Online casino gamers are very fortunate to be able to play new online casino games every month! There are two main reasons for this fantastic ability. First, online gamers can play whenever they want to and their other responsibilities and interests allow. This is not the case for players who prefer playing at land based casinos. The second reason is that the many game providers all feel the competition to bring out a new game every month!
Slots Lead the Way in Innovation
All of the casinos we review have a wide selection of table games and video poker variations. They all have what are usually called casual games. These may include keno, bingo, and other unique games from many game providers.
It is interesting that craps and roulette are also often considered casual games at online casinos. That’s mainly because, of all the games a casino can offer, these two games are best suited for land-based casinos! There is excitement in the air around the roulette wheel and the craps table at a land-based casino.
There are already so many variations of blackjack and video poker that game providers devote their energy to creating new slots rather than new variations of blackjack and video poker.
So, let’s look at what’s new in slots.
Color, Graphics, and Animation Get Better and Better
At all good game providers, these three keywords lead the creative teams in their quest to develop exciting new slots. The time has long since passed when slots players would be happy pulling the arm of a physical slot machine and watching the three reels spin around only to reveal yet another combination of cherries, bars, triple sevens and the other slots symbols of… not so very long ago!
The online casino “revolution” began in only 1994 and as we calculate from 2021 we see that all of the big innovations in slots have taken place in just 27 years! This is remarkable enough in itself so let’s take a look at a few of the innovations.
Graphics are More than Creative Caricatures!
Computer graphics have improved so much in the past 25 years that the improvements in online casino slots are just a single drop in a very large “bucket”. Buckets themselves have gotten much bigger in the last two decades or so as evidenced by “bucket lists” that include trips around the world and climbs to the tops of very high mountains!
Slots have to have excellent caricatures to attract a gaming community that is getting more sophisticated by the day! Slots have the advantage of being about “everything” in contrast to the hit television series “Seinfeld” that was in theory “about nothing”.
Being about everything means that there is no subject—within the limits of social propriety—that a slot cannot be about! Slots are about ancient cultures and the modern-day; they are about romance and competition; they are about sports and music; they are about holidays, national days, seasons, mountains and oceans, and everything else under the sun!
As creative as the teams at the game providers have become, they need vibrant colors that catch the gaming eye and hold it! This is no simple trick; providers may have a team work on a slot for a few months before they decide that the team has gotten it right! Color is a major aspect of modern computer graphics and the new slot at all of the game providers use color in new and innovative ways.
We invite you to visit all of our reviewed casinos to see what they are doing with color and graphics in slots!
Animation is to Slots as Seasoning is to Food
That means that modern slots would be as bland without animation as is a dish without excellent seasoning. And just as seasoning requires a special combination of flavors that create a dish whose taste in far more than the sum of its ingredients, so a new slot has to have animation that is greater than the game itself.
What kind of animation makes this possible?
Wild Symbols are Truly Wild!
In the old days of slots, there were no wild symbols. Today, there may be more than one wild symbol on a single slot and there are no new slots without one wild symbol! But it is more than the mere presence of wild symbols that make modern slots so appealing. In other words, the wilds have to “do something”! They stack, they stick, they expand up or down or both; they expand right and left; they multiply wins by factors that can reach high numbers; and they explode!
Exploding wilds may be the single greatest innovation in slots in recent years! Now, exploding wilds work best in slots with very vibrant colors rather than the relatively drab colors of ancient Rome!
Scatter Symbols Take Gamers for a Ride
Even though to take someone for a ride can have a negative connotation in modern English, here it is all good!
The scatter symbol takes gamers to the free spins bonus round! Every slot has to have a free spins bonus round! Some have two or more! In many new slots, the gamer can choose which free spins bonus round he or she wants to play!
Bonus rounds always have extra features such as multipliers. The wild symbol may take on important new tasks in the bonus rounds!
Let’s Review the New Elements in Slots
All new slots—and at our featured casinos, you can play a new slot every month—have to have vibrant colors, active wild symbols that are genuinely wild, frequent free spins bonus rounds, and as many extra features as the game providers can put into their latest slot!
Graphics Continue to Improve in Table Games and Video Poker
If the big three of color, graphics, and animation can make modern slots more fun to play, they can also make other online casino games more fun to play. After all, it is graphics and animation that deal the cards in both video poker and blackjack!
As you peruse our many featured casinos, take a look at their graphics in all games, not just in slots! Two prime examples are Fish Catch and Banana Jones which are considered casual games but the fun they provide is far from casual! It is the real thing and they rely on all three of the big three modern features of online casino games: color, graphics, and animation!
Come to Slots Play Casinos Often
SPC—as we like to call ourselves—is an independent industry observer. We promote online casino gaming primarily since we see online gaming as the giant wave of not just the future but the present as well!
The pandemic that is still with us has shown the importance of online casinos and the concurrent importance of independent voices looking at this industry with an open-minded and fresh outlook!
Please refer to Slots Play Casinos often for news and insights in casino gaming!