Founded in late 2022 and operational the following year, Backseat Gaming is a Malta-based slot studio known for its visually impressive slots, often packed with bonuses and features. The company claims to “leverage AI-driven design to craft high-volatility games with unique twists”, while its motto is “Be Innovative, Be Stunning, Be Fun.”
Many players will open Backseat Gaming’s slots and assume they’re actually Hacksaw Gaming. While it’s true that the two companies are very closely intertwined, Backseat is its own entity. However, it does push most of its games out via HackSaw’s OpenRGS aggregator, but for clarification, they are two separate studios.
In this Backseat Gaming review, we’ll show you everything you need to know about the provider. We’ll kick off with a detailed look at their background and history, explore some of their top games, learn about the mechanics they’ve developed, licensing information, and, to top it all off, we’ve got their full portfolio of free demo slots for you to enjoy.
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History & Company Background
With a team of around 15 employees, Backseat Gaming is a privately held company founded in 2022 in Birkirkara, Malta, and released its first games the following year. While Backseat is an independent studio, it works very closely with Hacksaw Gaming and was one of the first OpenRGS partner studios.
Unfortunately, Backseat Gaming hasn’t released much public information, and its website is quite bare. It gives virtually nothing away on its “About Us” page, saying only: “Backseat Gaming is a cutting-edge slot studio that leverages AI technology to create high-quality and innovative slot games. With a passion for simplicity and a commitment to excellence, we are dedicated to becoming one of the leading providers in the industry within the next 3-5 years.”
What we do know is that they operate primarily from their base in Malta, but they also have team members working out of Bulgaria. They’ve released upwards of 25 slots and are starting to develop a name for themselves in the iGaming industry as their titles become more adventurous and better polished.
Key Milestones, Timeline & Awards
2022: Backseat Gaming is established in Malta.
May 2023: The studio’s first slot, Lord Venom goes live – and Backseat becomes the first external studio to join Hacksaw Gaming’s OpenRGS aggregation platform.
July 2023: Backseat Gaming releases Commander of Tridents, an aquatic‑themed slot designed around a 5×5 layout.
August 2023: Sleepy Grandpa is Backseat Gaming’s next release, introducing a “dig for coins” mechanic. Blade Master is released later in the year.
February-March 2024: The Cursed King, an ancient‑Egypt 5×5 slot is released and boasts an impressive 12,500x maximum win potential. The following month, Barrel Bonanza was released.
May-June 2024: Space Zoo, a sci‑fi game with a unique Feature Wheel mechanic is released, followed by Shadow Strike.
August 2024: Backseat Gaming demo slots are added to the demoslot.com platform.
April 2025: Roman Bonanza, a 5×6 cluster pays slot, is Backseat Gaming’s next release – showcasing the studio’s “new and mature game mechanics.”
Backseat Gaming Highest RTP Slots
The return-to-player percentage of an online slot is an important factor to consider when choosing a new slot or an existing title to play. This value is determined over millions of spins, but it’s still wise to pick the games with the high returns where possible. If you’d like to view the best offerings with regard to RTP from Backseat Gaming, you’ll find them in our helpful and easy to read table below.
| Slot Name | RTP |
|---|---|
| 1. Pirate Rocket | 96.37% |
| 2. Blaze Buddies | 96.37% |
| 3. Chocolate Rocket | 96.37% |
| 4. Shadow Strike | 96.36% |
| 5. Banana Farm | 96.33% |
| 6. Hoot Shot The Sheriff | 96.32% |
| 7. Pirate Bonanza 2 | 96.32% |
| 8. Roman Bonanza | 96.31% |
| 9. Power Pops | 96.31% |
| 10. Diamond Mole | 96.31% |
Backseat Gaming Product Portfolio
For now, Backseat Gaming is a slots-only game developer. This means you won’t find any table, live, or poker-themed games, and it’s probably unlikely that this will change anytime soon.
All of their video slots are developed in HTML5, so they’re playable on both desktop and mobile devices, and they have a pretty impressive roadmap, looking to release 1-2 new games monthly in 2025 and beyond. Below, we’ll explore five of Backseat Gaming’s most successful and popular slots.
Online Slot Games
Lord Venom
Lord Venom was Backseat Gaming’s first release, and it’s designed around a 5×5 layout, with 19 fixed paylines in play at all times. (This odd 19-number is one you’ll get quite familiar with as Backseat Gaming use it in many of their slots! The game’s designed around a high variance maths model and boasts a pretty impressive maximum win potential of up to 15,000x!
