NextGen Slots

NextGen Gaming is a designer of slot machine games for online
and land-based casinos all over the world. They produce games
under their own label and license them to casinos, but they also
do a lot of work for other design houses. NextGen Gaming focuses
exclusively on slot machines.

All told, NextGen has a library of 550 slots spread all over
the Internet, in specialty markets and widespread casino
gambling venues alike. Because NextGen works with so many big
names that play a part in so many world markets, it’s safe to
say that NextGen slots are available worldwide.

That’s not to say that every country in the world has access
to them – many countries outlaw online gambling entirely. But
between their Australian, European, Asian, and North American
presence, they produce games that people from both hemispheres
and every corner of the globe can play. Even if they have to
take a vacation to the next country over for legal access.

About the Company

NextGen was founded in Australia in 1999, specifically to
create what the company calls “platform-independent content.” In
layman’s terms, that basically means games that can be played on
a lot of different computers and gadgets. From the start,
NextGen’s designers seem to have been more concerned with the
overall player experience than some other slot game designers –
they’re constantly creating new types of bonus games and other
bonuses. Since a large part of what slot fans are hunting for is
replay value, NextGen’s focus on bonuses means they produce a
lot of popular online slots.

It’d be nearly impossible to list every website and software
provider that partners with NextGen to produce and host slot
games. Some of their partnerships are kept a little bit secret.
Online slot players have probably played tons of NextGen slots
without knowing it – that’s because NextGen supplies their games
to a wide range of clients, some of whom host the games on their
own websites, others adding the games to their own library of
games. In other words, NextGen might be behind a slot that you
love, and you might think that game was produced by Microgaming
or Playtech.

We know a few of their partners, because NextGen maintains a
page listing “select partners,” and it’s an impressive
collection of big names in the industry.

According to their website, NextGen partners with:

• 888.com
• Bet24
• Bet365
• Betfair
• bwin
• Cryptologic
• Microgaming
• Playtech
• PokerStars
• SkyBet
• Unibet
• Victor Chandler
• Virgin
• WilliamHill

These are just the biggest names, and even then, only the big
name groups that allow NextGen to talk openly about their
association. We don’t want to sound like conspiracy theorists,
but based on the look of known NextGen creations, we suspect a
large portion of some of the Internet’s best-known game
provider’s slot libraries are actually products of NextGen’s
design labs.

Now that the company has partnered with PokerStars, the
company’s slot games are available in a new segment of the legal
gambling landscape, specifically the regulated online casino and
poker sites in New Jersey. This is a sign that the company plans
to expand its presence in the legal US market.

NextGen Slots

NextGen is different from most of their competitors in the
online casino game design business – they only produce slots.
You won’t find a NextGen table game, NextGen poker software, or
any other form of NextGen game. An entire design firm dedicated
to producing quality online slot games is good news if you love
slots. If you prefer blackjack or video poker or any other type
of game, you’ll be looking somewhere else for your online
entertainment.

If you’re going to specialize in slots, why not have a
massive collection of them? NextGen’s 550 slot games represents
the biggest single collection of slot games any of us have ever
come across. The libraries of Microgaming and RTG come close,
but NextGen’s library far outpaces them in terms of sheer
variety.

Unfortunately, you won’t find a collection of NextGen games
in any one place. Many of their creations exist as part of other
software packages. A game you may think is the product of
Realtime was actually developed by the designers at NextGen.
Rather than try to review hundreds and hundreds of slots, we
thought it best to offer a snapshot of the types of games
NextGen is producing.

Below, we’ve gathered six brief reviews of NextGen’s
best-known and most-reviewed slot titles:

An Evening with Holly Madison

One of NextGen’s newest high-profile slots is also one of
their first big licensing projects. Holly Madison, famous mainly
for being Hugh Hefner’s long-time girlfriend, may seem like a
curious subject for a slot game, but she’s a beautiful and
talented woman with a recognizable face and an obvious
connection to glamour.

Her slot includes expanding wilds, a second-change re-spin
feature that rewards players on bad luck streaks, and a unique
Photo Shoot Bonus game in which you act as the photographer and
earn random rewards in exchange for taking shots of Ms. Madison
herself.

Bets range from $0.01 to $2 per credit, and the game forces
you to wager 30 credits per spin, for a total betting range of
between $0.30 and $60 per spin. The game’s largest payout is
worth 5,000 times your triggering wager, for a payout of between
$1,500 and $300,000.

Andre the Giant

NextGen Gaming has been easing into the world of designing
licensed slots over the past few years. Andre the Giant is a
former pro wrestler and actor who was extremely popular for a
few years in the 1980s. It is a strange concept for a licensed
slot, but then again, it was probably an inexpensive purchase,
and they’ve done a decent job creating a fun slot built around
the theme of Andre the Giant, the wrestling character.

This is a fun five reel slot featuring NextGen’s famous
expanding wilds, as well as a cool Battle Bout Bonus in which
you can watch Andre the Giant doing his trademark ring moves.
The Free Spins round has a unique feature – if you spin enough
special Andre the Giant symbols, you will re-trigger all free
spin wins, so that you basically get double the free spins for
the rest of the game.

