In the latest edition of Beyond the Reels, SlotBeats reporter, James Ross, was accompanied by Relax Gaming CPO, Simon Hammon, to walk through the iGaming provider’s newest addition to its slots portfolio, Book of 99.
The title, which recently landed SlotBeats’ Slot of the Week, is a high volatility title with an Return to Player of 99 per cent, lauded as the ‘first slot’ to offer such a high RTP value.
Discussing how Relax strayed from the norm, Hammon began: “We’ve been toying with the idea of doing a ‘Book of’ game for quite a while. First thing we differentiated on was the theme convention. I noted that there hasn’t been any kind of Greek mythology type of approach to the ‘Book of’ series and everyone’s a bit bored of seeing the same old Egyptian book and Ra books and Atem books.
“There’s been a couple of iterations – I think there was a viking book that came out recently and there’s been a few changes but nobody had done this theme, but principally you’ve got to look at what people love about the ‘Book of’ games. Typically, it’s a familiar player format, very high volatile games, good variants and good win potential.”
“It’s quite a misnomer really. RTPs actually tell you very little about a game, if I’m being honest,” he continued. “Number one, RTPs are generated or are an average number that is generated over ‘x’ number of simulated rounds. Now, that ‘x’ number of simulated rounds can vary dramatically within suppliers. There’s no uniform standard as to testing standards about the number of rounds.
“We test, as an example, RTP over hundreds of billions of rounds; some games have even done trillions of rounds to do RTP, so if you’re a player doing a trillion rounds then great! But that’s what RTP is benchmark on really, an empirical average over a simulated number of rounds. And those simulated number of rounds, games do generally start to perform in that ballpark quite quickly, but they’re not the thing that defines the game.”
During the title, the players will aim to land book symbols to trigger the game’s feature modes. The symbol itself is a wild, which replaces pay symbol to complete payline wins, and also works as a Scatter.
If the player lands three or more on the grid, it awards 10 free spins. However, before the round commences, one of the pay symbols is randomly chosen to become the special Expanding Symbol.
On each spin, special symbols expand to cover all of the positions on the reel after any regular wins have been paid yet players will aim to get full-screen wins to be awarded the biggest prize. Free spins can be retriggered when three or more book symbols land within the bonus round.
Finally, the title comes with a wild collection symbol. When a wild symbol lands within the base game, the collection meter, which is placed on the side of the crease, increases by one. When filled with 99 collected wilds, 10 free spins are awarded.
“When we set out to build Book of 99 we wanted to create the best “Book of” game out there, one truly made for players,” commented Daniel Jonsson, head of games at Relax Gaming, upon being awarded SlotBeats’ Slot of the Week.
“With 99 per cent RTP we could add a quick collection feature so that players trigger free spins more frequently, making the game flow rapid and responsive. Graphically, the game came together very well with an odyssey theme and a feeling of adventure, mystery and excitement.”
