Anastasiia Yakovykh
Product Marketing TL at Evoplay
Mykhailo Kachanov
Chief Business Officer at SlotCatalog
Caramelo Dog: Lucky Run is the second co-created game by Evoplay and SlotCatalog. How does it differ from your previous title, Uncrossable Rush, in terms of design, player expectations, and positioning?
Anastasiia Yakovykh: With Caramelo Dog, the user's experience lives in the culture around the game. That's a fundamentally different design challenge, and it required an equally different approach to creative decision-making.
Visually, every element in the street scene, the colourful facades, the laundry lines, the food truck, the graffiti, and the wider environment is there for a reason. A Brazilian player opening the game immediately recognises something familiar rather than a generic interpretation of Brazil. That recognition creates an emotional connection before the gameplay even begins.
Then there is Taco, the game's central character. He is a lost dog trying to find his way home through an unpredictable urban world. That narrative changes player expectations. Users are not only managing risk and multipliers; they are also invested in the character's journey, which naturally encourages discussion and sharing.
Mykhailo Kachanov: Uncrossable Rush validated the commercial potential of the CrossyRun™ mechanic and demonstrated that Evoplay could execute the format at a very high level.
Caramelo Dog: Lucky Run approaches the concept from a different angle. Instead of proving the mechanic itself, the focus shifts to market specificity. The game was designed around a clearly defined audience in Brazil, a market that has experienced strong growth and increasing player acquisition over the last two years.
The localisation is not simply visual. It is built into the game's structure. Four difficulty levels provide different volatility profiles and multiplier ceilings, allowing players to choose the level of risk that best matches their preferences.
What were the key inputs behind Caramelo Dog: Lucky Run – and how did data insights, creative direction, and player-first thinking come together during its development?
Anastasiia Yakovykh: Research consistently shows that animals remain the most popular game theme among Brazilian players, ahead of fantasy, mythology, and classic fruit concepts. At the same time, much of the available content still relies on broader global references rather than local cultural elements.
We wanted to create something that felt immediately familiar, emotionally engaging, and naturally suited to an iGaming environment. Once those pieces came together, the direction became obvious.
The mathematical model was developed with the same philosophy. Brazilian players typically favour shorter sessions and faster feedback loops, so the hit range was designed to span from 0.01% to 87.27%. This gives users flexibility to choose a risk profile aligned with their preferred style of play.
The game offers a maximum multiplier of 10,000x and a maximum win of €750,000, while maintaining a 96% RTP. The goal was to create moments capable of generating excitement and social engagement without compromising long-term playability.
Mykhailo Kachanov: Three factors shaped the original brief.
First, SlotCatalog's data across Latin American markets revealed a growing gap between demand for crash-style experiences and the amount of locally relevant content available to Brazilian players.
Second, the Vira-lata Caramelo itself represented a powerful cultural signal. The character generates substantial search demand and social media engagement organically, making it a proven audience interest rather than a creative assumption.
Third, the CrossyRun™ framework had already demonstrated its effectiveness. Because the mechanic was tested and validated, development could focus on cultural adaptation and execution instead of experimenting with core gameplay foundations.
What made a Brazilian-inspired cultural concept the right fit for a crash-style game, and what signals or patterns in player behaviour support this kind of localisation?
Anastasiia Yakovykh: The story of the Caramelo dog aligns naturally with the core principles of the crash format. Both are centred around progress, risk, and decision-making.
The Vira-lata Caramelo symbolises resilience, adaptability, and navigating an unpredictable world. Those qualities fit perfectly within a game where every step forward increases both opportunity and danger.
The behavioural data was equally compelling. Brazilian players consistently gravitate toward fast-paced formats that deliver immediate outcomes. While crash games still occupy a relatively small share of overall casino content, they generate a disproportionately large amount of player interest, highlighting strong demand for agency, speed, and social interaction.
