Best Pragmatic Play Online Casinos in New Zealand 2024

The company has shown an insane growth since its foundation in 2015. Today, its offices and studios are in Malta, the UK, the Philippines, and a few other locations. As we are writing this review, the Pragmatic Play games numbered about 200 titles, with new games created almost once a week. They boast wide recognition from gambling associations and players’ communities that granted them the following accolades: MiGEA Malta’s Gaming Excellence Awards 2022, SIGMA Americas Awards, and Askgamblers Awards among other trophies. The company grows presence in local markets by partnering up with different betting platforms and extending the game portfolio, adding very immersive and innovative titles. 

As the company entered the market amidst the increasing domination of mobile devices over desktop, it started developing its game suite for mobile from the outset. So whichever pokie or live game from Pragmatic Play you are about to load on your Android or iOS, rest assured it will perform as expected; fast and without glitches. You can also join high roller online casinos on a smartphone or tablet and opt in to Drops & Wins events.    

The company offers a flexible customisation kit to new online casino operators, enabling them to add free spins and other bonus features to a standard pokie format. This means one and the same game can have a slightly or dramatically different bonus content across online casinos. E.g. a pokie may have a standard free spin feature plus an extended one, awarded to players betting more than the specific amount. Some Pragmatic Play games can be equipped with a Countdown Free Round bonus that gives a player 60 seconds to make as many free spins as they can. Exemplifying pokie names makes no reason as an online casino can link both features to any pokie game.

The studio tends to use some popular pokie mechanics. They are usually not unique but Pragmatic Play adds some minor twist to it, thus levelling up a classic experience, for example:

• Megaways: Wild West Gold, Extra Juicy, Elemental Gems
• PowerNudge: Goblin Heist, Rise of Giza
• Mega Hold & Spin: Rock Vegas; Lucky, Grace & Charm
• PowerWays: Yum Yum
• Hot Hold & Spin: Dragon

Below are the key characteristics of their pokies which you can find if picking a gambling site from our Pragmatic Play casino list.  

• An intro page in each pokie shows its variance level, ranked 1 to 5. 
• Many games have a bonus buy feature, e.g. Fruit Party 2 offers a free spin round at x100 bet, and Gorilla Mayhem unlocks the same kind of bonus at the cost of x80 bet.
• Max bet sizes can exceed NZ$200 in some pokies.
• Most pokies have an RTP of about 96.5% (very good figures for today). To know more about each one, you can visit the Pragmatic Play official page with short reviews of each pokie they have. RTP % are also shown on the information page (button “i” in each game).
• A Turbo Spin feature, activated by holding Space, lets one cut each spin time to about one second.

Bonus-wise, each pokie comes with a somewhat average number of features. There are wilds (standard substitutes and variations), free spins, win multipliers (normal, random, etc.). Generally, one cannot say their pokies are packed with features to the brim, compared to some titles from Microgaming (Immortal Romance, Thunderstruck II). 

Currently, Pragmatic Play offers 19 live games but this number is sure to increase in the near future. All of their games are broadcasted from one location, Bucharest, Romania, which opened in April 2019. Their games can be compared in quality with Evolution and moreover, they are often part of Pragmatic Play casino bonuses. Some of their games are classic, e.g. Roulette, Blackjack, Mega Sic Bo, and Baccarat, while others have an interesting twist to the rules, format or payouts. Some of the most unusual live games, often found in minimum deposit online casinos, are listed below:

• Mega Roulette (bet size NZ$1—NZ$75,000): a live European roulette featuring mega multipliers x50 to x500 assigned to one to five random numbers at the beginning of each round. 
• ONE Blackjack (bet sizes NZ$10—NZ$1000): the game uses a multi-player format with only one common hand visible on the table. The BJ features four side bets and a rare Six-Charlie rule.
• Sweet Bonanza CandyLand: merging the iconic Sweet Bonanza pokie with a wheel of fortune mechanic, the studio delivered a posh game show with three bonus games.
• Boom City: played on a 6×6 grid, the game lets one bet on x1, x2, x5 or one of three bonus games. The max prize is set at NZ$500,000.
• PowerUP Roulette: a pin-up style got an unexpected embodiment in this PowerUP European roulette that features up to five bonus rounds with a probability to win x8000 bet. Using bet multipliers, the game reminds of Evolution’s Lightning Roulette. 

