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Design Works Gaming Review
Very few slot game developers can boast roots that stretch all the way back to the 1940s. Design Works Gaming CEO and founder, Troy Zurawski, is the third generation of his family to be involved in the casino business. He launched the brand in 2005, with his vast experience and in-depth knowledge of casinos giving him an edge over much of the competition.
In the early 2000s, Zurawski noticed that the online casino business was showing very little cohesion between what developers and providers were offering, and what players were ultimately looking for. He decided to streamline the process to make games development efficient and affordable while ensuring that players’ expectations were being met.
The Design Works Gaming business model is based on the principle that gameplay comes first. Instead of launching slots with similar features and styles, the team develop each game from the ground up to be different from any other in the range.
The company certainly seems to be on to something, as its collection of 200+ slots is available at many of the best land-based and social casino sites in the world.
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Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, Design Works Gaming also creates slots on behalf of heavyweight clients such as IGT, Aristocrat, Scientific Games, and Novomatic. The expansion of the company has led to the launch of its own social casino sites, as well as to a gradual rollout of its games range into the real-money online markets.
Over 70% of the slots from Design Works Gaming use unique math models, which makes the range incredibly diverse. In an increasingly competitive world where more and more developers are regularly launching content, it’s important that game releases have unique selling points.
The artwork is the first thing that most players will notice when they’re looking for a slot to play. Design Works Gaming has brought together a talented team of 50+ artists from the US and beyond who craft slots with attention-grabbing artwork, slick animations, and quality graphics.
Many slots are intentionally designed to be nostalgic Vegas-style games. This means you won’t find titles with advanced 3D graphics
or photo-real images in the Design Works Gaming portfolio. However, the sound effects are quite impressive. The company is known to hire award-winning musicians and composers from the film and TV business to create cinematic-style soundtracks that accompany the action on the reels.
A unique games development package called CasinoCore ensures that each slot reaches the market with optimized gameplay that will keep players coming back for more. The mathematicians, artists, and engineers at Design Works Gaming use CasinoCore to refine any aspect of a game throughout the development process.
A classic example of the Vegas-style slots from this company is Golden Grand. It is inspired by the Californian Gold Rush, and the classic symbols here include colorful Sevens and win multipliers. Golden Grand is a four-reel, five-line slot machine that can be played for stakes of just 25 coins per spin.
You can claim prizes of 30x your total bet when the game logo lands across a line, which also doubles as a wild symbol. On top of that, reel four contains win multiplier symbols that can boost a prize up to ten times over.
The Golden Grand slot machine also has a free spins round triggered when a bonus symbol lands on the first three reels. You are awarded ten free spins, but that number is boosted if reel four contains a multiplier.
Most, if not all, slots developers have at least one ancient Egyptian-themed game in their range. Design Works Gaming is no exception, and Ahmun Ra’s reels are filled with pharaohs, beautiful Egyptian queens, gold statues, and scarab beetles. This is a five-reel, 20-line slot that showcases outstanding artwork and game design.
Three or more wild scarab beetles will launch a free spins bonus. But before these begin, a wheel will spin to reveal a random symbol. This will become a special Scatter Stacks symbol throughout the free games, paying out in any places – and not just when it crosses paylines.
Slots with an Asian theme and style are also hugely popular. Wealthy Pig sees a smiling golden pig character alongside high card symbols, bags of gold, and stylish Chinese ornaments. Five reels are here crossed by a 243 Ways to Win layout. A wild symbol helps to complete combinations, while a lucky gold coin awards eight, 15, or 25 free games when it lands in three, four, or five places at once.
During the free spins, the wild symbol will double or triple your wins. The round can be retriggered multiple times by more gold coin scatter symbols, with a maximum of 1,000 free games possible. Wealthy Pig is another example of a Design Works Gaming slot where the vivid artwork makes the game stand out on both desktop and mobile platforms.
We’ve determined that Design Works Gaming can produce good-looking slots with unique features, but it’s also essential that such games are fair and reliable.
Naturally, the highly experienced team here know this full well, and they go to great lengths to guarantee high returns and honesty. Each slot carries information about the average return-to-player percentage, with most paying back over 96% of your wagers in prize money.
Design Works Gaming’s slot creations are licensed for land-based casinos. The brand is also in the process of acquiring a UK Gambling Commission license at the time of this review. This will allow the company to offer its range online and on mobiles for real-money play. You can then play them alongside Blueprint Gaming slots and ELK Studios slots at UK-licensed sites
Each slot is independently audited by an approved testing company, ensuring that it meets the regulations set out by the relevant licensing authority. Random Number Generators (RNGs) determine fair results and guarantee that the average returns are paid out, and you'll find these games at some of the safest casinos online.
You can play Design Works Gaming slots in multiple currencies. These include USD, GBP, JP¥, and EUR. English, Japanese, Swedish, and German are among the many supported languages.
Design Works Gaming boasts an exciting collection of attractive games. We particularly like the way this Arizona casino games developer ensures that each release is significantly different from any other. On top of that, the team’s strong commitment to fair and responsible gaming is admirable. We're sure this will attract more casino operators and players to their slots as they continue to expand their reach.
Although you will mostly find Design Works Gaming titles at land-based and social casinos, the expansion into regulated online markets will bring this appealing range to a much wider audience. We look forward to seeing these creative slots games being made available to players around the world very soon.
