Gaming across the board is an incredibly fast-moving corner of the wider entertainment industry. Developers are forever pursuing new and inventive ways to get their ideas across, while hardware providers consistently raise the bar for what’s possible in the software. In 2024, the hottest trends so far point to innovation continuing to change the state of play of one of the oldest forms of gaming while the little guys are increasingly winning over the audience.
Megaways Continues to Make Waves
The sheer volume of Megaways games out there now speaks to the undeniable popularity of the mechanic. At its core, it’s the prime example of how innovating base concepts in any form of gaming can lead to tremendous success.
In the vast majority of slot games, from slot machines to online video slots, paylines dictate where you win. Online, you usually need to align at least three of the same symbol from the leftmost reel to the next one and then the next one. It used to be that one, three, five, or ten paylines were the standard, leaving many potential wins missed.
Megaways is all about changing that state of play and mixing up the results of every spin. As you’ll see in any game at the Megaways casino, there are now six reels, each of which features an array of symbol sizes. Where a normal video slot would have three symbols land on each of the five reels, in Megaways, you could get two or even seven or more at once per reel.
It’s called Megaways because this setup can have a mega number of paylines in play, and Megaways slots have them all live. Whenever you roll the reels, every possible payline from left to right is active and can award wins. On top of this, symbols often cascade in these games, so winning combinations pay, pop, and make way for more symbols to try to make more wins.
Indie Games Becoming Much More Prominent
Indie games have steadily enhanced their share of the ever-expanding video games market. On the Steam platform, 31 per cent of all revenue goes to indie creations, which is a six per cent increase on 2018. It comes at a time when triple-A games are increasing their upfront costs and sometimes then bundle in-game purchases and microtransactions either for the most popular game modes or after launch – with EA Sports FC and Tekken 8 being the prime examples of these.
For the most part, indie games cost under£28 or $35, and you get the whole game for that price. DLC tends to only arrive if the game sells well enough, which is welcomed by gamers, and sometimes, those add-ons are free of charge. Most recently, we’ve seen the likes of Balatro, Helldivers 2, Pagalworld, Manor Lords, Animal Well, Sons of the Forest, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Dredge, and Still Wakes the Deep all achieve incredible critical success and cultivate hefty followings.
Down the line, this trend looks set to continue. The UE5 kit, for example, offers a comprehensive toolbox of quick and relatively easy-to-deploy tools that make for very visually impressive games. Grand improvements in aesthetics will help sales, and the speed at which the quality can be achieved will only empower indie developers further.
So far in 2024, slot players have gravitated to Megaways slots more than ever before, while in video gaming, more are willing to take a punt on indie games. Both trends prove that creativity and making a new experience is increasingly desired by the audience.
