2by2 Gaming

About the Company

2x2 Gaming is a US-based casino slot developer for the land-based and online industries. The company was founded in 2012 in the Chicago area by CEO, Shridhar Joshi.

The company has worked with land-based casino suppliers such as Bally, Incredible Technologies, and Alfastreet with game placement in North America, Europe, and Macau.

The company has distribution and aggregation deals with Leander (LeGa), Openbet, and Microgaming Quickfire to name a few. It was their inclusion on the Quickfire platform that opened the door to the world for this developer.

Not all Quickfire casino partners carry all games by all developers and some carry none by certain developers, but most should have at least a small handful of the 40 or so titles in circulation for real money play. On the Quickfire platform alone, these games could potentially be available at over 250 online gaming sites.

Depending on your region and preferences you may find 2 By 2 games at iLUCKI, Pelaa, Emu, Vera & John, and CasinoLuck to name a few.

Joshi owns about 45 and controls nearly 100 gaming-related patents, including those behind the studio's unique game mechanics and features.

After more than 20 years at WMS Gaming, an industry leader in his locale, Joshi left the company in 2011 to form the 2x2 parent corporation, Misa Enterprises, and to launch 2 by 2 in June of 2012.

Darryl Hughes also came to the company via WMS where he was responsible for such games as Money to Burn and Monopoly Party Train among others. He is also a patent holder with 10 gaming patents to his name and over three decades of experience in the industry.

Some of his earlier credits included game development for Chartwell (later acquired by Amaya), Spielo (later merged with GTECH and now known as IGT), and Multimedia Games (now known as Everi).

The balance of the staff comprises veteran designers, graphic artists, and sound composers along with the maths labs and programmers who put the magic behind the illustrations, animations, and soundscapes.

Company services

In addition to game creation, some of the company's work is available in a third-party system wherein other industry professionals can license content from the firm including patent-pending game mechanics, Brand licenses like Gunsmoke and the Honeymooners, and maths models already deployed on land, online, and in social gaming.

Bespoke game development is available in HTML5 as well as stand-alone gaming platforms for land casinos. The firm's programmers can also take your existing games and convert them to HTM5 for instant play on any device. Some of their customers for this service have included Bluberi and Bally who engaged the firm to bring some of their popular land-based slots online.

With over a dozen decades of combined experience in the land-based and online gaming industries, 2 by 2 provides consultancy services in the areas of new markets, licensing, and the creation of new products.

Software and Games

The company's website speaks of Flash and HTML5 creation, but it could simply be that they are more busy developing and deploying games than in updating the website.

We don't find any specific examples of Flash to HTML5 conversions, however, it should be noted that backward compatibility usually results in excessive game size - sometimes in the 20MB range whereas new creations built on an HTML5 engine can come in as low as 3MB.

We mention this as the technical details given do not include game weights so we have no idea how lean the coding is on original purpose-built games. In fact, there are no fact sheets at all on the website, nor a direct avenue to a client area where they might be found.

The only information given on any of the games in the official portfolio is whether it is a land-based game, an online real money game, or an online social game.

The games

Having reviewed some of the patents behind the company's innovative mechanics, we were interested to see how they play out on the front end. Much of what we studied related to independent reel positions, long and tall reels, shared reels, and multiple arrays of reel sets. We were not able to find games that embodied those attributes online.

However, again, we find no "par sheets" or even rudimentary data players would be interested in such as RTP, hit frequency, volatility, the percentage of RTP assigned to the base games versus feature play, or the frequency of triggering certain features.

Loki Wild Tiles

This 5x5 "slot" has 25 reel positions visible and in play on any spin. There are no spinning reels or pay lines. It is a cascading tile game with pay awarded for 3, 4, or 5 matching symbols vertically or horizontally.

Winning symbols disappear and new symbols fall in to replace them for a chance to win more.

When three symbols match the middle one is replaced by a wild Loki symbol which can create more combinations.

Players can win up to 50 free games

Golden Tides

This game is an underwater themed-title with several attractive Mermaids or sirens as the featured characters.

Wild symbols appear on reels 2 and 4 and can be golden with 3x pays. Scatters pay 1x, 5x, or 10x total bet for 3, 4, or 5 respectively. During the base game, all of the Mermaid symbols can turn into golden wild symbols.

Wizard of the Woods

This is a fairly standard 5x3 slot with 25 fixed pay lines. The game has scatters and wild symbols. When a stack of wilds land on the central reel a Wizard will appear and convert one or two other symbols into substitutes or award a total bet multiplier of up to 10x.

Bonus scatters appear only on reels 2, 3, and 4. When all are present on the reels, 10 bonus spins are awarded. The Wizard wild feature described above occurs with more frequency during the bonus games. Bonus scatters remain on the reels during feature spins so the spins can be retriggered indefinitely.

The Final Analysis

2 By 2 Gaming has a solid history and deep industry network and marketing that now sees the games in casinos around the globe.

While we only examined about half a dozen games, there wasn't much more to report in innovation or feature mechanics in the three we aren't reviewing at the moment.

The artwork is decent and the gameplay is engaging but, to us, the title lack that special quality that would create infatuation.

The African Legend game is headed to the casino floor in an Alfastreet cabinet and we will seek it out in hopes of "falling in love" with a game from 2 By 2 and we will revisit a few more titles later. For now, we're just not feeling much attraction, but that doesn't mean that you won't.

Loki Wild Tiles does offer a huge bonus payout which may be worth seeking...

Golden Tides can surprise with Mermaids turning into Golden Wild symbols for a potentially huge win...

Wizard of the Woods has a feature that brightens up the screen and gameplay when the Wizard appears and a touch of anticipatory excitement waiting to see where the additional wild symbol(s) will appear.

Giant Riches and Wolfheart are 8-reel games with extended symbols and Legends of Africa is configured in a diamond shape (2, 3, 5, 3, 2 reel positions) with 30 pay lines. We'll visit these titles in a land casino or when they appear online and let you know if we feel a pitter-patter.