said ‘yes’. Lucksome was born from there in September of 2020.

What are Lucksome's plans for 2022? Any new partnerships or markets?

I'd say that North America and Italy would be a focus for us in terms of specific kinds of games - not that we're shirking the rest of the world of course, but there are some focus markets for us alongside our normal European stomping ground.

Slotsjudge gave Voodoo Temple a whopping score of 8.9. What was the inspiration behind the game and its main character?

I really like dark, high-contrast games, and I think a lot of male players do as well. So I love Voodoo Temple because you can mix the darkness, but you can have quite a lot of powerful colour in that kind of game as well, so you really play around with that and make it quite high impact. It just gives me a better playground when it comes to art direction - that's one. Then it’s because it's magical, you can also do some quite interesting stuff in the game itself; it's less rigid, so you can have some very cool effects, like the reels going on fire and things like that, and it just kind of works with the narrative of the game.

When it comes to choosing a character, especially one like the Priestess Wild, you put her right in the middle of it all, she does everything - she does the wild multipliers, she boosts, she triggers the shadow spins... everything - she's really got to be great to look at and mysterious, so having a priestess lady rocking her power is pretty powerful. And she's got a cheeky look to her face as well on purpose; that was the real thing - to show a bit of girl power, but at the same time have something that is quite interesting to behold. That's the main inspiration.

Bon Bomb Luxpots is a delicious game in the making, with a possibility of an 25,000 win. Can you tell us a bit more about its mechanics?

Well, we're using a well-known mechanic - which is this prize ladder - and we've put it into the Bon Bomb Luxpots Megaways game, but with a twist. The prize ladder has nice prizes in the base game, but when you get into the free games, that prize ladder can be multiplied with is really exciting to see. the candy bombs that trigger the ladder, they lock in free spins until no more bombs have landed. So, you get a bomb in spin one... it spins again… and if you get another bomb, now that's locked.

You spin again for another bomb... and you keep going, so the prize ladder's totting up, and what you're hoping for is that a multiplier will come in and multiply the entire prize ladder. I think the other key thing is the bonus buy. We're in a world of on-demand and instant gratification at the moment, so that's why we provide the bonus buy option, with our new Double Lux feature where you can keep your winnings if they are 60x bet or less and retrigger the bonus for you again!

Lucksome's website has a great affiliate area with access to all promotional materials for all games. How important is game provider collaboration with affiliates, and what do you expect/hope for from collaboration with Slotsjudge?

So, for me it's obvious: the affiliate collaboration between game studios is super important, especially for a small studio like Lucksome which needs to get a voice out there and reach players. So it's very, very important. As to what would expect or hope for with a collaboration? Well, it's the same that I expect with any partner - the relationship should be absolutely meaningful and authentic. So if you think my next game is bad, I'm okay with that - at least they're being real.

Obviously, I can respectfully disagree, or I could hold up my hand and say, 'well actually yeah, we had a bit of a struggle with this one - it is what it is', but the point is its authentic, honest and meaningful, meaning that we give as much good content as we can for affiliates to write about. I'll talk to them as much as they want about our games, and therefore they would represent us in a fair fashion. They get great content out of it and we get great exposure.