Yggdrasil has kicked off its March Roadshow video session by announcing the release of six new slots this month, with a further 14 titles scheduled for April and May. 

Focusing solely on March, Yggdrasil has announced the launch of its own title E-Force, scheduled for 28 March, as well as releases from YG Masters partners 4ThePlayer, Peter & Sons, Reflex Gaming and ReelPlay. 

Joining on the latest episode of the Roadshow, hosted by Alexander Lapinniemi, Key Account Manager at Yggdrasil, was Henry McLean, Co-founder, Commercial & Marketing Director at 4ThePlayer, Yann Bautista, Global Business Development Manager and Co-Founder at Peter and Sons, and Yggdrasil’s very own Sebastian Belton.

And it was Belton who Lapinniemi turned to first as he showcased the aforementioned Yggdrasil title, E-Force, an original title from the studio. 

The slot title is an action/Easter-themed game that includes rabbits dressed up as famous action film stars, such as Kill Bill, RoboCop and Rambo.

A 5×3 reel slot, the game includes a free spins and wild symbol which are used to trigger the free spins mode. 

Speaking about how the game came to be, Belton noted that the team behind the game wanted to make something “wholly original” from anything that’s out there on the market. 

“Classic action heroes are something everyone enjoys and there’s a lot of memorable characters. It’s something everyone associates with and people are going to play the game and go ‘oh that’s you know’ they’re gonna know at least one of them, maybe most will know a handful and that familiarity is a really great way to introduce someone to a slot game.”

Turning the attention to the games’ mechanics, Belton explained that within E-Force, the mechanics are “very simple and accessible”.

“The main aim of the game is to get the players into the free spins round as quickly as possible. We’ve made a scaling free spins round. Players can get three free spins symbols and it would be three free spins with a multiplier of x3.

“The reason we’ve done this is to make the free spins more accessible, you can get in there with a base of three icons but you can also get in with four, five, six, seven and all the way up to 10. 

“This gives the customer a much better access ramp to the free spins. We don’t want them sitting in the base game for long periods of time therefore we’ve been able to reduce the amount of spins required to hit the feature.”

Further on in the video McClean joined Lapinniemi to showcase 4ThePlayers’ latest slot 3 Lucky Leprechauns, scheduled to be released on 7 March.  

Marking his debut on the Roadshow, McClean provided an in-depth view of the Irish-themed slot title, a 5×3 reel slot that provides a maximum win of x5,000 and an RTP of 96%. 

Delving more into the mechanics of the game, McClean pinpointed that, at the beginning of the title’s development, the first thing the company started with was the mechanic, stating that 4ThePlayer wanted a “very active and frequent game”.    

“The concept that we had internally was ‘let’s create something very active and frequent’ and that’s where the Trails came from. From then it’s ‘what’s the classic theme that fits well with Trails?’ Leprechauns. It then all merged together really nicely.”

Further on in the conversation, the topic turned to the feature hit frequency in titles and how it was combated in 3 Lucky Leprechauns. On this point, McLean revealed that, through discussions with players, the biggest frustration, especially in the UK market where players can’t buy bonus rounds, was feature hit frequency. 

“We really listened to player feedback and made the feature frequency much lower, currently one in 75, which you could argue is 4x less than a lot of slots released at the moment. Through that, a lot of players will get on that feature and will get something fun and entertaining for their money.”

The final guest to join Lapinniemi was Peter & Sons’ Bautista who discussed the studio’s upcoming title, Book of Books, set to be released on 16 March. 

Inspired by the Monty Python film, The Holy Grail, the 5×3 slot with five high-paying symbols and five low-paying symbols.  

Explaining what players should aim for in the game, Bautista stated: “The whole game is about collecting power apps in the base game to trigger a really good free spins experience. In the game, you have three types of collections; on the top left  you have a free spins collection, on the right you have a multiplier collector and in the base game you have a simple collector.

“When you get a scatter you either get two scatters or you collect one/two free spins or the multiplier. The idea here is that the scatter is the book with the Holy Grail.”

Talking about the mathematics of the title, Bautista stated it is a very highly volatile game, and, due to this, the Co-Founder noted that the whole experience revolves around the free spins mode. 

He concluded: “I feel like this is going to be very appealing to hardcore players that want to go straight to the free spins, which you can do through the Buy Bonus.  

“During the base game, the idea was to have stuff happen there, such as the collections, and for normal players, you don’t want to enter too quickly because you want to be collecting during the base game to build a huge potential.

“The base game is nicely balanced because you’re still getting wins all the time… but like I said, the whole experience is on the free spins.”