If you’re looking for the best online casino games that NZ casinos have to offer, you’ve come to the right place.
Our casino experts test, compare, and review the best casino games in the industry and give you comprehensive information about what each game has to offer and how it works.
With our help, you can find casino games with the best winning odds, ranging from top-of-the-line slots to stylish live dealer games, powered by renowned providers and with the potential for huge payouts.
Real-money online casino games are available at all the casinos we have listed on our site.
About casino games
New Zealand’s online casino industry is developing at an incredible speed, which can be seen in the casino games operators have to offer.
Today’s casino games have amazing visual details, top-notch animations, and incredibly fun gameplay.
Some of the modern slots can easily compete with the best video games in terms of visual details.
Add to that the factor of winning huge amounts of money, and you get an incredibly fun casino game that you can easily play for hours on end.
On this page, we explain which games are available at casinos in New Zealand, how they work, and where you can play them for real money.
We cover the most popular casino games, from slots to live dealer games. Read on to see what we have in stock.
Types of Casino Games
When we talk about the list of casino games at an online casino, we are not just talking about the volume. If you look at the real-money casino games that some operators offer, you will see that their portfolio is quite diverse.
Online casinos give you the chance to try your luck on thousands of different slots, chase millions of payouts on the jackpots or just play bingo to pass the time. You can choose from many electronic variants of table games or put your skills to the test against live dealers.
From video poker, keno, and baccarat to specialty games, online casinos are guaranteed to have every game you want to play.
Factors that make up a good game:
High RTPLow House EdgeAwesome Design
Slots and pokies occupy
most of the casino games list at any online casino. But despite their popularity, online slots have the highest house edge of most other casino games. They can be very volatile and eat up your balance pretty quickly, but they can also deliver monster payouts in the first few spins.
A general rule in the industry is that the best slots are those with a high RTP value (96%+) and a low to medium variance.
But you also need to consider the game’s total payout potential and the bonus features it stocks.
Below, we explain the most common details about online slots. Understanding the game better will help you choose the best online slots and maximise your chances of winning big.
The Wild Symbol: The Wild symbol is often referred to as the Joker symbol and substitutes for all other symbols in the game except the Scatter and Bonus symbols. In many slots, the wild symbol has additional features such as expanding wilds, sticky wilds, wild reels, random wilds, extra wilds, multiplier wilds, and so on.
Scatter/Bonus Symbol: The scatter and bonus symbols generally have the same functions. They trigger the bonus round in the game, usually when 3 or more land on the screen. Once this happens, the fun begins with a chance at big payouts.
Free spins bonus:A free spins bonus is the most attractive feature in a slot where you can play for free. As soon as 3 scatters hit the reels, the feature is triggered, giving the player a predetermined number of free spins. The feature can be retriggered by landing another set of 3 or more scatters and usually comes with extra features.
Cash bonus: The cash bonus is another bonus feature that can be activated on many slots. Unlike the free spins bonus, the cash bonus is a pick and win feature. The player makes choices from several objects on the screen, and each reveals a cash prize.
Total Payout PotentialThe best way to tell if a slot is worth playing or not is to look at the total payout potential per spin or per feature. Some slots can give you smaller payouts ranging from 200 to 500 times the total stake per spin, while others can give you wins of over 10,000 times the total stake and more. So, the higher the payout potential, the better your chance of hitting a monster payout.
Live casino games:
Live casino games were first introduced by Evolution Gaming. The way they work is that a real-life casino floor is built and the gameplay is streamed in real time using HD cameras.
The player can place bets on the table via special software and communicate with the dealer and other players via a chat screen. In the beginning, only Roulette and Blackjack were introduced; later on, a whole range of table games were added to the live dealer section.
The most popular live casino games in online casinos today are:
Live Roulette
Live Blackjack
Live Baccarat
Live poker with 3 cards
Live Craps
Live Texas Hold’em Poker
The wheel of fortune shows Video Poker
When video poker machines were first introduced to land-based casinos, they really changed the face of the industry around the world. Other players and the dealer were excluded from the equation, so that you could only play against the machine. Another reason video poker became a popular casino game is the house edge.
Video poker comes with the lowest house edge in the industry, with some variants exceeding 99%. Players also have the option of doubling their winnings by choosing a black or red card.
This detail makes video poker a lucrative game because, with a bit of luck on our side, we can easily double our winnings into some pretty big winnings. Of course, you always have a chance to get a Royal Flush and get the highest payout in the game. Some of the most popular poker variants that you can play at online casinos are:
Jacks or better.
All American Deuces Wild Poker
Learn How to Play Video Poker Online! Bingo
games
Bingo games allow you to play slowly and build your balance over a period of time. It is still a game played daily by many bingo enthusiasts, but today it is mostly played on specialised bingo sites. At online casinos, bingo usually falls into the “Special Games” category, along with Keno, Sic Bo, and a few other casino games.
