Mutuel Play

About the Company

Mutuel Play Ltd launched in 2016 to bring a new vision to retail and online slot games. Founded by current Director, Rhys Owen, the company's first employee was veteran game developer, Paul Spencer.

Spencer and Owen both worked at Geco Gaming, an obscure but quietly powerful Sydney Australia company formed by the convergence of Wagermill and The Gaming Lab prior to Playtech's acquisition of the firm in early 2016.

Prior to his less than a one-year stint at Geco before establishing Mutuel Play, Director Owen ran gaming at Bede, managed the Geolotto.co.uk product, and headed up bingo for Playtech after lead roles at Virtue Fusion and Gala Coral.

Additional core team members include Developer Krishna Gurung who also spun off from Playtech and PT subsidiaries, Geco and Ash Gaming. Gurung's expertise is in software solutions with a focus on HTML5 games for desktop and mobile.

Kerim El-Hakim is the Senior user interface and user experience Designer - or in nerd-speak, he handles the UI/UX. Prior to joining the Mutuel family, El-Hakim worked at Sportingbet and then Playtech where he headed up the gaming giant's transition from Flash to HTML5.

The unique talents and skills of the mentioned colleagues along with several not mentioned in this brief review enable the company to collaborate with customers and appeal to whatever particular audience the gaming site plans to target for new games.

Early successes in deploying the product include inking a deal with Leander to distribute content over their remote game server, LeGa RGS. This strategic move allowed them to debut The Showman slot at Mr Green. Other Leander clients picked up the offering and added it to their libraries with some good results.

Many of the studio and lab's other creations have found homes through the RGS on popular bingo sites.

Software and Games

Buzz Bingo provides Bingo Millions - a 90-ball instant game with a potential twenty-five million-pound jackpot backed up by RISQ, the iGaming Insurance Platform (iGiP).

Thanks to the cooperation deal with RISQ, Mutuel can now integrate the insured jackpot solutions across their entire suite of games.

The next game rolled out at Buzz Bingo was Cash Cannons slot. While not a direct clone of their earlier Candy Burst slot release the game does share similar characteristics.

The unique mechanic to these two games is the Clearing Symbol - think Candy Crush or cascading "slots" with symbols disappearing or exploding and all save wild symbols being replaced with new icons, giving players a chance to go on phenomenal winning streaks emanating from a single betting action.

Very high volatility and a free spins feature create the potential for tremendous payouts from a gentile and 'cute' looking game. This shows some of the collective genius of a studio and lab working in harmony.

Jumpman Gaming, a prolific purveyor of white-label bingo sites in the UK and nearby markets picked up the Bingo Millions 90-Ball game for play across their entire network.

Aesthetics Meet Maths and Mechanics

This reviewer appreciates everything I understand about what goes on under the hood of a rousing game of slots. However, the engine is not the end-all and get-all for me, nor the maths, mechanics, volatility, or hit frequency. I can have as much fun playing a game with most of the RTP loaded upfront as one with the majority of payouts in a rare feature game.

Most of us have certain art styles, themes, soundscapes, and combinations of all the aforementioned that excite and inspire us.

While you may or may not be attracted to anthropomorphized fruit symbols beaming with personality, I am not. Juicy Fruity is an amazing game I simply would not play were I not reviewing the creators' works.

Buzz Bingo and Splatter Cake get a similar disinterest from me on their faces.

"Read all About it" visually reminds me a bit too much of a Microgaming slot that I simply can't put my finger on, even though the mechanics don't have the same feel at all. Regardless, it gets a pass from me without prejudice.

The games in this catalog that appeal most to me are;

• The Showman
• The Wild Mob
• Cosmic Fusion

That initial attraction rises to nearly 30% of the current offering of 11 titles. Not too shabby!

Highlights of Three Games

The first time I was exposed to The Showman was at SlotsMillion. (It is also available across the entire Whitehat Gaming network).

It always adds an element of fun to a game when you pick symbols to uncover how many free spins you have won and then reveal the bonus multiplier. In this game, you can activate up to 20 spins worth as much as 5x during the bonus round.

That all sounds fine but potentially boring if you never hit it big - but - add 25 extra wild symbols to the reel strips along with fully replicating reels and it has the potential to shake the roof beams.

The Wild Mob has fifty paylines, scatters, two wild symbols, free spins, respins, and random wilds that appear after the reels have settled after a spin. This title was the studio's second launch.

Cosmic Fusion is a 10-line game with expanding wilds and respins. Fill the central three reels with wild symbols for interstellar wins. Some of the same winning combinations can occur when the middle reels become a single reel with giant symbols covering reels 2, 3, and 4.

Just in case you like a more light-hearted game with plenty of fun-factor including mini-games with three reels for bonus spins, here is Juicy Fruity!

The Final Analysis

Mutuel Play does more than simply swap out the curtains, and paint the walls when they release a new game. Even with titles like Candy Burst and Cash Cannons that share common feature mechanics, each game they release feels fresh and new.

If you've ever owned a favorite make of auto and then sat behind the wheel of the latest year's model, we think you'll recognize the feeling.

Other games are as different from one another as sunrise and sunset, candy and fruit, a sow's ear and a silk purse yet retain the particular Mutuel Play conversance with each player's personal experience.

While we laud the Director for choosing to break into the open markets using the LeGa RGS vehicle, the irony is not lost on us. Those familiar with the work and history of Geco Gaming, where the top talent comes from here, will recall the company was formed in part by Electracade founder, Mark Paling.

Without digressing much further, we'll note that Electracade and their 2010 acquisition, Openbet, were early pioneers in the field of remote game servers and software 'bundles'. In fact, G-E-C-O is an acronym for Game Engine Co-Operative.

RGS, aggregation, and universal API are the three most important elements that drove the entire online gambling industry from the horse-and-buggy days of single software casinos (think Microgaming Viper, Playtech, RTG, etc.) into the present where we see thousands of diverse games from dozens of different developers at any given white-label or stand-alone gaming site.

Given the history, existing talent, and assumed the continued trajectory of the iGaming industry, we see good things on the horizon for Mutuel Play Ltd, not to mention plenty of driving pleasure from the consuming public who are discerning or lucky enough to find and enjoy their games.