Hot Streak Slots

2016

When I first started at Mobilityware, I was charged with the daunting task of completely rebranding Hot Streak Slots, a game that the studio had released on iOS about a year prior. In addition to an aesthetic overhaul with better and more appropriate branding and marketing direction, the game's UX had to be completely redone with several new features added.

Furthermore, existing slot machine assets had to be reformatted to work in Unity instead of iOS native. I got to work by first doing an analysis of the most popular social casino games, and putting together a doc and proposal for several branding ideas to present to our VP of Product. After selecting a style and refining the look of the game with my Art Director, I set out to recreate, repurpose, and redefine Hot Streak Slots.

UI Design

An important aspect of social casino games is recreating the air of Las Vegas. There are several ways to do this, but key visual staples are flashiness, bright colors, and "rich" or "luxurious" visual elements. To stand out from our competitors, I chose purple as a primary color for the UI, with a glassy finish and highly polished gold details. Every part of the UI looks tactile, clean, and polished.

Splash screen for Hot Streak Slots. The flames and embers were animated using Unity's particle system.

Daily Retention Bonus Wheel that players spin before entering the game each day.

The main Lobby of the game where players can choose from various features and machines to play.

Loading screen for a slot machine.

Main game screen for a slot machine.

Background changes and effects when Scatter is triggered.

Big Win animation.

When players match Hot Streak Symbols, a bonus round called Hot Streak Mode is activated automatically.

Level Up popup when the player has gained enough experience.

The Store menu for purchasing in-game currency.

The Daily Race feature, in which players are sorted into buckets, and the biggest winner of the day wins a prize.

Gift menu for sending friends coin gifts. I chose to do a present design with pleasing animation to increase visual satisfaction.

Tournament menu where players can play against each other and compete to earn the most money for prizes.

VIP Rank table showcasing the various perks of the different VIP tiers.

Paytable for a slot machine.

Settings menu.

Wild Animations

It is extremely important that Wild symbols have flashy fun animations in slot machines. I helped out our in-house illustrator by animating the wilds for several machines using Spine. Afterward, I would import them into Unity and add particles. I had never used particles before this job, and I was super excited to finally be able to learn how to use them. I had a lot of fun learning and experimenting while creating these.

In addition to setting up all machine reel frame prefabs in Unity, I helped out by adding additional animation and particle effects.

I exported Wild symbol art assets in Photoshop and then animated them in Spine, before finally implementing particle effects on top of them in Unity. You can see some more examples from various machines below.

Reel Frames

Another vital part of the UI is on the reelframes behind the slot machine symbols. Before, we had a very plain and generic set of reelframes that we used for every machine. I created and built new unique frames in Unity for many of our machines to help keep visual cohesion for each machine's theme.

I illustrated many of the reel frames in game, as well as concepted Scatter mode effects. Reel frame for Poseidon Rising.

Scatter Mode effects for Poseidon Rising.

Reel frame for Space Bar.

Scatter Mode effects for Space Bar.

Reel frame for Pirate's Harbor.

Scatter Mode effects for Pirate's Harbor.

Reel frame with Progressive jackpot UI.