The most popular bingo games in New Zealand casinos are:
The Roaring Twenties Bingo
Bingo Blast
Bargain Bingo
Bingo with 90 balls
Bingo with 75 balls
Scratch cards
Scratch cards You can find scratch cards at almost every online casino. They are easy to play as all you have to do is scratch the fields and reveal a prize. But compared to other casino games, scratch cards have a high house edge. Many of them come with bonus rounds and hefty prizes, but it can be difficult to turn a profit.
Some of the most popular scratch card games in New Zealand casinos are:
treasure tree
Lucky 8s
Magic Sevens
Tiki Tiki Tiki. Baby
pirate looting
Jackpot Slots
If you are a fan of online slots, then slots with a progressive jackpot are even more beneficial. The only difference between regular and progressive slots is that progressive slots have a built-in jackpot feature and a jackpot metre that is clearly displayed on the game screen.
The only downside is that jackpot slots have a lower theoretical RTP percentage, but since the jackpot prizes are in the millions, many players are fine with that.
The most popular online progressive jackpot slot is Microgaming’s Mega Moolah, which set a Guinness record for the highest payout when one lucky player won NZD 31,644,363.62 in the month of October 2018.
by John Coleman (CEO of Microgaming).
Progressive jackpots work so that a small percentage of every bet played goes towards the jackpot pool prize.
In some cases, the jackpot is accidentally triggered during the game, within the bonus game you get when special symbols land on your reels (scatter), and in some cases, a special jackpot trigger symbol is inserted.
The industry’s most popular progressive jackpot slots right now include
Mega Moolah from Microgaming.
Arabian Nights by NetEnt
Beach Life is by Playtech.
Joker Millions by Yggdrasil
The Sisters of OzWowPot by Microgaming
Don’t forget to keep up with the latest developments and don’t miss Microgaming’s new 4-level jackpot feature called WowPot. They have four new progressive jackpot slots with a starting amount of NZD 2 million each.
Offline
casino games are great options if you don’t have a WiFi connection and you’re in the mood to practise your skills or just have some free fun. The most popular
option for New Zealand players is the option to download and play free offline slots, but not only that, there are more types of games available to play offline, such as roulette, baccarat, video poker, Texas Holdem, and many others.
Many online casinos offer free casino apps, the mobile versions of their platforms, where you can play all their games offline without being connected to the internet.
How do you find good casino games?
If you are a novice player entering the world of online casinos in New Zealand, you can easily be overwhelmed by the huge range of casino games on offer. Finding the best one can be a difficult task. Luckily for you, we’re here to help.
We have a team of seasoned casino experts who find and bring the best games in the industry to you.
When looking for the best games, our casino experts consider many factors, including:
The RTP value of the bonus rounds is excellent.
a large potential payout
Attractive design
Low House Edge
Once our casino experts find a game that meets the criteria, they add it to our site and recommend it to our loyal players. This will save you time and allow you to play some of the best casino games in the industry.
Back to the player (RTP)
The RTP (Return to Player) value of a game can be a good indicator of what type of payouts you can expect. Simply put, this is the promoted value that the game is designed to return to the player in the form of winnings over a period of time.
The math is simple: casino games with a higher RTP value are bound to produce better payouts.
But the RTP value shouldn’t be taken as the only factor in the game. The RTP works in correlation with the game variance and the RNG (Random Number Generator) to create a totally random game.
This means that a pokie with an RTP value of 98% won’t return $98 in winnings over 100 spins at $1 bets. It can be more or it can be less, which is exactly what makes pokies fun to play.
Casino games with high RTPs:
Top online casino games (slots) in terms of RTP (return to player)–which means these are the slot games where the casino has the lowest house edge!
Some other games worth mentioning with the highest RTP are:
Mega Joker-99.9% (long time winner)
97.39% for White Rabbit Megaways (new).
97.00% for Jack Hammer.
There is a 97.90% chance of catching a fish.
Devil’s Delight – 97.60%
98.00% leeches
Immortal Romance: 96.8%
Read more about RTP here!
House edge
The house edge is simply the opposite of the RTP value. If the RTP value of a slot machine is 98%, then the house edge is 2%. This is the amount that the casino is allowed to keep in profit for a certain period of time.
The house edge is calculated over millions of spins, and all slots reach the house edge and RTP value sooner or later. But the variance makes it interesting to give both the player and the casino an equal chance of making a profit in the short term.
Which games have the best house edge at casinos? Table games are slightly more skill-based than other casino games, so the house edge can vary depending on how you play.
What are the best casino games to play?
Do you want to know which casino games are the best to play? You have some skill, but want to be sure which casino games have the best odds? Well, in this section, we have compiled a list of the best casino games to play based on various criteria, such as odds of winning, house edge, RTP of the game, and popularity.