Lord Venom has a pretty cool mechanic where “Jungle Bush” mystery tiles flip to reveal matching symbols, while Golden Eggs feed a persistent win multiplier that gets carried through to the slot’s main free spins bonus round!
The bonus round is triggered by landing three scatter symbols anywhere in view, and the multiplier you’ve built in the base game is then carried through. This makes Lord Venom one of those unusual video slots where you don’t actually want to land the bonus round too early. Another slot that springs to mind, which works similarly, is Big Time Gaming’s Kingmaker Megaways.
Blade Master
Blade Master is, in our opinion, one of Backseat Gaming’s coolest-looking slots, and this martial arts-themed game is played on a 5×5 grid layout with the provider’s familiar 19-payline setup.
The game’s signature mechanic is the Blademaster Feature, which hurls 2–5 wild multipliers worth between 2x and 10x onto the reels, and this means there’s some decent win potential in the base game! Landing three scatter symbols triggers the free spins bonus, awarding 10-14 free games. During the bonus, flag symbols increase a global multiplier up to a whopping 50x!
It’s a volatile game, but it does boast an above-average RTP of 96.12%. The maximum win potential is a massive 13,000x, and, as you’ll find with virtually all Backseat Gaming slots, Blade Master also contains a few bonus buy and FeatureSpin options.
Roman Bonanza
Roman Bonanza is the third Backseat Gaming slot we’re looking at today, and the game does away with conventional reels and paylines, instead opting for a 5×6 layout with a cluster pays mechanic. To form wins, you need to land clusters of eight or more symbols anywhere in view. When you do, the symbols involved in the win explode and vanish from the reels.
When this reaction occurs, a Cannon symbol will sometimes be left in the rubble. When that happens, multiplier bombs come out, displaying a multiplier value of between 2x and 100x. Their value is added to the tumble payout for that spin, which provides some good win potential within the base game!
Roman Bonanza also has a free spins bonus, and during the feature, there’s a collection-based multiplier mechanic, with larger guaranteed multipliers awarded if you reach the next stages of the trail! You can also use the bonus buy feature to purchase instant entry into the free spins.
Sleepy Grandpa
Sleepy Grandpa may sound like a bit of a joke slot, but it’s surprisingly good fun to play, and it’s laid-back, making it ideal if you’re wanting something a tad less volatile, albeit with solid win potential of up to 10,000x! The slot’s designed around a five-reel, four-row layout, and there are 26 fixed paylines in play at all times.
The game’s main attraction is the free spins bonus round, and during this feature, a “wandering Grandpa” wheels a cart around, collecting coins that land on the reels and adding them to a cumulative global multiplier that’s then applied against all wins formed for the duration of the feature!
Space Zoo
The final Backseat Gaming slot in this section is Space Zoo, an unusual game with, as you can probably tell, an even more unusual theme! Space Zoo is played on a five-reel, four-row layout, and you’ll find 14 fixed paylines in play at all times. Now, Space Zoo introduces the software provider’s unique Feature Wheel, which can trigger in both the base and the bonus round. When it does (it’s a randomly-triggered feature), a giant wheel appears on the screen, and you then get to spin. You can win things like extra wilds, sticky multipliers (that lock in for up to three spins with up to a 5x multiplier), and more! During the free spins round, the wheel lands a lot more often, too, so having a shot at the game’s max win of 10,000x is a little easier!
Jackpot Slots
Backseat Gaming does not currently offer any dedicated progressive jackpot or network-jackpot slots. All of its games are standalone video slots, and they currently don’t offer linked progressive jackpot networks, like Mega Moolah. Whether this will change in the future remains to be seen, but for now, they only focus on local, non-jackpot video slots.
Table Games, Bingo & Other Casino Games
Backseat Gaming has also chosen not to delve into the world of casino table games – yet. Their portfolio is made up entirely of slots, and they don’t even offer any instant win or Crash titles.
Again, this isn’t unexpected, especially for a new studio. Rather than stretching their limited resources trying to develop as many games as possible, they’ve chosen to focus on doing what they do best: creating online slots. And, in our opinion, that’s probably how things will stay.
