Slingo As A Design Innovation

Slot machines are an iconic feature of casinos and gambling halls throughout the world. They have been around since the late 19th century and have captivating gamblers and spectators alike with colourful graphics, flashing lights, roaring sounds and the recognizable noise of coins spilling out of the machine when a player scores a jackpot.

Of course, physical slot machines are not without their own challenges. Just a few years ago a long and complex story ultimately saw highly educated individuals incarcerated for figuring out how to game slot machines and guarantee big wins - naturally to the casinos dissatisfaction! For this kind of reason alongside many others including cost of maintenance, repairs and rent for physical locations, much gambling moved online as the internet age really took off in recent decades.

Online slot games are now ubiquitous across the web, with a multitude of websites offering slot games to avid gamblers and novice betters alike. Building on the classic and well-tested formula from physical slot machines out in casinos across the world, online slots let players pull a digital lever to generate icons and hopefully huge prizes and cash rewards. Yet not as ubiquitous is the singular genius of Dave Lyons and Sal Falciglia, who in 1994 founded the company Slingo Inc. and created the eponymous mixture of Bingo and Slot Machines; Slingo.

Slingo is an extremely well-designed mixture of bingo and slot machine mechanics that really took off shortly after launching in the mid-1990s. Much as in Bingo, the player is presented with a grid of numbers that they are tasked with scratching off. Except in this case the numbers are not called out but rather generated by the spin of a slot machine, which the player may perform a limited number of times - the challenge is to remove all numbers from the grid before running out of spins. The visual and mechanical experience of interacting with a lever and machine in this manner enhances interactivity and, together with some of Slingo’s additional rules, creates an element of strategy to the game.

The strategy comes from Jokers and Super Jokers, that may be used to remove numbers from a subset of all or from all positions on the grid, respectively. Additionally, multiple Jokers appearing tend to provide bonus prizes. Beyond Jokers, added elements such as Free Spins, Instant Prizes, Bonus Numbers, etc. all grant the player a modicum of control over their game, akin to allocating dice in Yatzy or the like.

In so doing, Slingo constitutes a genuinely innovative take on both Bingo and slot machines, drawing on both and breathing fresh excitement into each; a mechanically tightly-coupled design the proof of which is evidently in the pudding - Slingo has only continued to grow in success and popularity since its inception. Today aggregating sites let players find all of the best websites to play online Slingo, which remains an inspiration for inventors looking to innovate in both the physical and online gambling space.

As the genre continues to evolve, it will be interesting to follow which hybridizations may be created by combining similarly related yet distinct betting games. Roulette, Poker, Blackjack, etc. are all viable candidates for putative innovation in this manner.