Novomatic Casinos

If you were to ask the people of Austria to name the biggest brand associated with the country, they would doubtless say Red Bull. However, if you were to ask the people of Austria to name the second-biggest brand associated with the country, if they did not plump for jewellery makers Swarovski then they would probably choose Novomatic.

That information might surprise a lot of people from outside of Austria, but that’s just how well-known the Novomatic brand is to the people of Vienna and beyond. Novomatic is one of Austria’s real success stories, employing 30,000 people (in Austria and elsewhere) and with annual revenues in excess of €5 billion. Not bad for a company that was a one-man firm in 1980!

Novomatic has interests across the board when it comes to all forms of gambling both online and in the real world, and via Greentube and a small number of other companies they have released a few very playable games.

Several hundred slot machines have been developed for online use, and are available at a select number of Novomatic casinos. Many of these are actually ported from the land-based machines which have already proven popular all over the world. Titles like Lucky Lady’s Charm or Book of Ra are two examples, among many more.

All About Novomatic – Online Casino Software Providers

The roots of Novomatic can be traced back to the 1970s. Pioneers Gerhand Brodnik and Johann Graf began a business where they imported pinball machines from Belgium and exported them around their native Austria and in other neighbouring countries. Austria was hit by a pinball boon and Graf and Brodnik became billionaires.

Brodnik left the business in 1980 and Graf decided to explore different markets. He founded Novomatic with the idea to create slots and casino game cabinets that could be sold to casinos and other establishments. Just like pinball, this proved to be a huge hit.

Novomatic did not really move into the online casino market until 2010 when they bought successful online slots company Greentube. Novomatic has since expanded its reach to include self-service betting terminals, lottery ticket vending machines and lottery terminals, but its core business is unchanged – creating iGaming cabinets for real-world enterprises.

Novomatic Casinos

There seems to be a big difference in strategy, between the way Novomatic operates in the land-based market compared with the online one. There are literally thousands of land-based casinos which are offering their very popular games, but if you look at the online industry there are only a couple dozen of casinos that they’ve signed up with.

All this makes it even more important for you to find just the right casino to sign-up with if you want to experience Novomatic’s slots.

What Does Novomatic Offer

Novomatic is a developer that offers instant-play titles, the majority of which will be slot machines. You also get roulette, card or table games, as well as some skill-based titles, so they’ve created other types of content as well. They haven’t neglected the mobile niche either, and some of their games are available to play on such devices.

For the most part, they’re not going to be too adventurous. As they adapt land-based machines for use online, you will particularly enjoy their content if you’ve experienced it in a regular casino before, and you want access to the same games from the comfort of your own home. With the experience they have, they could very well decide to innovate as well in the future.

Slot machines by far, the most titles that are available from Novomatic will fall into this category. The likes of Book of Ra or Lucky Lady’s Charm each come in about three different versions. A lot of games will have the usual themes, with adventure and luck being two of the ones represented. There will also be slots inspired by gangsters, Asian women, fantasy, Australia, classics or bank robberies, and this gives you just a taste of the variety that is available.

While some players have complained that the quality of their games is not as high as those available from dedicated online developers, the strategy that they employ seems to work for them, as they mostly cater to players that started in the land-based casinos and which want the same games that they already know and love, but online.

Jackpots & Bonuses

As with any developer, the jackpots you get to take home will vary in attractiveness, depending on the type of action the slot is designed to offer. Go for a game like Fruit Fortune, and you could win a progressive jackpot that reaches high six-figure values. Get smaller payouts, of 5,000x, from a game like Book of Ra Deluxe. That’s not an amount to scoff at either though. Often enough, multipliers will be present during the free spins, and they will improve your winnings further (as is the case in Lucky Lady’s Charm Deluxe).

RTP wise, their games will often pay somewhere along the lines of 95%, which is a bit lower than what you will get from others that operate online. I’d imagine they’re a lot better than the machines you get to play on at land-based casinos.

When speaking about special features in Novomatic slot machines, you usually talk about things like wild symbols or scatters that deliver free spins. The developer hasn’t proven that adventurous with their online titles, but they’re not giving you only basic features either. They tend to improve the free spins usually, and while in some games they could have a special expanding symbol inside, in others they might deliver 3x multipliers that will effectively triple the size of your wins.

Important Features

Novomatic games have been developed for all devices, thanks to the instant-play technology that is at its basis. All you need to do is load up a browser and access your favourite Novomatic casino, the game will work both on PC and on mobiles. Whether you’re on Android or iOS, even on Windows Mobile, their games will just work.

The Leading Novomatic Games

If you were, to be honest, then you’d probably not think of Novomatic when it comes to cutting-edge slots with dynamic gameplay action, scintillating graphical experiences or game soundtracks so memorable you play their games just to listen to the music. With Novomatic its key that their slots are of the old-fashioned variety, as most of their games are hosted in real-world casino cabinets and players do not generally want to read an essay before they start playing.

Here are three examples of some of Novomatic’s finest work.

Book of Ra

Book of Ra is probably Novomatic’s most-played slot. It is certainly the game that’s found with a prominence at many online casinos. Like many similar slots, the Book of Ra has an Egyptian theme (with Ra being the Egyptian god of the sun) and if you play this game, you are more than likely to be reminded of a famous 80s film featuring an archaeology professor with a taste for adventure.

This is a very simple game with only nine paylines, but for many people, that’s what makes it extremely appealing.

This title from Novomatic has become so popular that it has been granted a handful of sequels, including Book of Ra Deluxe and Book of Ra Magic.

Lucky Lady’s Charm

If Book of Ra is too full of testosterone for you, then you might that to engage your fingers with the Lucky Lady’s Charm slot – just make sure you don’t chip off any nail varnish!

This gentle slot is very similar to Book of Ra – in fact so similar that Novomatic has been accused of stripping the original slot and reskinning it with the latter. This game does have one more payline than Book of Ra, and a lucky charm-filled side game.

It also – like Book of Ra – has generated a few sequels. Lucky Lady’s Charm Deluxe 10 adds five super-expanding reels to the slotting mix, while Lucky Spin Jackpots takes the game into a different dimension altogether.

Sizzling Hot

If you thought the nine paylines with Book of Ra is a little tight, then stand by for Sizzling Hot which has only five! This slot is aimed exclusively at the (very) casual slots player who likes nothing more than to watch the reels spin and winning paylines be created.

Novomatic has paid homage to their classic slots past as this game features all the symbols associated with traditional real-world slot machines – fruit, bells and lucky sevens all line up across the five reels in order to generate payouts.

If five paylines is not enough for you then you can always generate more playing Sizzling Hot Quattro in which you play four versions of Sizzling Hot at once! You can always generate an extra reel too by playing Sizzling Hot 6 Extra Gold.

Final Thoughts on Novomatic Gaming

Despite their success online it’s clear that Novomatic regards the real world as the number one generator of finance for them. If you look over their website you see that they push their gaming cabinets far more than they do their online slots; the latter they leave to Greentube and their other subsidiaries.

With revenues in the billions, it’s unlikely that Novomatic is going to change that stance any day soon.