July 7, 2021
This has been a difficult year for many of us, but it’s been a big one for the online casino business, and especially the live online casino bonus. The live sector has been booming for a while now and perhaps it didn’t hurt that many people were missing out on in-person human contact.
Live casino games work by streaming casino games from studios over the internet. Players interact with the games in the usual way through an interface but a real person handles the chips, calls the wins and losses and deals the cards.
The industry is dominated by a few big players at the moment: Evolution Gaming, NetEnt (who have just been bought by Evolution), Playtech, Pragmatic Play, and Ezugi are the games you’re most likely to see.
With most casinos enjoying exclusive tables how do you pick the best games?
Here are the titles that are getting the punters to crows around – virtually – in spring 2021.
1 – Lightning Roulette
Evolution Gaming are a company that have really taken live games into the next dimension. Their lightning games are a great example of why. A standard roulette game is given extra interest and value (a return to player of around 97.3% is quotes – theoretical remember) with special bets.
In this game up to 5 numbers on the wheel and struck by lightning and given multipliers of up to 500-times. You can see that this will make players look at the high-risk single number bets, so make sure you play safely, but adding jackpot potential to roulette has made this game the founder of a dynasty.
2 – Crazy Time
Evolution again reminding us that the casino means more than the old classics in 2021 with one of the TV game shows that are so popular now on live casino sites.
Crazy Time is quite typical of the model. It is based on Pachinko, a Japanese gambling game that sends tiny metal balls tumbling through a frame.
With lively presenters and a quite complex gameplay cycle that goes through several stages, Crazy Time is engaging and obviously winning fans.
3 – Monopoly Live
The ultimate big-money board game, Monopoly was actually devised as an anti-capitalist work (Monopolies are supposed to be bad, remember), so we’ll chalk a few irony points up for its massive success across the gambling world.
This award-winning game is based on the Dream Catcher wheel game, with the Monopoly board added in to deliver prizes. This is another Evolution hit.
4 – Quantum Roulette
Playtech are the first company to break the Evolution monopoly on our top-10 with a pumped-up (they actually call it roulette on steroids) version of the world’s favourite casino gambling game.
It’s not unlike the Lightning concept from Evolution, with some numbers given massive multipliers to add a jackpot dynamic to the usually relative low-key top prizes of the spinning wheel. The presentation and aesthetics are futuristic and very attractive, you can see why you’d want to try some obscure physics.
5 – First Person Roulette
And, we’re back in the Evolution fold again, with another game style. With the rules of casino games set almost in stone, the live casino world has looked to add presentational and gameplay tweaks in order to give online gamblers the novelty they seem to crave.
This innovation from Evolution is a switcheroo! Players can start out playing the rng (a random number generator-run simulation) version of the game before hitting a Go Live button to teleport themselves into the live casino.
It’s new, and obviously making a big impression on players.
6 – First Person Lightning Roulette
Evolution combine two big-hitting ideas in one by taking the lightning strikes and big prizes of the lightning games that are such a big hit with live players and the first-person mechanic that allows players to switch into the world or tables and clicking balls.
It’s a beautiful looking game, with excellent 3-D effects in the computerised version, and you can see why it’s been so popular since 2019.
7 – Deal or No Deal Live
Deal or No Deal is a bit of an enigma. It was a game show with absolutely no skill, but a huge following who were fascinated by the human stories of its contestants and the chance to win enormous prizes. Its breakthrough on UK TV is one of the big moments in the mainstreaming of gambling in this country.
This game takes its cue from the TV show, with RNG qualifying rounds before the big-money game, complete with telephone banker. It was exclusive when it was released in June 2019, and Evolution will hang on to this franchise for as long as they can.
8 – Blackjack
Evolution’s generic blackjack game rates a place in our chart. It’s massively popular with players because it’s the perfect casino game – it’s very simple to learn but can reward study and might even have a skill element to it.
Of course, this being online you can play blackjack in myriad different ways, including all the big rule variants (Vegas, European, Atlantic City) and some nice gameplay innovations, like social games.
9 – Adventures Beyond Wonderland
This is a game show from Playtech that’s new in 2021 and not yet widely available, so it looks like players are keen to get on board. It’s a wheel game, with multipliers that can rack up a 50,000 coins win from a weirdly fairy-tale world.
A new one to try a spin on.
10 – Spin a Win Live
Another Playtech wheel game offers very high RTP at over 97%. It’s quite a simple game with a roulette base and multipliers on prizes for those big wins. A lot of this game’s appeal relies on its simplicity – anyone can understand it – and then the liveliness of the presenters who have to sell it.
Live casino games are likely to be the big news in 2021 so get in on the ground floor and check out some of the biggest and best titles in the world.