Synergy Blue rolled out four new slot games today, with three featuring the company’s signature focus on arcade-style skills designed to appeal to a new generation of players.

“We want to provide something different each time we come out with a game, so we can cater to different people or different styles of play,” CEO Georg Washington told CDC Gaming Reports. “It comes down to providing something for everybody.”

The newly available games are:

• Joyride Jackpot, a driving game that can be played solo or with friends. Players choose from eight cars and five racecourses.
• Blizzard Blast, a touchscreen game with 200 levels and the company’s first standalone progressive jackpot. Players match and blast characters or shapes for a shot at winning. A “persistence” feature lets returning players resume at the last level they reached. Washington expects a progressive-jackpot feature to be available in three to six weeks.
• Zombie Heat, a defense-style game in which players use a cannon or traps to battle space zombies. Players can set the difficulty level at easy, medium, or hard.
• Royal Dragon Saga, the company’s first traditional video slot game.

The newly available games offer operators several choices of return-to-player and volatility percentages. As with traditional slots, players can alter their bets or quit whenever they want.

Washington said the first games will be placed in Nevada, California, Oklahoma, Florida, and Southeast Asia.

Las Vegas-based Synergy Blue offers about two dozen slot titles, most of them “skill-influenced” or “arcade-style” games.

Washington sees these games as a way to attract players looking for something other than traditional slots. He likens the entry of arcade-style slots to the introduction of electronic table games (ETG), which initially had difficulty gaining traction in the U.S. market.

Operators had to try various placements and confirm that ETGs attracted new players rather than cannibalizing the slot fans. “Now they’ve sort of come into their full stride,” Washington said. Another hurdle ETGs faced was an insistence that the games meet the house average for slot machine revenue.

“ETGs may not hit the house average, but they cater to a very different demographic than a slot player, and it’s similar with us as well,” he added.

Washington said Blizzard Blast is fast-paced enough that it can match the number of games per hour of traditional slots. Manufacturers of skill-influenced games “struggle a little bit” to meet that goal of a spin every five or six seconds, he said. Blizzard Blast players can go as fast or slow as they want in exploding on-screen blocks.

Blizzard Blast appeals to players from age 25 to Baby Boomers, Washington said. Women from 40 to 65 account for about 60 percent of people playing similar games on social platforms, “so we think we can cater to both markets.”

The games use Synergy Blue’s patented HAWG (Hybrid Arcade Wager-based Gaming) platform, allowing operators to meet regulations in their jurisdiction, while providing interactive gaming.

The company’s 2600 cabinet series, designed with the help of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, includes “Blue Safe Touch,” an antimicrobial media embedded in frequently touched surfaces to inhibit the transfer of viruses and germs. In addition, UVC filtration on the ducts cleans incoming and outgoing air. It also features a bartop version that can use offer all the new games except Joyride Jackpot.

Washington noted that casinos catering to local residents have seen good crowds since reopening from the coronavirus shutdown, with a concentration of younger gamblers showing up. That backs up findings of the company’s April survey of consumers.

“I think we’ve seen that first stage of people coming back,” Washington said. “There is a bit of a pent-up demand for the locals casino, and then once we sort out how to travel again, I think we’ll see that pick up on the destination side. We’re excited about that. We would love to show our games to those younger demographics. so we can keep them around.”