ELK Studios

About the Company

ELK Studios AB is a Stockholm-based specialty real money casino game designer with a focus on mobile first. Founded in 2012, they opened their first office in late 2013 in the town of Engelbrektsgaten, Sweden and released two games that year - The Lab and Electric Sam. Their games have gone on to become favorites of many players and their titles reach a wide audience, especially in the Nordic region, due to shrewd partnership deals with aggregators and platform providers such as Microgaming's Quickfire. Many of their games, such as Taco Brothers Saving Christmas and the award-winning Wild Toro can be found at Mr Green, Metal Casino, and perhaps hundreds of other Quickfire partner sites.

The company upgraded their labs and office space throughout the years first moving to Göteborg in 2015, and then Stockholm in 2017. The team continued to grow and today there are more than 30 employees. One thing that hasn't changed is the team's passion for excellence and continuing to place quality of quantity. When they started out there were still several major providers who simply created new themes and skins for existing games called them new, and released the sleeved clones in an attempt to stay out front with sheer volume.

Software and Games

The games are, again, 'mobile-first' and display perfectly on any device (16:10). They also adapt to high-resolution displays for full impact on any desktop monitor (1440x900).

For all of the artful renditions, advanced animations, well-thought-out soundscapes and other front-end dimensions we notice right away, the true beauty of their games is in strong conceptual game models coupled with the maths that make a difference. No two games are remotely similar, with the exception of series titles like Taco Brothers, and even then the gameplay is a rampage of fun and expanding narrative.

One of their first games, released in early 2915, was Champion's Goal. The slot's maths and bonus mechanics were truly visionary and players knew they were onto something fresh and exciting. Any lab can build in high volatility, and this game was certainly at the top of the range, but ELK managed to harness the excitement of big wins with a mixture of frequent action.

The football/soccer theme featured a blue team and a red team, each striking across the reels from their own side and an 'imploding free kick' that saw the ball change symbols on a row to for new chances to win with 5x payouts on all combinations that appear following the scatter incident. Another bonus triggers 3 free spins with sticky wilds on the first, central, and rightmost reels. Innovations in the free spins bonus were also groundbreaking.

The portfolio currently contains about 20 titles, and although not every theme or maths model is suited to every player, the innovation has never stopped.

Aside from breakthroughs in individual game modeling, designers have implemented special features into the games, including Betting Strategies.

Betting Strategies help players implement a set of commands that have the potential to change overall volatility of a session by changing up gameplay.

Jumper will increase the bet after each winning spin for 4 levels above the base level with the fourth spin 10x base level stake. It resets to base after any losing spin.

Leveller raises on 5 concurrent losses and then raises again if another five occur. Levels reset after any winning spin.

Booster works like Jumper, except it raises on losing spins.

The Final Analysis

While it would be a joy to analyse all of the data sheets for their games, we'll leave you with a tease of the third game to market, Champion's Goal, and suggest a look at Birthday; mention Wild Toro won them Game of the Year at the EGR Operator Awards in 2017, after Poltava was nominated the year before; suggest you look out for them at ICE Totally Gaming and other industry events; and wish ELK Studios the best of fortune in carrying their young but already legacied work forward for generations to come.

External Links

ELK at ICE
Official Youtube