Scheduled to hit casino floors in Spring and Summer 2013, MONOPOLY Prime Reel Estate® slots take full advantage of the visually stunning Gamefield xD™ cabinet from WMS. The new cabinet pushes the boundaries and allows gameplay to stretch onward and upward while creating opportunities for unprecedented player interaction.
We sat down with the game’s Lead Producer, CastleKing777, and Game Designer, KirkKirk, to learn a more about this exciting evolution of MONOPOLY slots.
KirkKirk: Can you describe the WILD Multiplier Feature?
The WILD Multiplier Feature may be triggered on any spin and simply adds a win multiplier to each win, based upon the number of WILD symbols visible on the reels. For example, if three WILD symbols land on the reels, all wins for that spin will be multiplied by 3x. There can be up to 7 WILD symbols on a single spin, awarding up to a 7x multiplier! Since the WILD symbols in this game are designed to provide more frequent and bigger wins on the reels, this feature really can lead to some big wins!
Which bonus was the most difficult to make and why?
KirkKirk: The Play the Board Bonus was probably the most difficult to make, since it contains so many mini-bonuses. It was very challenging to engineer since both screens are real-time 3D environments running at full [1080p] High-Definition. The creation of an extremely realistic-looking MONOPOLY board was one of the goals of this game. I’m incredibly impressed with the work the artists and engineers have accomplished!
How exactly does the Play the Board Bonus work?
KirkKirk: The Play the Board Bonus is triggered by a single Play the Board symbol on reel 5. When it is triggered, the player gets three tokens that move around the MONOPOLY board to randomly chosen spaces. Houses and hotels are randomly placed on the property spaces, increasing the value of the property from bonus to bonus.
There are also mini-bonuses for landing on Electric Company, Water Works, Chance, Community Chest, or any of the Railroad spaces. Once all three tokens have received their awards, a multiplier is chosen that will multiply one of the awards up to 10X!
What is your favorite mini-bonus within the Play the Board Bonus?
KirkKirk: My favorite mini-bonus would be the dice game within each of the Railroad spaces. It allows a player to roll for just about every other prize on the board. The ability to keep winning additional rolls allows a player a chance at the big GO! prize from any space on the board!
CastleKing777: What is your favorite mini-bonus within the Play the Board Bonus?
My favorite mini-bonus is the Electric Company bonus because it is unlike anything we have ever created before. Using a brand-new drag-and-drop play mechanic, players are able to touch and drag a plug to an outlet that awards a multiplier of up to 10x the plug value!
What is the coolest feature of this game?
CastleKing777: I think the Free Spin Bonus is something players are really going to love! Players drag down the reels and watch as they shoot up. This bounces around between the two 32-inch screens before finally landing on a multiplier of up to 25x! Again, great work by the artists and engineers to make this bonus happen!
As the first MONOPOLY game on the Gamefield xD platform, how did this design process differ from your previous games?
KirkKirk: Designing for the Gamefield xD cabinet is different in a few ways. First, the screen is just a lot larger. When you have that much screen real estate directly in the player’s field of vision, you have the ability to do new and different things! You can place things above the reels without having to put them on a separate screen.
Second, the Gamefield xD platform makes interactive bonuses much more natural. The screen sits directly in front of the player, so the player tends to have their hands on the screen for every spin. This makes it a natural transition to begin dragging things on screen, touching objects in a picking game, or shooting reels up to the top box like we do in the Free Spin Bonus.
We have only scratched the surface of the types of interactive gameplay we can do on the Gamefield xD platform or cabinet. It’s a platform with a great future!
CastleKing777: Do you have anything you would like to add?
Mirroring what KirkKirk said, never before have we had so much space to show off a theme in a single cabinet. Also, we have a greater ability to showcase the art and play mechanics in the Gamefield xD cabinet than we have had in other pieces of hardware.
By utilizing the dual 32-inch HD monitors (to create an unprecedented field of view) and dazzling visuals (made possible by the horsepower of our CPU-NXT®3 platform), we are able to create an unparalleled level of interaction between players and the MONOPOLY world.