Ainsworth Game Technology – Ramping Up

Four years ago, Ainsworth Game Technology began a process to reinvent itself in the slot market. The Australian company, which had made its name in the U.S. with high-denomination video, committed to broadening its game library with new game styles and the most popular game mechanics.

Since that announcement, Ainsworth has rolled out new games in all denominations, using its geographically diverse group of studios to develop games targeted to each market. Hits soon appeared, notably the San Fa series, and extensions of popular brands like QuickSpin in new versions featuring pot-filler features, hold-and-spin bonuses and other popular game mechanics of the day.

Meanwhile, the gradual adoption of the Unity game development platform has eliminated repetitive tasks in creating the games, resulting in a ramp-up of production quantity, along with the emergence of Ainsworth’s now-standard hardware platform, the Raptor cabinet, introduced late in 2023.

At the same time, Ainsworth has increased its footprint in all of its game verticals, from Class III to Class II, historical horse racing, VLTs and iGaming.

For the past two years, Ainsworth games have been consistently appearing near the top of the Eilers-Fantini game performance report, and according to Keith Kruczynski, vice president of North American studios, the focus now is to build on that success.

“We’re in year two of the Raptor rollout, and we’re obviously really happy with the success of San Fa,” he says, “which we followed up with games like Coin Kingdom and Triple Troves. We’re still seeing those perform at a very high level, so we’re building upon that foundation of success. We do that with brand extensions.”

At Global Gaming Expo, Ainsworth will launch extensions of popular game families including Triple Troves, Five Fortunes, The Enforcer and others.

“We have Raptor approved across all our jurisdictions in North America, and all our verticals,” says Sean Evans, vice president of product strategy, marketing and sales. “We are now getting to a stage where our cadence is effectively a game family every month, as the studios come together with Unity… Over each of the next nine to 12 months, we’re going to have at least four new games available every month.”

That includes new Raptor versions of established high-denomination hits, he adds. “We’re bringing back The Enforcer and The Night Hawk, our two strongest high-denomination games in dual screen right now.”

Improving technology has aided in those product rollouts. The Unity platform allows software to be ported straight from Class III to Class II and HHR, with five studios in North America using new technologies to increase overall production. “We are currently working on a process with an external provider to see how we can use artificial intelligence to improve the output of those teams,” Evans says. “We’ve been tasked by our CEO with improving our development cycle by 50 percent by the start of 2027.”

“I don’t think we can overstate the importance of our ability to port games across the multiple verticals,” adds Kruczynski. “Before, when we produced a game for Class III, it would take a year for us to get it approved for HHR and Class II. That’s now a couple of months.”

He says game output continues to increase as the Unity platform is used for more and more games—about 80 percent overall, a pace that will see all games produced using the new technology by a year from now. “That’s where we’ll utilize all those synergies in game development,” Kruczynski says.

The fruits of Ainsworth’s production ramp-up will be on full display at G2E in an exhibit of new games in all denominations, designed for all markets and all verticals. Ainsworth also will debut two new versions of the Raptor cabinet—the Raptor A-STAR 32, featuring three 32-inch monitors, and the Raptor Pedestal, a sleek slant-top in portrait slant and multi-screen slant versions.

In all, 12 new titles will be launched at G2E, including four new premium games.

Tripling Down

Among the most prominent titles Ainsworth will display at G2E will be in the Triple Troves family, with two new entries to the popular brand. The original Triple Troves, with base games Reigning Rhino and Dragon’s Delight, featured three persistent pots, six variations of the free-spin bonus, and a pick-three feature.

The new version of the game, built on the Unity platform and set to release close to G2E, adds a bonus wheel to the mix of features. Triple Troves Panda and Triple Troves Koala feature free games with expanding reels and multipliers added to the top symbols. Cash-on-reels symbols pay off instantly in the free games.

The pots award extra free games, “Jackpot Free Games” (jackpots are added to the reels) and “Ultimate Free Games,” on an expanded reel set.

The wheel bonus, triggered by five wheel symbols, is available in primary-game or free spins. The player is granted multiple spins on the wheel. When it lands on credits or a jackpot award, that slice transforms into “Collect.” The spins continue until a Collect slice lands.

“The original Triple Troves was successful, but it didn’t have a wheel,” Kruczynski says. “If something is successful, put a wheel on it and it’s even more successful. That’s pretty much an industry formula.”

Also on display at G2E will be a new version of Triple Troves set to release in Q2 2026. Triple Troves Bubble Up! features three colorful fish characters floating inside glass tubes. Special symbols fly up to the tubes that “bubble” the fish levels up until they reach the top and escape, triggering the free spins with one, two or all three enhancement features:

The gold fish turns poker symbols into higher-paying symbols for free spins, the purple fish adds multipliers to winning spins, and the red fish adds wild symbols to the reels. There is also a “Bubble” pick bonus that appears at the end of each feature, where the player can win progressives and credit prizes.

“This places Triple Troves into our premium space,” says Kruczynski. “The features are in a really great environment with the same sign package we offered (last year) with Neon’s Bonus Blast.”

More brand extensions to be launched at G2E include Five Fortunes: Duck & Cover, a follow-up to the Five Fortunes Emperor and Panda sister games released earlier this year.

