Will All the Different Game Engines Push Slots in a New Direction?

The online slot market has always been evolving ever since the classic games were digitalised. For many years, the alterations to the traditional format were almost imperceptible, and the mechanisms of new slots still matched up with the ones that came in the early days.

That’s not the case anymore, and the emergence of varying game engines has blown the slots market wide open. With all the diverse inventions that have been introduced to the games in recent years, it appears that these titles could be branching off in a multitude of different directions.

Megaways Leads the Way in the List of New Engines

Of all the new engines to have emerged in the slots market in recent years, the Megaways offering from Big Time Gaming is the most successful. This innovation allows for more than 100,000 win lines, and it achieves this by allowing the reels to morph and shift in size. The Australian developer’s 2015 creation was so popular that it opted to franchise it to other studios, and now there are countless titles that use Megaways as their main draw.

There are loads of Megaways titles among lists of top online jackpot games, and these include titles like Diamond Mine Megaways, Piggy Riches Megaways, and Dia Del Mariachi Megaways. Among these titles, there are various other high-paying games that use new mechanics as well. These include Jackpot King, Daily Drop, Power Reels, and Cluster Buster.

It’s clear that as the online casino industry has expanded, the ballooning player base wants diversity in their titles. The sector itself is projected to be worth more than $565 billion in the future, so this suggests that even more options will emerge to appease the ever-growing audience for these games.

Developers Could be Preparing for VR Adaptations

With slot games branching out in different directions, it feels like the perfect time for developers to come up with brand-new titles for virtual reality. Players are clearly seeking new experiences when they play these titles, so they may be more open to ideas that push the realms of slots in ways never seen before.

There is a lot of uncertainty about how slots could adapt to VR, but it is expected that they will at some point. Some developers, including industry leader NetEnt, have already experimented with ideas. For example, players could enter a fantasy world and be faced with giant reels within it.

An alternative could be to develop titles that are more compatible with the Metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg expects his VR world to be mainstream by 2030, and people will be looking for activities to do within it. One option for slot developers could be to make retro-style machines that people can play. Of course, the scope of what’s possible there could lead to more fantastic innovations as well.

It’s clear that the slots industry is beginning to spike off in different directions, and nobody is fully clear on what the future looks like. These new engines could be preparing players for greater twists on the current format when the titles enter VR.