The latest episode of Beyond the Reels sees Mykhailo Pushnia, game designer at Tom Horn Gaming, join CasinoBeats’ senior reporter, James Ross, to discuss the company’s latest fruit-themed slot title – Frutopia.
Released towards the close of 2021, Frutopia takes players on a cosmic journey that brings a twist to the classic fruit genre. Including three-reels, which can increase depending on energy cores, is a highly volatile slot and an RTP 96 per cent.
Talking on the fruit-themed slot and how it looks visually, Tom Horn Gaming’s game designer noted that his team attempted to come up with “new interesting twists” within the genre which has continued to saturate the market.
He explained: “We tried to come up with some new interesting twists with the graphics and the features for our free spin games. Even with the fruit-themed games, even though it’s the classical one, it still has interesting graphics which will attract the players.
“Talking about the features within Frutopia, they are quite simple and called Frutopia levels. These are basically different reels laid out for different levels. There are five levels altogether and all of them have different reel sizes, number of symbols and ways to win is different.
Talking about the energy core mechanic and how his team came up with the idea, Pushnia stated that once they had the initial levels implemented within the free spins mode, they “needed something a little extra and addition”.
“These energy core symbols are designed to make the gameplay more random and interesting because previously, without them, you have just two possible scenarios that can happen. You win or you will lose. This makes moving through the levels not as interesting.
“This is why we decided to add energy core symbols, a red and green one. The red doesn’t bring anything bad, both cores help players progress to the higher levels.”
Throughout the interview, Pushnia went on to discuss how Tom Horn continues to put players at the forefront of its mind throughout the development of new titles, delving deeper into how its five level feature and energy core mechanic coexist and gave a brief glimpse into what 2022 has in store for the supplier.
