Light & Wonder Software Review

A Bit of History

Light & Wonder, formerly Scientific Games, was officially established in 1973. However, its roots lie in an even older company called Autotate Totalizators, which manufactured totalizator systems at racetracks. The Australian company was founded in 1917 and only opened its US office in 1953. At the same time, it changed its name to Autotate Ltd to reflect its expanded portfolio of products.

Autotate would purchase Scientific Games in the year 2000, combining the two companies. This new corporation would adopt the Scientific Games label going forward, which lasted until its rebranding to Light & Wonder in 2022. The company has its HQ in Las Vegas, USA. Additional offices can be found in other US states, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, and the UK.

Currently, the company employs over 6,000 people. It is also listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market and the Australian Securities Exchange, making its finances public. Light & Wonder’s Q1 2024 gaming revenue was $476 million, 14% higher than at the same time last year.

Frequent Themes and Bonus Features

Despite the history and the connection to the land-based market, we’re pretty happy with the slot machines that are being released by Light & Wonder. The company has a good collection of online pokies that offer plenty of great features, are capable of paying big rewards and are a lot of fun to play.

That said, you need to watch out for the RTP in their slots since a range is usually involved. You will usually get versions with 96%, but we recommend checking just in case.

Its slot themes aren’t particularly innovative. The games either house a generic theme (China, Ancient Greece, fantasy, Irish luck, etc.) or qualify as a branded release (Monopoly, Cluedo, etc.).

We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the exciting features that are often part of Light & Wonder’s pokies. It manages to add plenty of excitement to these games, including expanding reels, cascading wins, and big multipliers.

The studio also provides players with unique game mechanics exclusively available in their games. Some of the highlights include:

• Accumul8: This was turned into an entire series of slot machines where you could play with a Scatter Pays engine. It requires 8 or more matching symbols to appear for a payout, but they could land anywhere on the reels.
• Mighty Ways: When players score a cash prize, it results in a reel cascade, with new symbols taking the place of winning icons. The reels in which the winning icons appeared in will increase in height by one symbol each time a cascade happens.
• Stellar Cash: It’s a bonus game that you advance through across multiple levels, aiming to collect the Grand Jackpot. You pick between the available icons, with each choice revealing a prize, a level increase, or a red X. The X removes one of your three lives, ending the round early. You can try it out in Stellar Cash: Blown Away.
• Ink & Win: Ink & Win starts players off with three shells, with each shell being worth one spin. Any fish symbols that appear on the grid will lock in place, adding their value to the total and resetting the number of shells to three. The feature continues until players run out of shells. There’s a bit more to this exciting feature, which we’ll let you discover in Colossal Splash Ink & Win.

Our Thoughts on Light & Wonder

Light & Wonder is a giant, so it’s not fair to compare it and the resources at its disposal to what other much smaller companies have to work with. It could do a better job with the design of its slot machines, even though they look decent for the most part.

The studio does an excellent job designing game mechanics and special features. The pokies we’ve played were fun, often even during the paid spins, and that’s thanks to the team’s experience.

It’s not a perfect developer, but it’s one of the better ones. We wouldn’t mind higher RTP settings or better graphics for some of its older slot series that are stuck in the past (though we get that players might be attached to those older graphics, and there is a reason why those series are still popular today). Despite some flaws, Light & Wonder more than earns the PokieMachines seal of approval.