But to find out which casino games have the best winning odds, let’s look at the game’s average “house edge”! Let’s look at the list below:
As can be seen, we have a better chance of winning at baccarat, roulette, and three-card poker than at the other casino games.
But like I said, this depends on how we play the game. A more experienced player who knows the rules of the game and has good strategy can optimise his chances of winning and ensure that he has better odds on his side, while a novice often has even lower odds.
In our opinion, the best casino game is blackjack. It’s the game where we can make sure we have a bigger house edge than in other games, and it’s also a relatively easy game to learn.
variance
Many new NZ players struggle to understand exactly what variance means when it comes to casino games. Well, in a nutshell, the game variance determines how often the reels pay out.
In terms of slots, you can find games with a low, medium, or high variance. Some slots have a mixed value, so on some titles you may encounter a low-medium or medium-high variance. But what exactly does all this mean?
High variance slots are games that can deliver huge payouts, but this happens very rarely.
Low variance slots, on the other hand, are games that offer frequent payouts that are smaller.
Many experienced players base their gameplay on the variance of the slots. If they want to win big, they go for high variance slots and hope to hit a good bonus round.
If they need to wager a large bonus amount, they switch to low-variance, higher-stakes slots.
This is a good way to play volatility-based slots, because it increases your chances of getting a big payout and keeps most of your money while you play with a bonus.
Design
When it comes to the design of online casino games, there are really no rules. Any provider in the industry can make casino games the way they want. It’s all about coming up with new designs and games that the players enjoy.
In the past, there was a general trend among software vendors to follow a unified design. Classic slots had a similar design with 3 reels and 1 to 5 active paylines.
Then came modern slots that followed a 5 reel, 3 row design.
But today we see new trends in game providers and new online casinos in the industry. Many new slots come with 6 or even more reels and a greater number of rows.
This design also increases the number of paylines, and many providers create slots with a Ways to Win design.
Many game providers have also made slots with a Cluster Pays design that are becoming more and more popular with New Zealanders.
What are the best casino games?
When it comes to real-money casino games, there is no easy answer to which ones are the best. The reason for this is simple.
Different players prefer different casino games. If you are a fan of slots, you will say that slots are the best real-money casino games.
If you like to play Blackjack or Roulette, you can say that table games are the best way to go. Video Poker fans swear that these games are very generous when it comes to winning at the casino. So, what are the best casino games to play for real money?
Well, all and none of the above. Table games and video poker have the lowest house edge of all casino games, but the stake-to-payout ratio is quite low.
On the other hand, slots and jackpots have the highest house edge of all casino games, but can deliver huge payouts in one lucky spin.
For example, Mega Moolah paid a whopping £13 million jackpot on a minimum bet of £0.25.
This is a payout of 52 million times the total stake, which no other game can ever match. In the end, it all comes down to your preferences and what you want to win at the casino.
Best game providers
Want to find a casino with games from your favourite game developer?
Choose a game developer below and we’ll tell you more and show you the best online casino sites.
Frequently asked questions
What do the different game terms mean?
A coin is the bet amount placed in a slot machine when the player makes their spin.
Deposit Bonus: The deposit bonus is a bonus that players get when the casino matches the deposit they have made into their account.
Bonus without a deposit:The no deposit bonus, like free spins for online casino games in NZ, is one that is given to the player as a gift.
Free Spins: Free Spins are offered in all online casinos to help players play more slots.
Bonus round: In casino games, the bonus round is the round in which players can multiply their winnings and receive additional bonuses that they would not have received otherwise.
Scatter: Scatter tiles fix a stuck board when someone is in a slot that has no matches.
Live dealer game: The live dealer game is hosted by a real person who deals with the cards or spins the roulette wheel in front of the camera while the players are watching.
A jackpot is the collective winnings that people can take from a game anywhere, no matter where they play it.
Bankroll: The bankroll is the money in the account that a player can use when starting a game. The payline is
any line of matches in a slot that will give the player a win.
What is an RNG, or Random Number Generator?
An operating system or computer programme that randomly releases the outcome of each die rolled, each card dealt, or each wheel turned in casino games is called a Random Number Generator (RNG).
Read more about RNG here!
Are online casino games manipulated in any way?
No, online casino games can not be manipulated in any way. If you look at the list of casino games, you will see that each game comes from a particular software supplier.
They supply the games to the casino, and when you play a game, you are actually playing on the software provider’s server and not the casino itself.
The providers have a licence from an authority that says that the games are fair and random.
Can New Zealand players try every game in the casino for real money?
Yes, if the casino in question accepts players from New Zealand, you can play any game they offer without any problem.
The only exception to this rule is when you play with a bonus.
You should check the bonus terms and conditions to see which games can be played with bonus money.