Backseat Gaming Slots With The Biggest Payouts
| Slot Name | Max Win |
|---|---|
| 1. Power Pops | 30,000x bet |
| 2. Diamond Mole | 25,000x bet |
| 3. Hoot Shot The Sheriff | 25,000x bet |
| 4. Arc Lord | 25,000x bet |
| 5. Mystery Bats | 25,000x bet |
| 6. Banana Farm | 25,000x bet |
| 7. Ghostly Hallows | 20,000x bet |
| 8. Pirate Bonanza 2 | 20,000x bet |
| 9. Infernus | 15,000x bet |
| 10. Gladius | 15,000x bet |
Game Mechanics, How They Work & Unique Features
As a game provider that focuses purely on the online slot space, Backseat Gaming has experimented with several in-game mechanics. In this section, we’ll take a look at each one and explain to you how they work.
Paylines
Paylines are the most common mechanic found in online (and offline) slots. These are, essentially, invisible lines that run horizontally, diagonally, or zig-zag across the screen. You need to land matching symbols on active paylines to form a win, and this is usually from left to right, although some games offer a win-both-ways mechanic, too. In older slots, it was common to be able to change the number of active lines, but today, most slots come with fixed line structures.
Popular Payline Games From Backseat Gaming
- Sleepy Grandpa
- Blademaster
- Lord Venom
Cluster Pays
Cluster‑pay slots throw the old line system out the window and, instead of worrying about where symbols need to land, you have to hit clusters of matching symbols anywhere on the screen. The number of symbols required to form a cluster varies, but it’s usually a minimum of five or six. The more symbols that land (i.e., the bigger the cluster), the larger the win. Most cluster pays games also feature cascading reels, so the symbols involved disappear, and new ones drop down to take their place!
Popular Cluster Pays Games From Backseat Gaming
- Roman Bonanza
- Desert Temple
Scatter Pays
Scatter‑pay, or “pay‑anywhere” slots, take things one step further, doing away with both paylines and the need to land symbols in clusters. In these games, you need to land a minimum number of the same symbol anywhere on the screen – their position doesn’t matter. There are no lines to worry about, they don’t need to touch, and the more that land, the higher the win!
Popular Scatter Pays Games From Backseat Gaming
- Pirate Bonanza
Bonus Buy Slots
The feature buy mechanic is a big part of Backseat Gaming slots, and in all of their titles, you will be given the option to play with enhanced modifiers in the base game, or to buy your win directly into the bonus or super bonus rounds.
Unique Features from Backseat Gaming
AI-Driven Game Design
While very little information is available about what this actually means, it’s definitely a notable feature from the studio and makes them one of the first to openly acknowledge that they’re using AI technology during the development process.
On their website, Backseat Gaming states they “leverage AI technology to create high-quality and innovative slot games”. While there’s no further information given, this is quite interesting, and we’d like to know more about how this works and what it entails in the future!
Feature Wheel Bonus
Another cool feature you’ll find in (one, as of now) Backseat Gaming slot is their Wheel of Fortune mechanic. It’s currently available in Space Zoo, and it’s a randomly-triggering bonus that can appear in the base game and bonus round, and award modifiers and mini-features.
This includes symbol transformations, multipliers, or added wilds. OK, sure – it’s not the most unique feature in the world, but the studio does market it quite heavily, so we may well see it used in future releases.
Best Backseat Gaming Slots Ranked By Demoslot Rating
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Our Conclusion:
As soon as Gladius hit my screen, I was getting Money Cart vibes, which, if you didn't know, was a spin-off series from the Relax Gaming franchise Money Train, where there are no standard paylines or paytable symbols.
Gladius does differ in some ways in that you can win in the base game by landing cash value symbols, but the main premise is pretty much the same and you'll need to land bonus symbols to trigger the bonus round which is a Hold & Win style feature.
Additionally, players can choose to buy their way into the bonus or play a different game where the reels fill completely with cash symbols, which, from our testing, will require some luck to turn a profit. Overall, though, Gladius is a pretty fun game to play and one I'll be spinning more on in the future.
Demo & Review
Our Conclusion: While Shadow Strike has some similarities to other releases under the Hacksaw umbrella, the three bonus games are at least different and offer some genuine excitement, especially the Wisdom of the Koi, where I had the best results during testing.
Demo & Review
Our Conclusion:
It's fair to say that some of the releases now coming out of the studios on the OpenRGS platform are on par with their partner studio, Hacksaw Gaming, and that can certainly be said of Roman Bonazna, a 6-reel scatter pays slot from Backseat Gaming. Players will be delighted to see the inclusion of cascading reels, multiple bonus buy options, and big multipliers in the free spins round.
Okay, so I'm sure I got your attention at the big multipliers part. These can be activated in both the base game and bonus rounds by winning combos leaving behind highlighted squares, and then a catapult symbol appearing to award the multipliers. If you think along the lines of Le Bandit and Le Pharaoh, then you'll get the jist of what Backseat is doing here.
