Exclusive Q&A: Blueprint Gaming insights about most wanted Slot Features

Innovative gaming software Blueprint Gaming debuted in the UK over a decade ago and has intrigued many online gaming enthusiasts over the past years. If you also want to find out all about this software house and what entertainment they offer, keep reading our today’s interview with Jo Purvis, Director of Key Accounts & Marketing.

Blueprint Gaming is also known for the introduction of the fun Slots Megaways, licensed directly from the giant Big Time Gaming. Thanks to this remarkable success, the Blueprint Gaming company was partly acquired by the German group Gaussman. Now Blueprint Gaming has headquarters all over Europe and thousands of employees. 

How would you introduce Blueprint Gaming to those who do not yet know you? What are the highlights of Blueprint Gaming’s story?

Blueprint Gaming is a leading UK-based game studio and part of Germany’s Gauselmann Group. We create an exciting and diverse range of slot games for the global online and mobile markets, with our content performing particularly well across the UK and Europe, including Italy.

Using our strong land-based heritage as a launchpad, we have managed to bridge the gap between retail and the digital environment, recreating the successes seen by many of our standout titles, such as Fishin’ Frenzy and Eye of Horus. These two game franchises remain a core component of our portfolio, as we continue to develop exciting iterations that evolve the user experience.

This reflects what drives us as a business – creating unmatched iconic titles that stand the test of time.

As well as our original titles, which have become established firm favourites, we have developed successful slots based on a broad range of third-party brands, offering players familiarity and operators unique marketing opportunities.

What is Blueprint Gaming’s vision of the game? What do you want to convey to the player with your games?

With everything we produce, we try to create unique gaming experiences with every spin. Our experience in game creation is well established and spans decades, with our slots displayed prominently across the industry’s leading online casinos. We’ve seen slots and their features and mechanics evolve and have devised many of the more popular ones ourselves, so we’re confident we possess the insight required to maintain our successful slots development pedigree.

We’re proud of our flexibility in adapting to current gaming trends – not always sticking to the safe, tried and tested formats but evolving what we develop to suit the player-favourite styles and themes. 

You have launched various Megaways and Jackpot titles. For example, the latest Lucky Nuggets, but also the branded slot Rick and Morty are among our favourite Megaways slots. The Goonies Return is also very popular for the Jackpot prize. What special feature or mechanic in a slot you think is the most appealing to a modern player?

There’s a real mix of what’s popular and it’s our job to stay ahead of that curve. Some of the best performing slots of all time are also some of the oldest – look at the current casino lobbies and this reflects that – but as well as recognising that some players prefer the familiar titles, we have to work with new mechanics and features too.

Megaways™ took the gaming world by storm and we were the first to obtain a licence from Big Time Gaming, using it to great success across many of our releases. It works because of its complex maths model and the revolutionary gameplay it allows and we continue to weave it into our titles. Having been working with Megaways for as long as we have, we’ve become very familiar with what it offers us and so we’ve been able to successfully leverage it in ways that haven’t been seen in other games, taking them in all-new directions.

Jackpots have always and will continue to draw the attention of a wide audience because of the basic nature of the big win allure. Our Jackpot King series feeds into that by adding the classic functionality onto already proven games and breathing new life into them – something that we’re renowned for at Blueprint. Its popularity has seen it establish itself as the original and best progressive jackpot system available online.

How do you collect feedback from your fans and ensure you are delivering the best content to them?

Apart from the obvious feedback we receive from our operator partners and any beta testing we engage in, the streaming and affiliate sectors are as buoyant as they’ve ever been and are a great place for us to learn what’s proving popular. There, we see it all, good bad or indifferent and that’s hugely valuable for a developer like ourselves that is focused on the player and their experience. Reviews, awards programmes and comments sections provide precious insight into where we can improve and we appreciate it all as it enables us to evolve what we create.

The Fishin’ Frenzy series has been a success and it is still very popular among players. This slot is also in the top 10 most played games on all our platforms. What do you attribute the secret of this success to?

We’re told by players that Fishin’ Frenzy is generally considered the original and best online fishing-themed slot that’s ever been created – something we’re always humbled to hear.

From the game’s beginnings as a land-based machine title, introduced by Reel Time Gaming, its simplicity and colourful, cheerful design instantly hooked players. It was that model that differentiated it from a string other similarly themed and developed titles at the time and so presented a breath of fresh air to players.

Blueprint took the hugely successful original and evolved it for the mobile and online markets, making sure to retain the charm of the original but supplementing that with new features and mechanics to please existing players and delight new ones too.

Besides Jackpots and Megaways slots, we can also find on your website two categories: “Pub fruit series” and “Deal or No Deal”. What are these two series?

The Pub Fruit Series is one we’ve developed using our land-based expertise, bringing the fruit machine style game to the online environment. These being very much UK centric games, many players from other countries may not have experienced them before. So familiar AWP features such as bonus trails, cash ladders and hi/lo gamble features all form part of the gameplay, emphasising our ethos of creating engaging, feature lead games that players become immersed in.

These feature sets create a depth of gameplay so that players can experience much more than the basic play a classic slot offers. A perfect example is Genie Jackpots: Cave of Wonders, which includes 16 different features, a significant upgrade on the original slot release.

We’ve just launched the 12th game in our now iconic branded series, Deal or No Deal: Banker’s Bonanza, and our long-term partnership with licence holder Banijay Brands keeps on delivering. It’s such a popular format, based on the classic TV show and its now-famous red box game and the Banker’s offer but equally, it’s extremely flexible and allows us to be creative with new iterations while retaining the classic pull of the original.

Can you reveal any previews on your upcoming releases?

We’ve always got one eye on current trends at the same time as working on our own innovations that we can build into future releases. With a development team as experienced as ours, we’ve consistently got ideas both on the drawing board and in production.

We’ve got plans for a number of releases that we’re excited about for the rest of year and our next new game is going to be the follow up to another of our much-loved titles, Gold Strike Bonanza: Fortune Play.

Again, we’ve kept what made the original such fun to play and enhanced it by adding the Fortune Play mechanic to increase the chance of levelling up and activating multipliers. Watch this space for more as we approach launch.