According to Kruczynski, this game displays the next-level animation made possible by the Unity platform. In this case, it is used to animate funny duck characters in five pots that lead to enhancements to the Lock & Re-spin hold-and-spin feature. Different-colored firecrackers trigger the “Cash Boost,” “Power Burst” and “Cash Blast” pots at the top of the screen, which increase cash-on-reels values and add more coins to the screen in the hold-and-spin feature.

Particularly funny animation triggers the other two enhancements, “Power Boost” and “Power Blast,” represented by bombs held by the two very nervous duck characters until they burst to add cash-on-reels coins or increase values to spots surrounding the spot where they land during the hold-and-spin bonus.

Four lower-level jackpots are included in the Lock & Re-spin feature. The Grand is awarded by filling all 15 spots.

Premium Payoffs

The brand extensions from Ainsworth are accompanied by several new games on the Raptor Premium cabinet. One standout slated for Q4 2025 release is Atomic Gold, a funny homage to the 1950s “Atomic Age” and the flying saucer craze of the same period. It features a single collection pot—a dog in a rocket ship that comes alive in hilarious animation.

During the primary game—available in “Mars” and “Venus” versions—“Atomic Wilds” can appear on the middle reel that burst and fire wild symbols around the reel array. If a wild lands on an existing wild symbol, it adds a multiplier. This action can occur up to three times.

Six coins can activate a main hold-and-spin feature, or alternatively, at any time, a mystery trigger will occur, and the dog will throw a shower of coins across the reels to activate the feature. The dog’s rocket ship launches into the sky and the screen displays the hold-and-spin reels, with five 1950s TV sets above the reel array. It’s a standard three-spin cycle, with a clever twist:

Every time a reel fills with cash-on-reels coins and/or one of the three lower-level jackpot symbols, they are instantly awarded, and the TV above that reel displays a letter. The top Grand jackpot, a progressive resetting at $5,000, is awarded by spelling out G-R-A-N-D on the TV screens.

There also are special symbols that can appear to enhance the cash-on-reels values. If a rope appears, it triggers animation of the rope lassoing the symbol, and the dog grabbing at the rope in a tug-of-war, each tug increasing the value. If an alien appears, all the cash-on-reels values fly into one symbol, freeing up the original spots for more coins. If a flying saucer appears, it adds credits to the cash-on-reels symbols surrounding the spot. If a bone appears, it increases the value of one coin symbol. All of the enhancements play out in funny animation.

Another premium game to be released at G2E is Train Heist, a Western-themed game featuring beautiful artwork and graphics. The three-pot game is slated for release in 2026.

G2E Launches

Other games on display that will launch around the time of G2E include Dragon Legacy, an Asian-style game packed with bonus features. There are five pot enhancements to a free-spin round that starts at eight spins and can add spins along the way. The free-spin round can be triggered with one of the five enhancements, but coins continue to flow up to the pots during the free spins, making it possible to trigger the other pots during the feature.

The pots include Premium Symbols—which transforms free-spin symbols into higher-paying symbols—Free Games, Jackpot Pick, Wheel and “Red Envelope Reveal.”

The wheel spin, also triggered by two wheel symbols in the primary game, can lead to any of the five jackpots, including the top Grand. The Jackpot Pick has the player picking symbols until matching three to win one of the jackpots. Red Envelope Reveal carves out a “pay zone,” and when the target symbol lands in the zone, the player scratches it to reveal a mystery multiplier. There is a key in this feature that unlocks additional rows of symbols, up to 10. Free Games triggers one of the other four enhancements for the entire feature.

Another standout is Fa Cai Lightning, which includes a hold-and-spin bonus plus free games for which the player chooses the volatility, from five free games with 10X, 15X and 20X multipliers to 13 free games with 2X, 3X and 5X multipliers.

Finally, Ainsworth will launch new versions of San Fa Fortune and The Enforcer on the new Raptor A-STAR 32 cabinet. San Fa Fortune is a three-pt game featuring enhancers. One of the enhancers will double the reels in the free spin rounds, a first for Ainsworth, and the other will give players 12 free spins to start the round, instead of eight. The three pots offer “Sticky Free Games,” in which wild symbols stick for the entire feature; “Jackpot Free Games,” which accumulates symbols leading to one of the five jackpots; and “Retrigger Free Games,” which extends the feature.

The Enforcer Reloaded is a low-denomination version of one of Ainsworth’s most popular high-denom games. Each revolver symbol fills one of the bullets spelling the word “BONUS,” causing a revolver chamber to spin up to five times in a mini-hold-and-spin feature. Filling all six chambers with bonus credits awards the “Reloaded” jackpot of $1,500.

Free games feature sticky wild symbols, and the bottom two jackpots are “Must Hit By” progressives.

Kruczynski says this year’s G2E lineup reflects a continuous effort to improve upon what works in the market. “We have become extremely data-driven when it comes to our decisions on how we’re going to design games,” he says.

“We are looking at all the reports, at everything that’s working right, and then asking, ‘How do we take these ingredients and make it into our own great recipe?’”

That recipe is working, and it is still evolving.