Much like the games I just mentioned there, triggering or buying the super bonus is the most likely way to success, as the marked squares remain highlighted for the duration of the bonus, so they can be activated multiple times per feature.
Bringing this review to a close, Roman Bonanza is a good addition to the Backseat Gaming catalogue and one that's going straight into my playlist for some real-money play.
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Our Conclusion:
I quite liked the original Pirate Bonanza slot, so I was looking forward to what Backseat Gaming was going to do with the sequel. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a difference in the gameplay, but the increase in max win to 20,000x, along with a few minor alterations, does make Pirate Bonanza 2 a much better game, and one I'd recommend you try.
Demo & Review
Our Conclusion:
So far, when I've played a game from another provider using the Hacksaw RGS Platform, it's been a bit of a mixed bag with regard to quality, with some releases being ok and others perhaps a little below par, so I was delighted to see that Backseat Gaming's Crystal Robot not only looked the part but had some exciting gameplay and two good variations of a free spin feature, both with the potential to payout a good win. This could arguably be one the best titles from Backseat to date, so give it a try and see what you think, as this gets a big thumbs up from us here at Demoslot.
Commitment to Player Safety and Fairness
Licensing & Regulation
As of now, Backseat Gaming doesn’t appear to hold any of its own online gambling licenses. We checked the public licensee registers at the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) and the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) and found no mention of the software provider. We also didn’t find any references on its website: usually, if a studio is licensed, they include this information in their footer.
However, as they’re so closely integrated with Hacksaw Gaming, they don’t actually need their own online gambling license. Provided their games are certified by a testing house, their slots can be distributed to online casinos through Hacksaw Gaming’s OpenRGS platform, and they can then, in a way, “piggyback” on Hacksaw’s gaming licenses.
This isn’t to say that Backseat Gaming won’t apply for and receive licenses in the future, but for now, it isn’t licensed by any iGaming regulators.
Fair Play & Security
As we just noted, Backseat Gaming distributes its games through Hacksaw Gaming’s OpenRGS platforms, which means their games must be tested, certified, and random. Their games are also very safe, all running on secure, encrypted servers. As noted on their website, they conform to data protection laws, and the random number generators used are subjected to periodic checks by auditors, too, to ensure they remain fair and free from manipulation.
Partnerships & Collaborations
Backseat Gaming’s content is distributed primarily via Hacksaw Gaming’s OpenRGS platform. As one of Hacksaw’s launch partners, Backseat Gaming benefits from OpenRGS’ reach, which currently stands at more than 1,000 casino partners around the world. In fact, many players don’t even know that Backseat Gaming develops the slots, as they look and feel almost identical to Hacksaw Gaming’s slots!
In addition to their OpenRGS partnership, Bakseat has partnered with another aggregator, Timeless Tech, which also indexes Backseat Gaming, giving them additional global reach.
Corporate Social Responsibility
As a relatively new iGaming studio, Backseat Gaming has neither shown any corporate social responsibility programmes nor hinted at doing any in the future. This is to be expected: they’re expensive, time-consuming, and only really needed by the big players in the industry. However, they highlight responsible gambling on their website, and their games have various responsible gambling tools built into them, like reality checks and win/loss limits on the autoplay.
Backseat Gaming Transparency Checklist
| Licenses Held/Used Displayed On Their Website | ❌ |
| Licences Are Clickable To View | ❌ |
| RNG Testing Displayed On Their Website | ❌ |
| Testing Logos Are Clickable To View | ❌ |
| Open Dialogue With Demoslot | ❌ |
| Contact Details Available On Their Website | ✅ |
| Responsible Gambling Links On Their Website | ✅ |
| Active On Social Media | ✅ |
| Last Audit | 16/05/2025 |
| Total Score | 3 Out Of 8 |
Final Summary
Backseat Gaming may be a young iGaming studio, but they’ve already shown that they’re ambitious and have enjoyed fairly impressive levels of success in a short time. The studio’s partnership with Hacksaw Gaming has given it instant credibility and allows its games to be distributed to highly-regulated markets like the UK and Malta (without the studio needing to worry about licensing) – and it’s likely we’ll see them expanding into more regions shortly.
Their games proved popular with players right off the bat, too, with titles like Lord Venom and Sleepy Grandpa introducing some fun, quirky mechanics, combined with high win potential!
Although their portfolio of games may not be the largest in the world, they’re developing new games monthly, and we fully expect them to become a leading iGaming studio within the next few years!