Andre the Giant offers up to twenty-five pay lines, and each
line can be set to be worth between $0.01 and $2 per spin. That
gives the game a total wagering range of between $0.01 and $50
per spin. The game’s top prize is worth 5,000 credits, for a
total value of between $50 and $250,000.

Read Full Game Review

Blood Lore

Blood Lore is based on the “vampires vs. werewolves” motif
that’s become popular since the release of the Twilight novels
and films. Blood Lore sets the Vampire Clan against the Werewolf
Clan, though without much in the way of plot or story, mostly as
a backdrop for a tradition 3×5 video slot. Blood Lore allows you
to bet on up to twenty pay lines per spin, at a cost of between
$0.02 and $40 each. That’s a total betting range of between
$0.02 and $80 per spin.

It’s pretty typical of NextGen to produce a game with such a
wide variety of available bets. The 5,000 credit top prize is
also a trademark of NextGen slots, and it means a top prize of
between $100 and $400,000. But since the luckiest players of
Blood Lore will trigger that top prize during the game’s Free
Spins round (during which all prizes are tripled), the true top
prize range is from $100 to $1.2 million.

That’s an amazing fixed prize, the kind of money you usually
only see with progressive online slot games.

Casinomeister

Casinomeister is a slot that’s near and dear to our hearts,
since it takes as its theme the website Casinomeister and its
creator, Bryan Bailey. We use Casinomeister a lot in our reviews
and discussions of the online gambling business, so any time we
get to play this Casinomeister-themed game and earn money for
reviewing it, we’re happy.

This is a five reel thirty payline slot with a 10,000 credit
top prize, a wild symbol that doubles all wins it completes, a
free spins round in which all wins are tripled, and a bonus game
in which you get to metaphorically “lock up” rogue casino
operators, shown as greedy pigs in the world of the game.
Credits can be set to a value of between $0.01 and $2 each, and
a max bet requires a wager on twenty pay lines, meaning a max
bet ranges from $0.20 to $40 per spin.

Doctor Love

A typical arrangement (five reels and twenty pay lines)
doesn’t mean this game is typical. It’s anything but. One of
just a handful of NextGen slots to get a sequel (and a third
game is now in the works), Doctor Love includes all the bells
and whistles available to NextGen’s designers. It uses a scatter
symbol, expanding wilds, a gamble feature allowing you the
chance to double every single win, a free spins round in which
all wins are tripled, the ability to re-trigger every free spin
win, a bonus round with a skill element, a huge betting range
(with credits available between $0.02 and $5 each), and a 5,000
credit prize that’s eligible for tripling during bonus or free
spins rounds.

Basically, Doctor Love is stuffed with extras, and while the
plot is lacking, it feels like you win more bonuses, free spins,
and extra games on Doctor Love than on other NextGen titles. In
fact, we’ve found that we’re usually happiest with the NextGen
titles that allow bets as low as $0.02, rather than $0.01.
Spending that extra penny gets you access to games with much
more replay value and more addictive in-game features, not to
mention the ability to double or triple your winnings.

James Dean

Another strange concept for a licensed slot – James Dean, the
actor who embodied and invented the “live fast and die young”
philosophy. James Dean, the inventor of casual cool, the
gorgeous Hollywood star who lived so fast and died so young he
never even got to see his final film.

Once again, we think we know what NextGen is doing by
creating these oddball licensed games – it must have been both
inexpensive and easy to license James Dean’s image and a couple
of audio clips by a Dean sound-alike actor.

Unfortunately, the game isn’t that much fun. No video clips
are available, and it feels like a typical NextGen slot with
some James Dean and classic film graphics thrown in. James Dean
is a five reel and twenty-five pay line slot with a cool 1950s
rock and roll theme and a top prize of 5,000 credits. The image
of James Dean himself is a powerful symbol in the game – just
one James Dean photo triples the value of the win and rewards
three free spins, each of which can be re-triggered as part of
the game’s built-in gamble feature.

Bettors can set the credit value anywhere between $0.01 and
$5 each, which means a max bet on twenty-five pay lines ranges
from $0.25 to $25 per spin.

Conclusion

NextGen Gaming has been creating and licensing online slot
games for nearly twenty years. The company has quietly released
some of the best-reviewed online slots, often licensing them to
other designers with very little fanfare. All the while, NextGen
has been forming partnerships with the world’s biggest brands
and online casinos, and are now setting foot in new regulated
markets, such as regulated land-based and online casinos in the
state of New Jersey. The end-result is a huge company with
massive sway in the industry but without a household name.

The ten games reviewed above are just a fraction of the total
slot library produced by this innovative Australian slot
designer. NextGen slots are known for having a large number of
interesting bonuses and rewards that add replay value. While
NextGen is light on licensed games and they don’t produce a
large number of progressive jackpot slots, they are releasing
some of the best-reviewed video slots with the most interesting
bonus rounds, side bets, and side games.