Yggdrasil and 4ThePlayer team up to produce an online slot called 4 Fantastic Vikings Go Fishing. The game combines the two popular series and will come packed with different features.
For the special occasion, we sat down with Henry McLean, Co-Founder and Commercial Director at 4ThePlayer and Jose Simon Kadala, Commercial Director at Yggdrasil, to talk about the upcoming release, expectations and the process of making the game.
Henry, the first question is for you. What can players expect from 4 Fantastic Vikings Go Fishing?
They can expect everything they love about the existing 4 Fantastic Fish, and Vikings Go Berzerk games in one amazing package, plus the usual 4ThePlayer twist!
4 Fantastic Vikings Go Fishing features 4ThePlayer’s popular Money Ways™ mechanic, where players win the cash they see on the reels as part of a ways win, without the need for a unique Collect symbol or to play any special bonus elsewhere in the game!
Collect cash prizes in Fighting Respins - this time, Vikings can land on their reels and fight to award a unique special feature: they can collect, multiply, or increment cash prizes or cast nets to guarantee a cash prize on the next respin! The shark returns to eat cash prizes in Fighting Respins, doubling the prizes while creating more space for prizes to land.
As well as being the top-paying symbols, Yggdrasil’s player-favourite Vikings sit proudly over the reels, gathering treasure on every spin! Any coin they collect could launch them into a Berzerk rage during Fighting Respins, and they will be guaranteed to win their fights and award their features.
Meanwhile, the Giant Squid returns from 4 Fantastic Fish to improve or create wins in the base game or Fighting Respins.
All of this is driven by a super solid maths profile that perfectly balances the big win potential and fun factor!
The next question is for Jose. It must be exciting to see your Vikings series back and more popular than ever. What do you think it is about the series that players love so much?
We’re convinced that players enjoy these Viking themes because we’re literally going back to our Yggdrasilian roots! Everything about Yggdrasil is strongly Norse-themed, and what better way to represent that than with Vikings?
It seems that players love to connect with us and take a peek at the company’s Swedish heritage, and the Viking series is fun, fast-paced and visually appealing. It’s like we’re taking players back in time and having them experience what it was like to be on a wooden Nordic Viking ship.
Therefore, we thought that it would be fit if they would go fishing too! Thanks to 4ThePlayer’s ultra-popular 4 Fantastic Fish series, we were able to make that happen with a fun collaboration that brings a combination of excellent mechanics together in a game for the ages.
Henry, where did the collaboration idea come from?
As one of the YGG Masters partners, we work closely with Yggdrasil, and they came to us with the idea of creating something together. We wanted to create something that reflected our personality and drive for player entertainment but that also tapped into the best Yggdrasil had to offer.
We started talking about ideas that would work, and honestly, this felt like a no-brainer: 4 Fantastic Vikings Go Fishing was born - the ultimate player-centric collaboration!
What makes 4 Fantastic Vikings different from other Fishing and Vikings games before? Jose, you can give us an answer.
Yes, of course. Since this is the first-ever collaborative release that Yggdrasil has done, combining one well-loved theme and proven mechanics with another has been a new journey for us. It takes the two themes and blends them into an even more epic combination, and it’s not every day that you see Vikings take a break and go fishing!
The original themes of both series are being kept as authentic as possible while still kicking things up a notch in terms of the maths and mechanics in this game.
Henry, can you please tell us about the challenges of merging two iconic franchises into one seamless game?
Mainly, we had to clear the bar set by the strong reputation both series have: we didn’t want to create a game that disappointed players who enjoyed the original games! We’ve done a great job bringing the visuals and feature set from Yggdrasil’s Vikings series to merge them into our strong features and maths models.
We had to think very carefully about the artistic style - how to combine two very different genres into one single masterpiece. Luckily, we already had some experience playing with the style of our 4 Fantastic series when we made 4 Fantastic Fish in Egypt, where even our seagull got wrapped in bandages!
Last but not least. Jose, when is the game released?
This game will be released on 29 October, and we can’t wait for the Vikings and the Fantastic Fish fans to enjoy this awesome release across all our networks.
We wish to thank Henry and Jose for taking the time to introduce our players to the upcoming slot. We don’t have any doubts that 4 Fantastic Vikings Go Fishing will be a blast. You can try the game for free at AskGamblers before you’re ready to play it at the online casino of your choice.
