We’re pleased to say we have been nominated in the Kongebonus Awards 2022 best joker slot category for Joker Max: Hit ‘n’ Roll Christmas Edition. Our CCO Andrew Crosby caught up with Kongebonus to talk about the title and all things Kalamba in 2023.

The Norwegian version of this Q&A can be seen here.

Congratulations on your nomination for best Joker Slot. What can you tell us about the nominated Joker Max slot? Just the fact that you decide to release it in a special Christmas edition means it has become a popular game all over?

First of all, thanks for the nomination, it’s always good when the team’s hard work is recognised! Our Joker series has been really popular with players – particularly Joker Max, which is why we decided to release it with a new mechanic added, Hit ‘n’ Roll, at Christmas. Hit ‘n’ Roll is our bonus wheel mechanic which gives players a chance to win either a feature or cash prize and it’s proving popular as we’ve re-released more hits from our back catalogue such as Safari Chase and Joker Leprechauns with the feature added with more to come.

We have to admit that Kalamba games in general are sort of an undiscovered territory for most Kongebonus members. This is your opportunity to introduce yourself to our community, and highlight what you think would be the main reason to test out your slots?

We’ve always tried to reach out to as many players as possible throughout our titles, and to that end, some are ‘hard core’, with story-based themes, innovative mechanics and creative narratives like Machina Reloaded Megaways™ and Rumble Ratz Megaways™ and some are more for casual players like FruitMax: Cashlines and Divine Gongs – so there’s really something for everyone in our back catalogue!

Going through your portfolio of titles it’s quite a variety of themes and mechanics. Except from Jokers and Megaways it’s difficult to find a red thread if you understand what we mean. Are Kalamba still searching for its own unique identity within slots?

Well, as I say, our aim is to make a broad range of slots – if there’s a ‘red thread’ then we’re aiming for then it’s quite simply to make great games. There’s no single universal player type – people play in a variety of countries and for a variety of reasons, so I’d say that as developers we should be trying to engage as many different players as possible.

Looking through your Hall of Fame big wins on the Kalamba web-page we saw that 23K x is the highest win ever on any Kalamba title. Despite several of your games having a theoretical max-win of 50 000x. Do you think your slots are too difficult to reach its max-win limit?

If a game is really popular and gets great attention and placement, then there’s always a chance to hit the maximum win. As you say we’ve had some really big wins in the past, including most recently the huge nearly 20k x win on Phat Cats Megaways™ on its second day of release, so there’s always the opportunity for players to notch up some really big prizes wherever they’re playing.

Even if we are not too fond of asking generic questions, we feel kind of obliged to ask which slot is your own favourite from all your releases up to now?

Apart from our Joker series of course, probably Phat Cats Megaways™. Everything from the art style to the features came off really well including the unique implementation of Megaways where we used nudges with the mechanic which I’m not sure if that is a first or not with Megaways™ but I think it is. The nudges and the mystery reveal together offer players huge amounts of potential.

What can we expect from Kalamba in 2023? Do you have something up your sleeve to stand out in the increasing competition we see amongst slot providers today?

Our next major release is Duel of the Dead Megaways™ which, as the name suggests, will include the classic Megaways™ mechanic plus a great Wild West zombie shootout feature we think players will love. We’re also developing some great offers for players with our new Cash Drops promotions which are small daily prize drops that are proving really popular. Also, we have some other great new slots out this year such as 9 Blazing Cashpot Megaways™, Divine Gongs and even more titles in our low minimum bet Mini-Max and wheel bonus Hit ‘n’ Roll series, so it’s going to be a busy year.