Will Barnes, co-founder of DreamSpin, sat down with SlotsSpot to talk about our second release, Backstreet Wilds, and what he’s most looking forward to in our roadmap.
Hi Will, thanks for speaking with us today! Congratulations on the success of DreamSpin so far. Can you give us some information about your next release, Backstreet Wilds?
Of course, thank you!
Backstreet Wilds is our second release, and this time around we wanted to put a big focus on one kind of symbol, basing the entire game around a relatively simple mechanic. As the name suggests, we chose Wild symbols.
What features can players expect to find in Backstreet Wilds?
There are a few different elements that work together to make Backstreet Wilds exciting.
The main focus of the game is Wild symbols – with Smashing Wilds, Walking Wilds and Multiplier Wilds all available.
There’s also a Bonus Trail, triggered by landing Scatters. 2 Scatters trigger an Enhancer Respin with one of four enhancers, and 3, 4 or 5 Scatters trigger Free Spins, Super Free Spins or Mega Free Spins, respectively.
How do the Walking Wilds work in Backstreet Wilds?
Walking Wilds are one of the main features in this release – when Wilds smash through the reels, they can be regular Wild symbols, Multiplier Wild symbols, or Walking Wild symbols.
If they are Walking Wilds they spray and move in any direction (up, down, left or right) up to 3 positions, leaving a Wild symbol in each position they pass over.
Wild symbols also add their multiplier to any other Wilds they cross or create (up to maximum values of x5), so there’s lots of opportunity to improve winning combinations.
Can you tell us more about the enhancers?
When the Enhancer Respin is triggered from the Bonus Trail, players are awarded a respin with one of four enhancers – Walking Wilds, Wild Reel, Remove Lows, or Bonus. The Bonus enhancer awards an additional Scatter, immediately taking players into Free Spins.
The Walking Wilds enhancer adds a certain number of Walking Wilds to the reels for the respin, Wild Reel adds a full reel of Wild symbols, and Remove Lows removes all low paying symbols from the reels for the respin.
During Free Spins, the active enhancers are used on every spin – so symbols are removed for the duration of Free Spins, a Wild Reel is added on every spin, and at least 3 Walking Wilds are guaranteed on every spin.
If any Free Spins mode is retriggered, additional spins are awarded and the enhancers are upgraded, guaranteeing more Walking Wilds, 2 Wild Reels, and even more symbols removed.
Why did you decide to include enhancers?
We added the enhancers for a point of difference within the game.
There are lots of Wild symbol games on the market, and we had put a big focus on Wilds, so the enhancers were a fun way for us to keep things fresh for players, with each Free Spins feature having a different enhancer or combination of enhancers active.
It helps things to feel exciting and gives players an opportunity to figure out what their favourite combination is.
How did you decide on the theme for Backstreet Wilds?
We knew we wanted to do something that was quite well-known – in this case, fruits – but put a bit of a twist on it to make it our own.
We decided on the gritty backstreet theme because we thought this opened the most doors stylistically for us – we could have a lot of fun with the music and special symbols with this approach.
I think it’s all come together quite well. There’s nothing too unfamiliar, but it’s interesting enough that it hopefully makes players pause and really take it all in.
Can you tell us your favourite part of Backstreet Wilds?
From the gameplay I love the bonus retriggers. It is genuinely exciting when the enhancers are upgraded, particularly if you’re in Super or Mega Free Spins where you already have 2 or 3 enhancers working together.
I also love the Mystery Bonus Buy, because I think it’s a reasonable cost but offers great anticipation because of the chance of Mega Free Spins.
Outside of gameplay my favourite part is the big win count up with the puns. We have Fig Win, Plumbelievable, Lime is Money and Berried Treasure. Those are very fun with some great animations.
What are you most excited about in the DreamSpin roadmap?
We have a few cool releases in the pipeline, and I’m excited about each of them for different reasons. As we’re still quite new to the industry we’re still at the point where we’re trying lots of different things and finding the style and features that best suit us.
Our gritty, fruity Wild game is following Buzz Thrill, an outer-space, bee themed release with expanding symbols and Coins. Beyond these we have a few different themes (some classic, some quirky) and a lot of different features coming soon.
I’m looking forward to seeing what resonates most with players, but right now I’m particularly excited about our next release after Backstreet Wilds. It’s a cluster pays release with a great character, and I love both of those things!