Lightning Box Games has a history in pretty much all sorts of casino gaming. Land-based, online, and social, they’ve designed and created games and solutions for all of these fields. For all of these areas, their interest has always been in slots. There are a whole lot of them, representing various styles and types.
This company has a widespread influence across online casinos, and that’s both through their own network, that of their new parent company, and their countless partners. Their long roots in the industry guarantee that they are one of the best choices when it comes to classic casino gaming. But have they kept up with the needs of modern audiences? Let’s have a further look at that.
Best Online Slots Casinos
A Bit More History
Today Lighting Box Games can be found under the Light & Wonder group of companies, a long way from where they started. But before this acquisition in 2021, the company did a long trek through the early era of casino gaming. Their history starts in 2004 when the company was established in Australia.
Some of the roots of the company lay in staff that used to work in other Australian casino giants like Aristocrat. It is therefore not at all surprising that you see similarities, such as the many different nature themes, and concentrating heavily on different maths models to ensure varying gameplay.
Ever since the beginning, the company has concentrated on producing games, for their own use and for their partners as bespoke products. At the same time, they have expanded into different markets. This also includes limited-time exclusive launches, such as was done with Viking Fire on Betsson. By this time the company was well established and partnered not only with many land-based casinos, but with most big European online casinos. This includes a distribution deal with the Quickfire platform in 2017, which pretty much guaranteed worldwide visibility.
2018 saw the company break into the North American market, via a shared deal with SG Digital. Just a year later this led to the company having access to Canadian markets. Today they are partnered with Loto-Quebec, amongst other casinos. The following year they acquired a British Columbia Lottery Corporation licence.
In 2021 the company’s one-time partner Scientific Games acquired the whole company, which later on sold parts of its business and changed its name to Light & Wonder. This doesn’t seem to have slowed down the company at all, and they still continue conquering the world through their unique brand and exciting games.
For a look behind the curtain, check out our exclusive review.
Online Slots
You can find a game or two that don’t fall under the category of online slots, but they are so rare that the only one worth mentioning is Lightning Keno, which happens to be quite popular with Canadian players.
But it’s the slots that have made their way into pretty much every casino, and which can often be found amongst the list of most popular casino games. You can start out by checking out the following player favourites:
- Silver Lioness 4x
- Panda Pow
- Stacks of Pearls
- Golden Yak
- Toro Rockets
- Astro Pug
- Respin Rhino
- Dolphin Gold
- Ritual Respins
- Silver Lion
- Chicken Fox
The company has been making games so long that you’ll run into all sorts of slots. As well as a series of slots, sequels, and games that use special mechanics. Jackpots are also present. The naming convention does reveal that the animal kingdom is close to heart here. These are by far the most popular themes, though you will run into games that use the standard leprechauns, historical heroes, or other similar popular themes.
Lightning Action
You’ve probably noticed that a handful of the games have the name Lightning as part of the title. This isn’t just repetition from the company, rather it’s a specialised feature. A special symbol, usually a lightning bolt, activates the feature. The player gets three respins, with special symbols that pay out either cash prizes or jackpot icons. Landing these symbols reset the count of respins, with prizes paid out at the end of the feature.
Something else you will encounter, and perhaps a bit more original than respins, is called Reelfecta or Waysfecta. The first one is used with normal paylines, and the latter with ways to win setups. This is a method that uses one of the game reels to increase the number of ways that symbols can form into combinations. It works in a very simple fashion, simply replacing individual symbols with four smaller symbols each.
Skillstar is yet another specialised feature from Lightning Box. If you’re looking for something that you’re not going to encounter in slots from other providers, this is it. It’s a mini-game that is played before bonus spins. And as the name implies, there’s a bit of skill involved. Usually, this feature results in more bonus spins.
The Basics
The games use both paylines and ways to win setups, and there’s a wide variety of different configurations to choose from in both categories. The earlier games, where they are still available, tend to offer a more uniform setup in this regard. The modern games have embraced diversity, with the exception of payouts which tend to go higher and higher with each new release.
RTPs are pretty high, and so is the variance. It’s almost impossible to find games where the top prizes are below one thousand times the bet. And usually, it’s double or triple this. Most of the time these can be gained directly from the paytable, and at other times it is tied to specials like jackpots.
Besides the custom features we mentioned, you are likely to run into many familiar features and modifiers. More often than not, the special payouts are built around the bonus spins. This is then reinforced with other modifiers, like increasing multipliers, extra wilds, wilds with different functions, and special symbols.
Visuals and Audio
Graphics and sound effects are probably the weakest area when it comes to Lightning Box games. That’s not to say they would be outright bad or repulsive. Not at all. They do drive their purpose and even occasionally offer some eye candy. But for the most part they are simply not something that would stand out.
And not to mention that a lot of classic symbols are used, that animations are mostly missing, and the fact that a lot of the themes are quite similar. Luckily, this isn’t something most people play slots for anyways. And given that all the work saved on graphics seems to have gone into perfecting game features and upping the mathematics, the tradeoff ends up being quite favourable.
The Legal Side of Things
Even before Light & Wonder acquired the company, and thus added its impressive distribution network into the mix, Lightning Box was already present in Canadian markets. The company has travelled quite a long way from their native Australia to the other side of the world, and amassed quite a number of licences and certificates during this time.
For Canadian players, the company offers countless options to choose from. You can play in land-based casinos, local Canadian online casinos, and hundreds and hundreds of offshore casinos big and small. Check out suggestions and get started!
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