Core Gaming Limited

About the Company

Core Gaming is an HTML5 content developer for the online gambling industry. The Knowle, Birmingham company was founded in 2011 when current CEO and Director Justin Chamberlain's BetLow Ltd game studio was acquired by a company operating in a different industry formed by Stephen Murry a year earlier. However, the labs may have been in operation for several years prior, working on special projects for Sky Vegas and others since as early as 2007.

The team at Core is filled with industry professionals with long histories in the field from the former creative director at JPM International, and head of games at Sky Vegas to a content developer formerly of the Inspired Gaming Group and a few uniquely talented freelancers that found their place with HTML5 development at Core Gaming. The company has more than 30 employees involved in the creation, development, and deployment of a wide range of games for well known international operators such as Bet UK Casino, NordicBet, LeoVegas, Videoslots, and SlotsMillion to name a few.

In 2016, the company signed a content distribution deal with the Rank Group adding to deals already in the works with Ladbrokes, Paddy Power/Betfair, and Sky Betting and Gaming.

Well-known companies with development partnerships in the works include Aristocrat, IGT, Mazooma, NextGen and Scientific Games. Platforms carrying Core games include Leander Games' LeGa, NYX, Dragonfish (888) Microgaming Quickfire, and Storm, to name but a few.

Available Games

The company was quick to abandon the sometimes unstable and platform-specific Adobe Flash technology for instant play games when HTML5 became available in 2014 after nearly 10 years of development. The change in game delivery created a revolution in the online gaming world with a single language capable of delivering the same quality of animation and sounds to mobile devices and desktop web browsers. With HTML5, players no longer need to download software or install an app to play high definition online casino games.

We have to believe that Core Gaming is doing a lot more than simply developing their own portfolio of proprietary slot games, and the partnerships mentioned earlier would probably account for a lot of their output. We've been able to identify about 20 of their games as of late 2017, and more titles are sure to be released in the coming months and years.

The games we tested for our review were delivered over the OpenBet platform, which was acquired by NYX in early 2016. As an aside, NYX was subsequently taken over by lottery and gaming giant Scientific Games in late 2017. The games loaded fairly quickly, and all were well rendered in light and shadow with some having true to life looking 3D effects, such as the trail feature Captain Cashfall slot which seems to have been developed in association with Storm Gaming.

One of their better titles, not only in terms of presentation and theme, but game mechanics with huge win potential, is Balthazar’s Wild Emporium. The five-reel, twenty pay line slot offers a visual mix of well-rendered 2D art with random 3D accent animations, such as when the main character shows up on or disappears from the side of the reel set in a fog of green bubbles. Where the game gets extremely interesting is in the feature.

In short, landing two spell vials from left to right opens a gamble screen where players can collect free spins or gamble for more. After a successful gamble, landing another vial, the gamble game is repeated until spins are collected, lost in the gamble, or all five vials are collected.

The end result, depending on the color of the vials, can be as many as 1,000 free spins with colossal wilds. The game has an RTP between 88.19% and 94.02% based on player strategy and the max win for a paid spin (and resultant free spins) is $500,000.000 or 5,000x total bet for the spin.

All of the games have at least one unique twist, even the seemingly simplistic, The Sky's the Limit slot with highly volatile chances to land special symbols on the fifth reel and trigger features.

Final analysis

Core Gaming may have only a couple of dozen games to their name, but each is a work of art in more ways than one.