Progressive jackpots are not the area where the company has excelled. As of creating this review, they had around eight titles, most of them being not too popular in New Zealand and other countries. Some games that you can try are Great Rhino (btw, there are three versions of the game: a normal one, Deluxe, and Megaways), Fire 88, Lucky New Year, and Chilli Heat.  

Important note: many gambling websites position Great Rhino and some other games as the ones with a progressive jackpot. But even a quick glance at them reveals they are actually not. They do have a set of tiered jackpots but they are fixed, not progressive. For instance, Great Rhino has Major and Grand jackpots awarded during a respin feature. They have a fixed value of x375 and x500 total bet, respectively. In fact, Pragmatic Play has no progressive jackpots in the true sense of this collocation.

The best Pragmatic Play casinos come up with exciting series of pokies that have a shared theme or a central protagonist. In terms of bonus features, games of this kind are like many others, yet some players find game sets overwhelmingly exciting as they resemble a television series with a recurring line or short stories with a recurring character. Anyway, what Pragmatic Play offers today is a powerful scope of video pokies with some central element in each. The most popular series are

• John Hunter adventures: John Hunter and the Mayan Gods, John Hunter and the Book of Tut, Da Vinci’s Treasure, and five more games devoted to this fictional thrill-seeker.
• Big Bass: featuring a fishing theme, the seven pokies in this lineup have lots of alluring bonuses and captivating mechanics. Popular titles are Big Bass Bonanza, Bigger Bass Blizzard – Christmas Catch, and Bigger Bass Bonanza (7 games in total).
• Fire Hot: a classic set with three pokies that look and feel identical but have some small variations in layout. Each of them has 5, 20 or 100 paylines.

Table & card games based on RNG software are not impressive in all respects: they are scarce and have mediocre quality. We cannot recommend any table game produced by Pragmatic Play. But if you do want to play some, below is a full list of the respective creations:

• Roulette
• American Blackjack
• Scratchcards (7 titles)
• Baccarat
• Multihand Blackjack
• Jacks or Better video poker
• Keno    

Perhaps the guys behind Drops & Wins did not expect it to become a global hit in real money online casinos. There are a few reasons underpinning its unfading appeal:

• The Pragmatic Play casino games participating in the event have the same high RTP (around 96% to 96.5%) as other games.
• There are no buy-ins or other entry fees for joining or opting in to any Drop & Win event. You just play as normal, while getting a chance to scoop a massive freebie.
• Random cash prizes are really big. You can make just one real-money spin and win x1000 total bet.
• Everyone takes part in two events simultaneously; there’s no need to opt in, enter some bonus codes or do other things. If you are playing any participating game, you are in automatically.

The epic activity has two parts: a weekly tournament and daily cash drops. While its general terms and conditions are always the same, the rules of participation, prize pools, and some other minor things often change every new week. For example, there can be a minimum bet requirement (50 cents per spin or so) but in any other week, a bet of any size will qualify.  

A weekly tournament has a prize pool of about NZ$85,000 (subject to fluctuation), which is renewed every week. The winning criterion is simple and is based on a bet/win ratio, e.g. if you bet NZ$2 and win NZ$100 in one spin, you get 50 points. All resulting figures are collected into a leaderboard and once a tournament ends, 1800 best players get cash prizes and 200 other players down the ranks receive free spins.

Daily cash drops are absolutely randomised, giving everyone a chance to get cash or free spins out of 700 daily prizes from a total pool of about NZ$85,000 (to recap, the money rewards increase or go down every week). Cash drops run for pokies, live blackjack, and some other games which are set by Pragmatic Play on a weekly basis.  

Pragmatic Play is a successor of its mother brand TopGame which shut down its gambling operation in 2015. The studio has produced about 200 video pokies, a package of about 20 live games and a very small number of online table games in addition to a new sportsbook and bingo collection. Their games have ideal compatibility with iOS/Android mobile devices. The best Pragmatic Play casinos in New Zealand are part of the Drops & Wins network with prize-rich tournaments and cash drops for real-money bettors. Though the company has no progressive pokies as of writing, it still boasts of a few high-profile pokies with tiered jackpots such as Fire 88 and Congo Cash.