A PIRATE’S LIFE
Eclipse Gaming releases a swashbuckling duo of games in the new “Adventures on the High Seas” family
By Frank Legato
Georgia-based Eclipse Gaming manufactures slot games for Class II Native American markets, but that classification— they are technically electronic bingo games, the revenue from which goes exclusively to the tribes—means little or nothing to the fans of Eclipse games.
While Eclipse may not have the R&D war chest of an IGT or Aristocrat, the quality and entertainment value of Eclipse slot games stand up unashamedly to those of the biggest suppliers in the business. The artwork, graphics and sound of these games are remarkable, and the deployment of the most popular game features in the business completes the picture.
That’s good news for players in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and other states where Indian casinos host Eclipse slots. Meanwhile, the company continues to churn out fun new games, and lately, they’ve come in the form of game families. “We are focusing on game families rather than stand-alone games like we had been doing in the past,” says Tamara Johnston, studio program manager at Eclipse, “because we want to foster longterm engagements and further support our tribal partners.”
Johnston’s latest project promises to foster those long-term engagements with players. It is a fun pirate-themed game family called “Adventures on the High Seas.” The first two games in the series—Blackwater’s Bounty and Rose’s Revenge, featuring central male and female pirate characters—convey the swashbuckling pirate theme through a rich collection of primary-game features and bonuses, capped by a pirate-ship battle played out in an array of color and booming sounds.
ACTION-PACKED
Just like an Errol Flynn movie, the Adventures on the High Seas games are packed with action, starting with the primary game. There are two primary-game bonus features. The base game is a five-reel, 25-line setup, but players can keep an eye on the fourth and fifth reels. If compass symbols line up on those two reels, they become one large compass for a bonus spin.
Once the image is combined, the compass displays credit awards on each of the four primary directions. When the player hits the spin button, the needle on the compass spins.
The main game character—Blackwater, who is a skeleton pirate, a la Pirates of the Caribbean; or Rose, a beauty in colorful dress holding a saber and an 18th century flintlock pistol—stands atop the compass as the accumulated award counts off. “To really accentuate the win, we have Rose or Blackwater on top smiling at you,” says Johnston.
For the other base-game feature, the main character’s sidekick, a pirate monkey named Patches for Rose and a parrot named Scurvy for Blackwater, appears on the screen to award bonus credits to the player. Patches is steering a boat full of cash and jewels while Scurvy flies in and tosses you a prize.
There are two main bonus features. During the primary game, a collection pot feature is ongoing. Every time a doubloon lands on the reels, it will fly up to the treasure chest on the top screen. The treasure chest grows as more doubloons fly into it, until it bursts—with a flashy animated explosion—to trigger a jackpot picking bonus.
A grid of treasure chests appears on the screen. The player picks treasure chests until revealing three matching jackpot icons, awarding bonus awards of $10 (Mini) or $25 (Minor) that scale with the denomination, or progressive jackpots resetting at $750 (Major) or $5,000 (Grand).
“Each jackpot is color-coded, and there is a nice rainbow effect as you pick each treasure chest,” Johnston explains. “It’s visually engaging for the player, and there is a nice celebration with Rose winking at you.” (With Blackwater, it’s more of a grin.)
According to Johnston, the math behind this feature, while skewed toward the lower three jackpots, is spread out among those prizes. “We tried to make it where you’re not getting the Mini every single time you get this feature,” she says. “We put a little more money into that feature so you can get more than just the Mini most of the time.”
THE BIG BOATS
The signature feature of the game is the Battle Ships Feature, a first- person battle between the main protagonists. Special cannon symbols on the first and fifth reels trigger this feature.
Players will shoot their cannon at their enemy’s ship to rack up additional credits as they try to sink their opponent. The battle continues with the opposing ship taking on damage until the player runs out of ammo. Anywhere from three to six cannonballs will be randomly awarded for players to fire.
Johnston says the animation and booming sounds of the ship battle put on a particularly compelling show when two adjacent machines go into the bonus simultaneously.
“The machines aren’t going to be connected in the field, but it’s fun to imagine that if you and the guy next to you get into the feature at the same time, it feels like you’re battling each other,” she says.
In all, Adventures on the High Seas is packed with features one doesn’t find in a lot of Class II slot games, particularly all combined in a single game. “The Class II player doesn’t normally get quite this much excitement and animation with their games,” comments Britt Carter, Eclipse’s new marketing specialist who comes from the world of slot influencers. “This is something I’m really excited to be able to showcase with these games.”
The game also is a testament to the game development and engineering talent at Eclipse. “That’s what our guys are good at,” says Johnston. “There are four features in this; it’s a pretty sizable game. They were able to put less money into the base games so they could put more money in the features—into the random credit feature and the compass feature, so they can happen more often, and enough money in the jackpot pick feature and ship battle feature so there are good prizes within them.”
She adds that big prizes in the ship battle were essential, because it’s the least frequent of the features. “We wanted to make sure that the player gets a really nice prize, because this feature doesn’t happen very often,” Johnston says. “Because the player doesn’t see this happen so often, we wanted to drive out the entertainment value in this feature, and make it really special for them.”
The new game family will be in casinos in early April, and Johnston estimates that this may be just the beginning of the series. “We are definitely planning on turning this into a full series of games, since it has such an engaging story behind it,” she says. “We’ve actually already started thinking up a lot of other features that we can put into these games to supplement them once they really take off.”
Johnston says that of all the features in these games, the visuals stand out the most. “I think the players are really going to enjoy the art style,” she says. “You can tell we spent a lot of time on the art. It’s one of the first compliments we get with these games—that they look awesome.
“On top of that, people really love the sound package. It feels like you’re really immersed in the adventure together, since it tells a story. And you can choose whether you want to play the hero or the villain. That’s really big right now, heroes versus villains. It’s the theme of every movie and game right now.”
Just like Errol Flynn.