Mykhailo Kachanov: The step-crash mechanic creates tension through a sequence of small decisions. Each move forces players to evaluate whether to continue or secure their winnings.
When that gameplay is paired with a culturally familiar character, the emotional engagement becomes much stronger. Brazilian players understand the symbolism of the Caramelo dog immediately, which makes the experience more meaningful from the first session.
At the same time, broader market trends support this approach. As regulated iGaming continues to expand across Latin America, operators increasingly compete through content relevance rather than sheer catalogue size. Games that reflect local identity are demonstrating stronger acquisition and retention metrics than more generic alternatives.
What is the most important takeaway from Caramelo Dog: Lucky Run – not in terms of mechanics or theme, but in terms of what it reveals about players and market demand?
Anastasiia Yakovykh: The main takeaway is – Brazilian players need games that recognise them. The market already has a huge volume of content, but much of it still feels disconnected from local identity, which can become a much stronger retention driver than a generic entertainment layer.
Another insight is that simplicity and depth can work together. Caramelo Dog: Lucky Run is easy to understand: move forward, build the multiplier, collect, or crash. But underneath the simple structure, the game offers a wide mathematical range, which allows different player types to find their own rhythm.
For us, the broader lesson is that cultural specificity and technical depth should not be seen as separate directions. When they support each other, the game becomes relevant, flexible, and more likely to stay interesting over time.
Mykhailo Kachanov: Crash game supply has grown substantially over the past two years, but a significant proportion is structurally interchangeable. Studios and operators who treat localisation as a visual adjustment rather than a product positioning decision are finding that they do not convert the demand they expected.
Caramelo Dog: Lucky Run shows that when cultural insight is built in from the start, the product gains a materially different market position than one with local flavour added later. The distinction matters at the acquisition stage, in casino lobby placement, and in the organic content affiliates and players create around the title. The market data is increasingly clear on this, and this release is a direct application of the insight.
What stands out most about your collaboration on Caramelo Dog: Lucky Run, and how do you see this partnership shaping the iGaming space?
Anastasiia Yakovykh: What stands out is that we combined two different types of intelligence and saw how much stronger they become together.
SlotCatalog sees the industry from a position no single game studio can replicate: patterns across thousands of games, hundreds of operators, and millions of interactions at once. They know which themes are overrepresented, which are invisible, which promo mechanics retain players in specific markets, and what operators need when they integrate a new title. That kind of catalogue-level intelligence is rare, and it changes how you approach a brief.
Evoplay brings the other half: the engine, mathematics, production quality, and the ability to turn cultural insight into a playable experience that performs technically. The CrossyRun™ format, the 18.2MB mobile weight, 20+ supported languages including Brazilian Portuguese, and the promo tool suite, Free Spins, Quests, Tournaments, Prize Drops, Wheel of Fortune, and Races, are not default choices. Each one reflects what operators and players in specific markets will actually use.
For the industry, Caramelo Dog: Lucky Run is a counterargument to the usual pattern of building universally and localising superficially. That is not just a better game. It is a new-level template for how this industry can work.
Mykhailo Kachanov: The defining feature of the collaboration is the separation of ownership. SlotCatalog holds the mechanics framework and the market intelligence function. Evoplay holds production and creative execution. That clarity makes the process efficient and keeps accountability unambiguous.
The broader significance is in what the model represents for the industry. The relationship between data platforms and game developers has historically been transactional: one produces analysis, the other creates games, and the two connect at the reporting stage. This partnership inverts that. The CrossyRun™ mechanic emerged from SlotCatalog's analysis of player behaviour patterns, and the cultural direction of each release is informed by live demand data rather than retrospective market research.
As operator scrutiny over content performance increases, and as studios face more pressure to justify new releases with market evidence rather than creative confidence alone, this kind of integration between intelligence and product design becomes a commercial necessity rather than a differentiator. This collaboration is an early and functional example of where that trend is heading.
