Rarestone Gaming

About the Company

Rarestone Gaming is a Sydney, Australia-based slot developer for online casinos. The company was acquired by Playtech in 2018, joining a long list of design, development, and production facilities enhancing the Playtech brand.

Prior to the acquisition, the firm was known as 88 Technologies, co-founded by the company's current content manager and senior producer, Anton Tjioe. The CM logged over ten years with IGT designing and producing games after working in the GLI test labs in the early 2000s.

Another highly notable team member at Rarestone Gaming Pty Limited is their head of game development. James Stewart brings nearly two decades of experience to the Playtech entity beginning with a career's worth of time spent at WMS, eventually leading up a team whose work formed the basis of nearly two dozen games in the Aussie market. This, after a brief stint working on the hud system and menu for a PS3 and Xbox 360 game known as Storm Rise.

Prior to joining Rarestone (88 Tech), Stewart was a principal software engineer at what is now Scientific Games, Australia for more than 8 years.

The company had only been in business a short time before Playtech took notice of the unique game features and high-quality playing experience provided by the company. But that doesn't mean the rest of the team was new to the field. Those mentioned already comprise 2/5th of the game makers at the firm, all in Australia. All five of them come from the landbased casino industry with experience in the Asian, U.S., and Australian markets. 

In order to turn their concrete ideas into HTML5 reality for online players, the team partnered with a Ukrainian production center where all of the concepts and maths became images, animation, sounds, bells, and whistles.

Software and Games

The developer is getting noticed by players for many of the same reasons they caught the eye of Playtech. One of their unique innovations is a Hold & Respin feature. At least six titles have been released so far using the feature and each new game also offers a secondary bonus mechanic different than the one deployed on the prior game. The idea is to keep players coming back for more with each new release to find out what is new.

The first UK release of the feature was in the slot, Fire Blaze: Sky Queen. It was also the studio's first release since the Playtech acquisition. Industry reports indicate that it is still one of Playtech's top games.

All of the games in the Fire Blaze Jackpot series, including Blue Wizard, have an ancient world or otherworldly theme - Sky Queen is no exception. This fits in nicely with Playtech's Age of Gods series, yet gives players new and instantly recognizable features to seek out. As well, there may be some cross-over with Rarestone developing AoG games such as Epic Troy, the first 243 ways to win AoG title.

Fire Blaze Jackpots

All of the Fire Blaze games offer players a chance to win one of four bet-based jackpots through the proprietary, "Hold & Respin" feature: Mini, Minor, Major, and Grand.

In order to trigger the respin feature, players must land at least six Sun symbols (Sky Queen) in a single spin while playing the base game. Each of the suns holds a prize. These prizes are locked in and additional Sun symbols award more prizes as well as extra respins.

If a Jackpot Star symbol appears, the player is assured of winning one of the three lower jackpots, up to 500x total bet. However, if all of the symbol positions are filled with Sun symbols the Grand Jackpot (2,000x total bet) is awarded.

It's also possible to win the Grand jackpot during base-game play by filling the 5x3 reel set with Star symbols.

Of course, the symbols will be in theme with the rest of the game on all titles... stars; suns; pearls, etc.

Additional games to date include:

• JinFu Long
• Savage Jungle
• Blue Wizard (FB Jackpot)
• Panther Pays
• Tsai Shen's Gift (FB Jackpot)
• Pharaoh's Daughter (FB Jackpot)
• Eternal Lady (FB Jackpot)
• Fat Choy Choy Sun
• Tiger Turtle Dragon Phoenix
• Tiger Stacks
• Golden Macaque
• Hainan Ice
• Panther Pays

Many of the games listed offer something new, if not in bonus mechanics or feature combinations, then a feature new to Playtech or new from Rarestone. Tsai Shen's Gift is the first 243 ways to win Fire Blaze jackpot game. As mentioned earlier, Age of Gods: Epic Troy was the first 243 ways to win  title in the AoG series.

Slots, slots, and more slots!

The team seems to be highly focused on doing one thing and doing it right. We don't find any simple maths table games or card games after well over a dozen releases...

That's not to say they will never venture into skill-based games or games with localized interest. We don't find reactor games or games with cascading and exploding symbols, and we may never see those sorts of titles released. After all, are any of the aforementioned games really "slots"? As a slots purest, this reviewer doesn't.

What we do see is a steadily growing portfolio of premium Playtech games created by industry professionals with long and respected histories in real money gaming. 

The Final Analysis

Rarestone Gaming is an excellent addition to the Playtech family of development studios. The core team is comprised of consummate professionals with real-world experience in placing successful games on casino floors around the world. The production end of the maths and concepts creator proves that super high-quality work can come about from distance relationships, and should give heart to up and coming developers that they do not need to do everything in-house to succeed.

We're very happy to see Playtech continue to give credit where credit is due and let the star studios shine. While acquisition targets like Ash Gaming and GECO had already made indelible marks on the industry before they became parts of the family, the same can't be said for some of the minnows gobbled up in the earlier days of the industry before it was good for business to let players know that "no man is an island". Along with Playtech, we can thank Yggdrasil (YGS Masters Studio Partners), and their head to head competition with Playtech's Quickspin for part of that change in industry perceptions of what players value, as well as Microgaming who now has a studios program as well.

Rarestone games are beautifully executed, giving players a sense of thrill which vacillates between anticipation and payouts... and that is simply genius. But more than that, the auditory and visual experience achieves a level usually only found in and totally consistent with other premium Playtech games... they just have a certain 'feel' to them. When those two things come together, and you add a jackpot mechanic that carries from title to title with only slight variation for iconography to fit the instant theme, you have a winner on your hands.