Red Rake Gaming announced on Sep. 5 that it is the latest slots manufacturer to obtain a license to offer its games in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State will be the first point of entry to the US market for the Spanish developer.
Red Rake boasts that its games are available in 22 languages and support over 100 currencies. It holds licenses for over 20 non-US regulated markets, mostly in Europe. Pennsylvania may be its first US state, but it won’t be its last.
Nick Barr, the Managing Director for Red Rake’s Maltese office, said:
We could not be more thrilled to have been approved for operating in PA and already have seen a huge demand from operators for our content across the state. We are equally delighted to now being able to offer the players who have enjoyed our social games over the years to have the ability to play with real money in Pennsylvania. We are extremely confident about the US and the integral part it will play in Red Rake Gaming’s continued growth.
US social casino players making the transition to real money play may already be familiar with some of Red Rake’s products. Although this marks the first time its games are legal for real money play in the US, Red Rake says it has been active in numerous states with some of the largest play money casino brands.
It’s not clear yet which Pennsylvania online casino sites will sign partnerships with Red Rake. However, all the major national brands operate in the state and are potential candidates: BetMGM Casino, DraftKings Casino, Caesars Casino, etc.
The Red Rake ‘Super Series’ Slots
Red Rake’s slots tend to be feature-rich, with multiple individually simple mechanics layered together to produce an experience full of bells and whistles.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in its Super Stars Series, which Red Rake says it plans to bring to the US. These are a collection of 5×3 reel slots featuring “old-school” symbols like cherries, 7s, bells, and bars.
The series begins with Super 5 Stars, with features as straightforward as its visuals. The only bonus mechanics center on three types of scatter symbols: two award cash prizes, and the third unlocks a free spins bonus round. The bonus round is simple, awarding between 5 and 20 spins with either a 2x or 3x prize multiplier.
Each subsequent installment in the series increases the number in the title and adds new bonus features to the mix: Super 7 Stars, Super 10 Stars, Super 12 Stars, and so on.
The most recent of these, Super 30 Stars, came out just a few weeks ago on August 17, 2023. It has no less than 11 bonus features accumulated from previous installments and may be intimidating to players who haven’t experienced earlier games in the series. Presumably, Red Rake and its eventual partners will ease Americans in slowly.
Red Rake’s ‘Million Ways’ to Win
Aside from the Super Stars Series, Red Rake’s main claim to fame is its trademarked Million Ways mechanic.
Million Ways games are all-ways slots with a 6×10 reel configuration. Since every possible payline counts, that means there are indeed 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10, or 1 million different combinations of symbol positions that pay out.
If you’re wondering why that doesn’t result in a win on almost every spin, there are a large number of blank symbols on the reels. Since the number of potentially paying symbols on each reel varies from spin to spin, the effect is a game that feels quite a bit like Big Time Gaming’s Megaways, where the differently sized symbols also mean a variable number fitting onto the reels each time.
Also like Megaways, some but not all Million Ways games include a cascade feature allowing for chain reactions on winning spins. In the more recent titles, generating long chains is also the key to triggering free spins.
There are over a half-dozen games in the Million Ways series, including Million Dracula, Million Zeus, and the most recent, Million Vegas. All games in the series include a true persistence minigame where non-winning spins or particular symbols fill a bonus meter gradually, triggering a special feature when it fills.
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