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The moment that pushed Evoplay back into the spotlight this year did not come from a merger announcement or a record quarterly report. It arrived at an awards ceremony, with studio teams watching a shortlist on a big screen. When Adrenaline Rush was named winner of Game Design & Art Direction at the SBC Awards Europe 2025, Evoplay suddenly found itself at the centre of the room.

The recognition did not stand alone. On the same circuit, the company collected an Industry Innovation of the Year prize, which followed earlier honours for its sci-fi-inspired flagship title Star Guardians at the Game Developer Awards. Taken together, the trophies suggest a longer story about how the studio approaches its work.

Design as the Basis for Retention

In an exclusive interview with BonusFinder, chief executive Ivan Kravchuk kept returning to one theme. In his view, design is not a decorative layer that appears near the end of development, but a structural choice that runs through every decision. As he put it, “Game design is fundamental. It defines how players feel and interact while playing.”

Asked how that philosophy shows up in practice, Kravchuk described design as the main driver behind satisfaction and retention. Sessions are shaped by how mechanics, visuals, and audio support each other. When that balance slips, he argued, players sense it quickly, even before data reports reveal a problem with engagement or time on device.

He pointed to situations where rewards feel uneven, where the pace of wins does not match the story on screen, or where the interface makes it hard to understand at a glance what is happening. None of those issues is dramatic on its own. Together, they can slowly push players away from a title.

For Kravchuk, the core rule is simple. “Good design is always about balance,” he said, describing how pacing, feedback, and thematic detail are meant to hold each other in place so that players feel comfortable enough to stay curious.

Racing titles, connected worlds, and awards momentum

Adrenaline Rush now sits at the centre of that conversation. The title was built as a three-dimensional racing experience in the online casino space and gives players manual control over the action rather than presenting a traditional reel grid. A roster of car types and three main characters with their own backstories introduce layers of narrative and choice more commonly seen in console releases.

Around that framework, Evoplay has built systems that track and respond to performance. Leaderboards, player statistics, and bonus rewards that react over time create additional points of contact during a session. Those elements form part of the wider trend toward gamification in iGaming, but in this case, they are tightly anchored to the racing theme, so the experience feels consistent from one race to the next.

The idea has since expanded into two connected titles. Adrenaline Rush: Super Boost translates key motifs into a slot format that feels more familiar to traditional casino audiences, while Adrenaline Rush: XCrash reimagines the universe as a crash-style game where timing and risk management are at the centre. Together, the three releases invite different groups of players into the same world, with varying levels of speed, interaction, and volatility.

Behind Evoplay’s 2025 Engagement Spoke

The awards have arrived at the same time as a shift in Evoplay’s internal numbers. In the first half of 2025, the company recorded a 47 percent rise in player activity and a 24 percent increase in total bets compared with the same period in 2024. Kravchuk sees those figures as the result of several projects that have been in motion for more than a year.

That strategy relies on closer collaboration with affiliate platforms, media outlets, bloggers, and streamers. One partnership with an affiliate that specialises in tracking player preferences produced Uncrossable Rush, a co-developed release that has already surpassed early expectations for engagement. In another example, the studio ran a test campaign for the fantasy-themed Oath of Steel with SlotsCalendar, giving players early access and inviting detailed comments on graphics, mechanics, and general pacing.

According to Kravchuk, these initiatives have tightened the loop between releasing a game and improving it. The studio receives clearer warnings when a mechanic creates friction and stronger signals when a new idea resonates with a particular audience segment. Public rankings on comparison sites, including affiliates such as BonusFinder, add an external view of how Evoplay titles sit alongside rival products in the same casino lobbies.

What’s next for Evoplay?

Looking ahead, the roadmap remains steady rather than dramatic. The company plans to continue releasing new titles across multiple verticals, deepen its relationships with operating partners, and run further campaigns that invite players to try in-development content. Over time, data gathered from North America and other regulated markets is expected to guide which types of experiences receive the most investment and which themes are taken into new regions.

For now, the same idea appears in both the statistics and the trophies on the shelf. A studio that treats game design as the starting point, rather than a finishing touch, has found room to grow in a period when players have more choice than ever before. In Evoplay’s case, that principle is likely to shape the next set of releases just as strongly as it did the games that first carried the company onto the awards stage.