The Games Company

About the Company

The Games Company (TGC) is a boutique independent casino game developer founded in London by Hans Winkelmann and Ian Matthews in 2012. The UK company's development team is located in Portugal and creates games in HTML5 for mobile, tablet, and desktop. In addition to game creation, the company has developed and launched an open platform remote gaming system (RGS) to deliver games from their portfolio as well as third-party suppliers. TGC is licensed in Alderney and by the UKGC.

TGC appeared to get its first big break in 2017 when it was announced that a strategic distribution deal had been signed with another British firm, Bede Gaming in an agreement that will allow the Rank Group (Grosvenor Casino online. Mecca Bingo, et al) to use TGC's proprietary RGS. The integration is expected to enable the Rank Group to quickly and easily deploy games to their customers. Bede Gaming is licensed by the UK Gambling Commission as is the Rank Group.

Software and Games

TGC's remote gaming server is powered by Black Cow Technology Ltd software, an English company that is also licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission. Their proprietary platform is called the OGA, which stands for Open Gaming Architecture. The RGS is maintained by TGC in-house, giving them complete flexibility to develop, design, and deploy games on their own platform. The software contains a game development kit and is also used by Geco Gaming (now a Playtech company) and Playzido, an Endemol company.

TGC has a small handful of bespoke games as of review time. The math minds there use a wide variety of mechanics including reel modifiers, multiple features and mini-games, "Colossal" symbols and several anticipation builders. The artwork is sharp, even brilliant on most of the games with some of the newer titles such as Mariachi Mayhem and Cash Cowboy utilizing more 3D techniques than earlier titles such as Monster Mash - which has its own allure and hot spots.

Unfortunately, we initially thought we would need to review the games using only provided images and data sheets as the demos seemed to require javascript to load and were not delivered over a secure protocol (https). Reverting to an older machine we were able to load the games in isolation as we considered TGC to be a trusted source.

The Mariachi Mayhem slot offered 4k resolution, free spins, a respin feature, wild reels, and a stepping colossal feature. The data sheet declared a 95.1% RTP and volatility was rated as medium/high.

Gameplay was on 20 compulsory lines and auto-play was available. The game sounds only occurred while the reels were spinning, with a nice effect whenever a colossal symbol landed, covering 4 reel positions in some instances and three full reels in others. For small wins, the celebration was brief and not at all annoying. Wild symbols substitute for all others except scatters. A mariachi band appeared randomly turning several reels wild and the music that played while waiting for the conclusion was invigorating. Big win celebrations during the base game also brought on additional animation and sound effects. After the band randomly triggered wild reels and a colossal symbol covered multiple reel positions, only the colossal symbol was respun, leaving the wilds in place to generate further wins.

We didn't play long enough to trigger the "stepping colossal" feature. The paytable explains that a random colossal symbol will step one reel toward the left edge of the screen and the positions it vacates will be filled with wild reels. The oversized reel symbol steps to the left one position with every spin until it lands on the leftmost reel and ends the feature. Depending on the symbol's tier value, and how far to the right it begins its journey, this could be a very lucrative feature.

We examined the data sheets of other games which featured several innovative mechanics and other interesting features such as 243 ways to win. The other two games we played loaded quickly and gave satisfying gameplay.

Conclusion

While small development labs seem to sprout up at a dizzying clip these days, and all need vehicles to get into player's hands, TGC seems to be well positioned to do just that. The games themselves are very well made and certainly worth more testing to really get a feel for what they are all about, as each unique lab has a certain signature feeling. We will be playing these games more as they become more widely distributed and will look for new developments from The Games Company.