Selling Bonuses In-Machine Is an Emerging Trend

Read this month’s Headline Release and Market Watch

Selling Bonuses Inside Machines

Selling bonuses for machines is an emerging trend in slots apps, but these offers usually appear in the app’s shop rather than within the machines. In this month’s Headline Release, we analyze Cash Frenzy’s Faerie Tale, which is the first time we’ve seen an app offer an IAP built into a machine to instantly trigger a bonus.

Faerie Tale also stands out by selling three tiers of respin bonuses for its regular and high roller modes, which significantly boosts the IAP’s potential for generating spend. These tiers have fairly high price points, especially in the machine’s high roller mode.

Despite their high costs, the purchasable bonuses in the high roller mode award less currency than bonuses triggered through spins. This decision was likely made to maintain economic balance, but it might discourage some players from making purchases.

Instead of offering lower-value bonuses at premium price points, we’d like to see slots apps find ways to enhance the perceived value of purchasable bonuses beyond primary currency alone. In Faerie Tale’s case, this could include adding symbols that grant more valuable bonus enhancements but have lower odds of landing, as these symbols already exist in the machine but are limited in the paid bonus.

Release Trends

In addition to its respin bonus, Faerie Tale includes a unique mini-game bonus. Machines with mini-game bonuses are rare among tracked slots apps, appearing in less than 4% of machines released in the past year. That said, the number of machines with mini-games released by tracked apps has nearly doubled in the past two years, from an average of 5.5 releases per quarter in 2021 to an average of 10.5 in 2022. So far in 2023, tracked apps have averaged nine releases with mini-game bonuses per quarter.

Read our full analysis of Faerie Tale in this month’s Headline Release.

Market Watch

In Cash Frenzy’s Magics & Wonders, players solve puzzles—such as tapping icons in the correct order or finding hidden objects—to earn rewards and unlock features. In a mini-game, players draw an image to receive a random jackpot. 

In Quick Hit Slots’ Electric Orbs Dark Masquerade, players spin on a nontraditional reel set arranged in increasingly tall reels. Landing adjacent orb symbols awards the values on the orbs or triggers respins.

In Jackpot Party’s Super Reel’em In!, players choose one of five fishermen for a bonus. In the first stage of the bonus, each fisherman collects prizes on a different reel and is ranked based on their total winnings. In the second stage, players choose themed background art, and the fisherman collects prizes based on their rank.

Read our full teardowns of all notable releases in this month’s Market Watch.