Royal Wins is an Australian games studio focused on bringing real money skill and chance social and casino games to various platforms. They work to provide adults with a variety of real money games and control in the way they play. Luke Jeffery, the community manager at Royal Wins, talks about the company and their product, Mojikan.
A Royal Change
Royal Wins, founded in 2013, is a Sydney based start-up which focuses on a hybrid social skill and chance-based experience for the web, desktop, and mobile devices. We have a dynamic team of experienced executives, game designers, developers, and artists who have honed their skills with stints at some of the world’s biggest game developers including Aristocrat, IGT, KMM, Konami, and NextGen Gaming.
Back in late 2013, the team decided to shut down their immersive online social game world known as MojiKan.com (which had been in beta-test for the past year). We had some incredible feedback and suggestions from our amazing user base and VIP members. As a result, we have taken this feedback into consideration and re-engineered the site.
A New Direction
With this new information, our game designers decided to focus the new Mojikan.com site solely on a totally new style of hybrid experience (skill+chance based games), where elements of each would be found in the other. Imagine a slot game where you could use your gaming skills to improve your chances of winning, or skill-based games that also featured a random number-generated bonus feature. We wanted to provide that type of experience.
Now that the base gameplay and genre was worked out, we had the luxury to be creative in deciding upon an overall theme. With a clean slate, our games designer’s imaginations ran wild, with the Mojikan theme evolving from a fantasy themed world, to a “Casino Royale-like” CIA spy thriller, to a Wild West saloon adventure. However, after many attempts, the theme and game-play just wasn’t the way we envisioned. These themes were too restricting and specific in the types of games that could be made. The Mojikan needed to have a broader, more open-ended theme. It was during this time that our team had a sudden spark of inspiration from the past Mojikan world and pulled a brilliant idea out of a hat! The Mojikan Kash Karnival was born, a carnival that could be fantasy, Wild West, and whatever we desired all at the same time because of its setting. This carnival housed all of the different types of games and soon it became apparent that we wanted to develop the idea further. This led to the final idea of the Kash Karnival™. This new “Karnival” theme worked on so many different levels. It meant that:
- We had a setting that could resonate with multiple target audiences, as carnivals are for people from all walks in life.
- We could be as magical and as crazy as we liked with the world and the characters which inhabit it, along with the stories we could tell.
- This gave us many opportunities to create countless types of games with multiple aesthetics, featuring wild characters and various stories.
This carnival idea lit a magic fire within our bellies, allowing our 3D and 2D artists to create an eclectic world of colorful environments and characters, as well as allowed our designers to go crazy with different types of games that span multiple genres. We can mix and match whatever we liked and it will just work!
Designing a Karnival
With a theme chosen, it was time to develop the new Mojikan world even further. We were put to the test to answer the question of who inhabits this world and, more importantly, what is this world? The first part of the question was easy to answer: a carnival needs a ringmaster. We decided that this ringmaster would be given the grand name of Mojikan.
The character of Mojikan had four main inspirations: Willy Wonka, Guy Fawkes, and, of course, the original Ring Master from the original Mojikan game. Our designers worked hard with Jason Williamson, our art director to create a robust back story and look for our protagonist. We wanted Mojikan to be a three-dimensional character with depth. This gave our 2D and 3D artists a chance to really develop the aesthetics of the game.
The Kash Karnival is the central hub and can be found on Moji Island. The central hub is an area where players gather and interact with each other. It acts as the main “station” before they enter various themed areas. Within the hub, there are two special areas for players to explore – the Skill District and the Adventure Casino. Each area is tailored towards two player bases: players who love skill games like Angry Birds or Candy Crush, and players who love to play social casino games like slots, blackjack, or roulette. Myles Blasonato, our lead game designer took the time to think extensively about what our players would want. From past experiences and feedback from the previous Mojikan, we concluded that we want to give players the best of both worlds; to combine elements of skill and Chance together into one seamless experience. This is how the Skill District and Adventure Casino was born.
The decision to make two separate areas was not taken lightly by our design team, as it would affect the overall user experience. The team needed to consider how a player would enter the game world and how they would filter through all of the different genres so they could easily navigate and find exactly what experience they wanted to have. The team thought it would be easier and less confusing to separate the two player bases and create two areas specifically tailored to each one. This allows both players to co-exist in the same space and even jump over to the other side and experience something they might never have before. It gives choice to the player to decide their own entertainment, whether it be skill games, chance games, or even both!
The Skill District is for gamers who love skill based experiences. This area is special because it allows social gamers to be rightly rewarded in a unique way for their amazing efforts by introducing small amounts of “casino-like” elements to the games. Players can choose different difficulty options and place various bets on how well they perform to give themselves a better chance at winning bigger prizes! The harder the difficulty, the bigger the prize!
The Adventure Casino is a unique area for social and online casino players. It contains all of what they love, such as slots and other popular casino games, but with more entertainment value. These games aren’t ordinary, standard casino games. The Adventure Casino games are designed to drive narrative and tell character-focused stories that engross the player into the world of Mojikan and its inhabitants.
For our upcoming Facebook release, we will launch with four games in total: two skill-based games and two chance-based games. I know what you are thinking, “Only 4?” But as we say here at Royal Wins HQ, quality over quantity.
“Don’t half-ass anything” is Myles’ philosophy. “Our team wants to build the best games; we want to dedicate our time to managing and perfecting a smaller number of games to ensure a solid gameplay experience and not churn out a bunch of crap that nobody wants to play for the sake of quantity, which is mostly what’s out there. We feel the trade-off is totally worth it and hope that our fans appreciate our efforts in making the best experience possible. However, that being said, we already have a bunch of exciting ideas in our road-map for new experiences just waiting to be created.”
If you like what is happening at Royal Wins or want to follow their progress on Mojikan’s Kash Karnival then feel free to “Like” their Facebook page or “Follow” them on Twitter.
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