Julia Alekseeva: "We don’t want to simply recreate a successful game"

Casino Guru News sat down with BGaming CPO Julia Alekseeva to discuss the success of one of the company’s most recent releases, Royal Beellion Hold & Win. The title combines an ambitious theme with a range of tailored game features designed to enhance the entertainment factor, creating a familiar yet enticing format that drives stronger engagement and retention.

Q: Thank you for this opportunity, Julia. We wanted to focus on one of BGaming’s more recent releases, Royal Beellion Hold & Win, as it combines multiple aspects of the BGaming design philosophy. To start you off, did you think this specific theme was what was needed for the slot to be specific? Would the same philosophy have worked with another skin?

Thanks for having me! The bee-and-honey theme was a very deliberate choice. Both are familiar to fans of classic land-based slots, while the gold and royal hive immediately give the game its character. The bees filling the honeycomb also fit with the Hold & Win mechanic and its idea of collecting and building up.

That said, the same product philosophy could work with a different theme. The core is in the combination of a clear structure, medium volatility, and a bonus game with plenty going on. But in BGaming’s Royal Beellion Hold & Win, the theme and mechanics support each other especially well, making the whole game cohesive and easy to understand.

Q: You specifically featured the Hold & Win mechanic for this title. Why was that, and how popular has Hold & Win been with players? Is it a recognized game feature that players explore?

Hold & Win is a well-known, popular mechanic that players can pick up quickly, so the barrier to entry is low. Players can see the symbols stay on the reels, while each new symbol resets the counter to three respins and increases the potential reward.

For Royal Beellion Hold & Win, we built on this familiar format by adding random multipliers and a progress meter. When players collect 10, 15, or 20 bees, they unlock a Mystery reward — a new feature for the BGaming portfolio.

The mechanic also performed well in practice: the Buy Bonus conversion was 28% higher than our benchmark.

Q: How well has the Hold & Win mechanic done across your entire portfolio, and are there other BGaming titles that have enjoyed similar success? Do you think this mechanic has specifically been key to the success?

Hold & Win has been consistently popular across the classic part of our portfolio. It’s a familiar format built around simple rules, visible progress, and the anticipation of getting another respin.

But I wouldn’t say the success of Royal Beellion Hold & Win comes from the base mechanic alone. Expanding Wilds, random multipliers, Mystery rewards, and the smaller progress goals all played an important role. As a result, first-bet conversion was 40% higher, while fifth-bet conversion was 50% higher compared with BGaming games using a similar mechanic.

Q: With so many operators now offering Hold & Win mechanics across different providers, how does BGaming ensure Royal Beellion Hold & Win, and titles like it, stand out from the crowd rather than blending into an increasingly crowded category?

Today, having a familiar mechanic is not enough on its own. In Royal Beellion Hold & Win by BGaming, players have several things to watch at once: new bees appearing, random multipliers, the field filling up, the progress meter, Mystery rewards, and four prize levels.

At the same time, we didn’t want to make the gameplay feel overloaded. All these extra elements are built around the familiar Hold & Win structure and visually tied to the hive theme. That balance between accessibility and added depth is what helps the game stand out in a crowded category.

Q: As it has now been more than four months since you launched the game, could you help us understand how it has performed - did Royal Beellion Hold & Win justify or even exceed your expectations? What were the areas that the game outperformed in, and those that it could have used some polishing on?

Royal Beellion Hold & Win exceeded our expectations across several key metrics. Compared with BGaming games using a similar mechanic, first-bet conversion was 40% higher, fifth-bet conversion was 50% higher, and D1 retention was 16% higher.

What stood out to us most was the depth of the first session. Players made 43% more bets on average, while the median session length was 57% higher. Buy Bonus conversion was also 28% higher. So the game didn’t just attract players, it kept them engaged beyond the first few spins.

We also saw very strong MAU in the first month after launch, almost twice that of other BGaming releases from 2026 over the same period. But we wouldn’t attribute that entirely to organic demand. It was most likely the result of a combination of audience interest, distribution, and promotional support.

There are still things we want to understand better. Our next step is to look more closely at what drove these results, separating the product's impact from marketing and examining how performance differs across markets. That should give us a clearer picture of what we can take from Royal Beellion Hold & Win into future releases.

Q: When you have a game such as Royal Beellion Hold & Win that is successful on the market, is the immediate instinct to build something just like it, or do you, as a team, start to think differently, looking for another way to apply the lessons learned in order not to dilute or cannibalize what makes the original game unique?

We don’t want to simply recreate a successful game with a different look. That can quickly lead to an oversaturated portfolio and, more importantly, take away from what made the original game special.

For us at BGaming, the more useful question is: what exactly made players respond to this game? With Royal Beellion Hold & Win, we see a few things that really worked: a clear gameplay loop, visible progress, and several connected goals within the bonus round.

Those are the lessons we can take into future projects without making them feel like copies. The idea is to keep learning from what works while giving every new release its own theme, mechanics, and personality.

Q: What leads has Royal Beellion Hold & Win given you, and can players expect to see them incorporated into new games any time soon?

Royal Beellion Hold & Win showed us that classic players are open to new features when they are built into a familiar mechanic without making the rules harder to follow. We also saw how important visible progress can be: every new symbol should feel like it’s moving the player closer to another goal or reward.

These are lessons we’ll take into future BGaming projects. We’ll keep exploring progressive bonus mechanics, intermediate goals, and surprise elements, but adapt them to new themes and gameplay structures rather than simply copying what we did in Royal Beellion Hold & Win.

Image credit: Casino Guru News