Q&A with Annamaria Anastasi, Marketing Director at Betsoft Gaming. 

It’s nice to see another great game is being added to the Slots3™ collection, just weeks after the launch of Fire & Steel; one of the fastest loading, most visually impressive games released on your HTML5 platform. What can you tell us about the quality of GIOVANNI’S GEMS?

Thanks so much. While Fire & Steel approached the visuals with a highly detailed realism and gritty storyline, Giovanni’s Gems speaks to the other side of our player base. With rich colours, and fast-paced gameplay, Giovanni’s Gems focuses on hitting classic popularity metrics: cascading reels, gemstones, and well saturated colours. These elements have shown through our session KPIs to often be found in many of our well performing games, and Giovanni’s Gems combines all of those attributes into a single game.

We are about to follow the charismatic Giovanni the Gem Hunter in Betsoft’s new video slot featuring a 7×7 grid. What can you tell us about the unique layout used for GIOVANNI’S GEMS?

The 7×7 Grid allows us to better emulate the feel of the popular Match-3 type cluster games found in casual gaming markets across the globe. The large grid provides an ample area for clusters, allowing players to feel the sense of reward potential on every spin.

Cluster wins are becoming a real trend among slot developers. What is it that makes this slot feature so incredibly popular?

We believe it comes back to the Millennial talking point. As iGaming becomes a more broad and acceptable medium for entertainment, the industry seeks to find ways to expand that appeal even further. This includes drawing in the crowds who enjoy social gaming and casual gaming platforms. The cluster based wins remove the illusive paylines and allow the wins to happen anywhere, as long as matching symbols are clustered. This allows a visual ease, and sort of intuitive nature to the game, even for those who are not familiar with classic video slots.

Featuring a 7×7 grid, cluster wins, cascading reels, and free spins, it seems GIOVANNI’S GEMS is going to bring a great combination of slot features. Anything hidden in the cave that I forgot to mention?

You’ve left almost no stone unturned, but we’d be remiss to not mention the special Diamond feature. During standard paid spins, any time a cluster of wins adjacent to a Coal symbol, the pressure of the cluster explosion will turn the Coal into a Diamond.

Diamonds are scatter pays and explode anywhere. To add to the fun, exploding Diamonds can turn nearby Coal into even more Diamonds! Achieving a chain of Diamond formations can be very exciting, and incredibly rewarding.

In what way is Giovanni the Gem Hunter adding to the excitement?

Giovanni the Gem Hunter gives the player a role in the story. By imagining themselves as a travelling companion of, or even as Giovanni himself, players can better be emotionally transported to this special world where gemstones overflow and fantasy is real. This connection to the game and its environment will draw players back again as they remember his charming cheers and memorable persona.

The brilliant animations of GIOVANNI’S GEMS are made possible by Betsoft’s own Shift™ platform. Can you tell us something more about this platform?

Shift™ is our growing platform for modern day, HTML5 games. As more people move from Desktop to Mobile platforms, and often switch between the two, we believe games must be small in file size, compatible across many devices and systems, and yet still hold true to Betsoft’s reputation and ideals of having the best visual quality, whether 3D or 2D, in the iGaming market.

Shift™ is the platform in which these dreams come true, and allows games like Fire & Steel and Giovanni’s Gems to be brought to players around the world, regardless of their device or internet connection speed, with remarkable speed and not a hint of quality lost.

Is GIOVANNI’S GEMS allowing us a look into the future? Can we expect more Betsoft games in which an expanded grid forms the base of the game?   

Absolutely. Betsoft has historically always embraced innovation and mould-breaking design, and we will continue to innovate and provide rich new experiences, as well as remarkable classics in the next year.