Light & Wonder – Riding the Wave

Light & Wonder has drawn accolades around the industry for the progress it has made since shedding its lottery division in 2022 and refocusing on cross-channel game development.

Few have had a closer view of the evolution of Light & Wonder than Nathan Drane, the company’s chief product officer. Since joining in 2021, when the company was still Scientific Games, Drane has helped steer its transformation into today’s leading cross-platform global games company, one fueled by relentless product development and a growing roster of design talent.

“This has been a really exciting year for us,” Drane says. “If you look back over the past couple of years, we’ve been doing a lot of brand building, talent building, hardware and technology building. Now we’re seeing all of those efforts come to life.”

That investment in talent has paid off. Last year, Kelsy Foster, a 20-year veteran of slot design, joined as vice president of game design and quickly built a new studio from the ground up. Her team is now in full production, with their first titles set to debut on the Global Gaming Expo floor. More recently, Nate McGregor came onboard as studio director for the company’s Star studio in Sydney, further strengthening the global creative bench.

For Drane, the showcase at G2E is about much more than just games. “What I’m most excited about is demonstrating all the hard work that’s gone into our portfolio—our games, our hardware, our new cabinet variants—everything will be on full display.”

At G2E, L&W will present a strong mix of proprietary and licensed brands. Iconic franchises like Huff N’ Puff, Jackpot Party and Piggy Bankin’ will appear alongside brands such as Universal Monsters, The Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka.

“One of the hallmarks of our portfolio now is that we’re not over-relying on any one brand,” Drane says. “We pride ourselves on the breadth of talent across our teams, which fuels a wide range of ideas and perspectives in our portfolio. No longer will you see us leaning too heavily on just one internal or external franchise; we’re building a balanced mix of content across all of our cabinet models.”

He says the company has been careful in choosing licensing partners, and that shows in the results. “We’ve seen some of those investments show up on the scoreboard,” Drane says. “When you look at something like Kong: Skull Island, we’ve invested in a new license, but we’ve gone with something a little bit different, something that may be unique to the industry, and it has really struck a chord with the players.”

The LightWave

Light & Wonder will arrive at G2E with new games designed for all the various markets, and for verticals from Class III to Class II, VLTs, VGTs, historical horse racing and digital gaming. But the star of the show for the company will be the launch of its latest large-scale portrait cabinet, LightWave, which Drane calls “the most ambitious cabinet this company’s ever built.”

It’s not so much a cabinet as it is a presentation. The machines are built into a bank-wide visual presentation that seamlessly integrates machine-mounted LCD screens with high-resolution Micro-LED surround displays.

The synchronized displays merge into a unified, dynamic canvas, creating a spectacle of a slot presentation. The signage actually connects with the game, creating a theatrical light show that responds to events occurring in the slot game, in real time.

Drane says the name LightWave is a play on Light & Wonder and the Wave cabinet, the industry’s first curved slot monitor released by legacy Bally Technologies. The LightWave also uses a curved, 49-inch portrait monitor which fits nicely into the customer-interactive signage.

“This is the first bank-controlled mixed media signage package,” Drane says. “The game controls the sign. You go from a 49-inch screen to 170 inches of screen, because the whole LED segment is controlled by the game.”

The company couldn’t have picked a better game family to demonstrate the capabilities of LightWave: It will debut at G2E housing a new wide-area-progressive version of the hit game Frankenstein, called Frankenstein Returns.

In this format, the central feature of the Frankenstein game is a show of its own. The most memorable feature of the game occurs on an overhead bonus board when four Frankenstein heads line up on the reels. Lightning zaps from the electrodes jutting out of the heads on the reels up to the big board to zap credit awards, as the monster reacts with a grimace and a growl as the electricity charges up.

In the LightWave version, the lightning zaps also travel to the awards from the electrodes of the giant monster depicted on the game’s signage package, a remarkable display of synchronized animation and light tied to a main game event.

Additionally, in the new version of the game, the four jackpots, including the Grand, appear on the bonus board for possible zapping and collecting. Three new colorful Monster symbols have been added that can zap players with two to five prizes, supercharge multipliers up to 5X, or spark jackpots.

There also is a wheel feature that can unlock free games, Power Ups, and a chance at the Grand jackpot. During free games, Reel 1 and 5 have an “It’s Alive” feature, and each Monster comes alive with its own specialty: Yellow Monster awards prizes, Green Monster multiplies and awards prizes, Purple Monster rains multiple prizes, and the Fire Monster awards jackpots.

Frankenstein Returns won’t be the only game at G2E featured on the LightWave cabinet. “This is something we’ve been working on for a number of years. and we’re going to come out swinging at G2E with this,” Drane says. “We’re going to plant that flag. We’ll have five different games on LightWave including Frankenstein Returns, Dancing Drums Revolution, Visitors From The Planet Moolah, Ultimate Fire Link Cash Falls Explosion and Jackpot Party VIP-Disco. These are some of our biggest proprietary and licensed brands, all at G2E on this new cabinet.”

