The latest episode of Beyond the Reels sees Jeremy Coleman, Commercial Director at PearFiction Studios, join CasinoBeats’ Business Journalist, Danny Lee, to discuss the studio’s latest volcanic slot title, Treasures of Kilauea.
Treasures of Kilauea is a 5×4 reel slot with an additional horizontal top reel and bonus features including volcano erupt and eruption spin modes. Landing an Idol symbol on the top reel can trigger one of five jackpot prizes with micro, mini, minor, major or mega variants.
“We have seen a few of the island, volcano and tiki-style Hawiian games, there’s a few around that we think are very good, but we wanted to take that volcanic theme to a new level with a great new mechanic,” explained Coleman, commenting on the inspiration behind the game’s theme.
“So far, all of our games have been very character-based and we wanted to do that for Treasures of Kilauea as well so we really made the volcano the star of the game. We wanted to make sure that the volcano was very interactive, particularly when the player is momentarily inactive.”
Focusing on the games’ bonus features, Coleman stated: “The lava spins are really exciting, they give players a quick sense of the win potential within the base game.
“This is our first foray into the persistent type of feature, similar to Scarab which is really popular in some of the land-based games that we’ve been looking at recently.”
When asked how the studio designs slots like Treasures of Kilauea to attract new gamblers, Coleman said: “We try and put ourselves in the place of the player. Most of the guys in the studio are players themselves and we believe that players want to be entertained so when we build our games we want to bring that level of entertainment with each game that we create.
“We want the players to go on a journey, we don’t want them to just sit there and have to do 250, 300 spins to get into a bonus round that may or may not payout as you would want. We are not a one feature studio.”
Check out the above video to hear Coleman discuss difficulties the studio faced when making the title, the importance of character design and future plans for the Canada-based company.
