In the latest episode of Beyond the Reels, SlotBeats is taken back to a crazy cat-filled golden age of the internet as Rogue‘s Chief Commercial Officer, John Parsonage, and Chief Product Officer, Dan Lamond, join Danny Lee to look into the studio’s Interspace title, Mega Laser Kitty Cube.
Mega Laser Kitty Cube utilises an Interspace mechanic, designed by the company itself. With this mechanic, symbols fall in various conjoined shapes to create gaps in a colourful grid. An interspace block will then either collect cash values from these gaps on the grid or fill them to create cluster wins.
When questioned on how the firm came up with the unique theme for this title, Lamond explained: “We probably approach games a little bit differently to a lot of studios, we come up with the mechanic first. There’s always five to ten demos that are at various stages being played, once we get one that is balanced, plays well and we all like, then we start to look at the themes and the styles.”
He continued: “This seemed to fit the originality and entertainment style of the mechanic. The intention is loosely based on early memes with space cats and all of this has an intention to be fun and put a smile on the players face. Hopefully, with the feedback we’ve had so far, it is doing that.”
This title uses a mechanic that has been designed by Rogue, and the majority of the brand’s titles are the same. John Parsonage explained that, although they tend to use game formats of their own creation, that doesn’t mean to say they wouldn’t use external IPs for different titles.
He stated: “If one of our mechanics, or one of our formats really fits or would work well with another IP, whether it be in the gaming industry or completely separate, we would probably consider it, but only if it fits.
“What we try to do is, our mechanic comes first with the idea, and if that works then we will find a theme to fit it. I think that’s how we work differently to most other studios. Because we’re quite small, quite agile and like a collective, we work together on these things and when an idea comes together we get feedback from our teams, from our people. It’s like a fun project.”
As Rogue has developed a number of fresh mechanics for its portfolio of titles, Lamon commented on a need for up and coming developers to branch out. He said: “There really is an appetite with a lot of operators, and especially players, for smaller studios to come through and be brave enough to do something new.
“In this whole sea of clones and repetitive styles of content, if that works for you then awesome, good luck to you, but for a small studio like us, we’ve got to do what we can to stand out. These mechanics are our USP.”
Watch the video above to learn all about the studio’s Interspace mechanic, how the studio thinks this format can attract players to their brand and future plans for the rising studio.