The original Jackpot Party, released by legacy company WMS in 1998, featured a video bonus of a picking game—you picked wrapped presents to reveal credit awards, and you kept picking until you unwrapped a “Pooper.”

The original bonus was a birthday party. It was one of the most popular slot machines of the early 2000s. Fast-forward to 2025—the new Jackpot Party VIP, on the LightWave cabinet and entertainment package, is a disco party. You’d better believe the company used the LightWave to complete the disco effect in the bonuses, from booming music to the light-speckled disco ball.

The new game is packed with bonus features. There is the Disco Bonus, a free-spin round played out to the backdrop of “Boogie Shoes,” the 1975 KC and the Sunshine Band hit that was made famous in Saturday Night Fever. There are 12 free spins, extended by “+2 Spins” symbols.

There’s the Boogie Down hold-and-spin bonus, with enhancers “Funky Town” and “Party Animal,” including a feature within the feature—a secondary hold-and-spin on a three-by-three grid. Filling up all nine spots with cash or jackpot symbols returns the VIP Jackpot, a progressive resetting at $1,000.

(The background music is another KC hit, “Get Down Tonight.”)

Content Variety

The LightWave games will share the G2E stage with a wide variety of new content from Light & Wonder, as well as another new cabinet, the 12-foot-high Cosmic Sky.

“Our Mural cabinet is one of the best jumbo cabinets in the gaming ops space. Cosmic Sky is the next iteration. It leverages the DNA of the Cosmic cabinet, but with the Mural canvas,” says Drane.

As Drane promised, the G2E game lineup will run the gamut from homegrown brands to progressives, from for-sale to gaming ops.

Among new entries to established brands, new Huff N’ Puff games will be launched in both premium video and stepper formats. On the sleek Cosmic Upright, which was launched early this year, is Huff N’ Puff We’ve Had Enuff.

The new game keeps the main features of the game series—the Three Little Pigs, the Wolf, trading houses up for mansions. But in the new game, players can win mansions and trigger the bonus wheel directly from the base game.

Among other extensions of current brands are Piggy Bankin’ Break In and Triple Blast from the Planet Moolah on the proprietary-brand side, and the new Wizard of Oz I’ll Get You My Pretty, which was released this summer, in gaming ops.

Piggy Bankin’ Break In is the first new Piggy Bankin’ title in 10 years. It is a three-pot game with an enhanced hold-and-spin feature. The pots are marked “Instant Win,” “Double Play” and “Repeat Win”—triggering instant collection of all cash-on-reel values, a double reel array, and repeats of cash-on-reels or even jackpot wins.

Triple Blast from the Planet Moolah is the latest in L&W’s hilarious series mixing cows and barnyard animals with invading aliens who beam them up to spaceships. This one is a three-pot game leading to an enhanced free-spin round in which the reel symbols in winning combinations disappear and new symbols cascade down to the screen.

The newest Wizard of Oz game focuses on the Wicked Witch, with bonuses that invariably involve the four main characters in the legendary film. It has Flying Monkeys who turn reels wild, and other bonuses covering memorable Wicked Witch of the West scenes. The witch’s castle in a night landscape is beautifully depicted on the large-format Mural cabinet’s monitor.

L&W will also bring the Universal Monsters franchise to a new stepper cabinet to be revealed at G2E.

“Our stepper has been the leading stepper now for 24 months,” Drane says. “We’re going to bring out a new iteration and it’s going to be coupled with one of our biggest brands and mechanics, Frankenstein—we’re going to bring out the Monsters franchise on a new stepper.”

New Brands

Light & Wonder will also introduce several original game brands at G2E, each bringing a unique twist to its portfolio. Ticket to Win features three train-themed collection pots, leading into a hold-and-spin bonus with an added secondary hold-and-spin for bigger rewards.

Power Pig is a lighthearted new series starring the “Zeus Pig,” who presides over four pig-shaped pots. These pots feed into the Power Tower, a ladder of escalating bonuses and progressives designed to keep players climbing.

In Lucky Lemmings, the action takes a funny turn as lemming symbols march up a cliff—only to be chased down by a fox symbol that triggers a stampede, sending lemmings tumbling onto the reels as cash symbols.

These fresh titles reflect Light & Wonder’s commitment to variety and humor, while also showcasing innovation across channels. The new themes will extend into Class II, HHR, and other emerging verticals.

The company is also refreshing its commitment in the electronic table games space with the launch of the Obsidian ETG.

“I really like what we’re doing. We’re innovating, we’re leading, and doing something a little bit different with our portfolio,” Drane says. “We’re going to plant that next flag.”