Mancala Gaming, a game studio known for its creative solutions and smooth game running, has a CTO with vast experience before even joining iGaming. Evgeny Prozorov first came as a team lead, but quickly rose to his current position.
In our interview, Evgeny swiftly and charismatically talks us through the basis of creating games, AI integration into his processes, and the essence of creating games efficiently.
When most people hear "CTO," they picture servers, infrastructure, dev teams. At Mancala, you also co-lead game creation with Pantelis. How would you describe what you actually do?
Uh, you started with a tough one. I can describe it as “CPITAO - Chief Pain in the Ass Officer”. I think the studio hates me sometimes for my feedback. I've been in game development my whole life, so I’m always interested what’s going on with new games in our studio. My main role in Mancala is CTO but my passion was always “how to make games better”.
You and Pantelis run the game-making process together. One of you wears the CTO hat, the other runs the studio. In practice, how do you two split decisions when a game is being shaped?
We don’t split! If you split it means 2 teams are working separately - devs and art, but we have a strong synergy - devs can always tell what they dislike in the game and how to make it better, and art can always tell about bugs and issues. But the important thing is that those are only suggestions, I cannot dictate.
Mancala is jumping from two releases a month to four in 2026. What changes inside the studio when the pace doubles, and what gets harder?
Oh, people have a deadline every day, that’s amazing! Haha. But to be honest it was not a 1 day decision. We were working hard to improve all our processes way before the decision was made. So on that day we just started to hire more people and scale. Because from my experience business always wants more and you need to be as flexible as my cat.
Before a single line of code gets written on a new concept, what's the first question you ask?
Let me put on my "well, actually" hat for a moment. A lot of code was written way before the game development started. We have our own framework for that, you don’t need to think about common things. But going back to your question, I think the most important thing is “What is the difference between this game and other Mancala’s games?”. It’s important for developers - they will know if this game will have some new things that they have never developed.
Almost no one in slots actually uses a spiral grid. You committed to one for Moltar's Wrath, with 35 reels, one row, no paylines. Walk us through that call.
Well.. Do you remember that old school game “Zuma”? Ofc not, it's as old as me. It was very popular when I was younger and my hair was so beautiful.. Anyway, nowadays we are experimenting with different themes, mechanics, visuals and this grid is something that potentially players (my age) will like! Nostalgia is always a strong reason to play some games.
Most slot characters are decoration. Moltar isn't. He's wired into the math through the Progress Bar, and he actively destroys symbols on the board. How did that idea move from a story beat to a real mechanic?
That was a brilliant idea from the studio! Progress in slots is not something new, everybody is making slots with progress nowadays, but we went a little bit further and made it as a storyline.
Instead of one Buy Bonus button, Moltar's Wrath has a Shop with three price tiers: 0.2x, 0.3x and 0.5x. Why split the option that way?
Why not? That’s actually a question that drives our world :) Can we go to Mars? Why not? This game has many features and players who don't want to wait can just buy it and experience all features!
You also built in a Random Reshuffle for moments when the spiral stalls. What's the principle behind not letting the board sit still?
Players shouldn’t stop! The joy should continue! It’s just unfair when it’s stuck to stop the round. Players will appreciate it I think.
Across 80+ titles, players talk back fast, sometimes loudly. How do you separate the feedback that should change a game from the feedback that shouldn't?
It is not that simple to answer to be honest. If I knew the receipt each of our games would be a hit! But the key is deep analytics: do not listen directly to players, listen to them and compare with your data. Players can say “Hey, we want more winnings!”, but you will not put 200% RTP right?
What's something about players you didn't believe when you started, but you do now?
I didn’t believe that people can win millions in 1 spin! Now I do :)
You once posted that "no ChatGPT was hurt" in your work. Where does AI actually help in slot development today, and where does it still get in the way?
AI is very helpful nowadays, but I think it is a great tool, not a worker. I’m using a few AI tools for development, trying to vibecode :) It is an amazing tool that really helps developers to speed up the process and to make code better, but only if they know what they want and how.
A year from now, when someone, a player, an operator, anyone, talks about Moltar's Wrath or whatever comes after it, what do you want them to say?
I’ve told ya!
This interview was authored by Andrei Vlaicu, with special thanks to Evgeny Prozorov for his invaluable contribution to the creation of this piece.
