Those who have followed our casino industry conference coverage know we’ve been watching with interest the recent developments of Interblock’s AMUSE line of games, which leverage their proven hardware and marry it with novel twists that bring something new to the casino floor.
Some, like Freefall Roulette, which launched last fall, offer simple twists to known games. Brian Christopher tried it out when it launched and went back for more on camera.
But the latest batch that launched about a month ago in Las Vegas, and are popping up in more locations, offer some completely new directions. The week of the launch I had a chance to check them out at Circa Las Vegas, and the promise I saw at the IGA 2026 conference was largely fulfilled.
Two games push the envelope in fresh directions for the casino floor. One was an online concept, crash games, making its debut on the casino floor with their game Battle for Earth.
But the one I’m seeing capture the most attention on channels that showcase electronic table games is the game Destroyer Naval Strike. The channels have often called it “Battleship” but that’s unfair to Interblock and the cleverness of what they’ve created.
Effectively they’ve taken their baseline craps single player machines and created something entirely novel. A 6×6 grid maps out the 36 combinations the two dice can roll, with one die having the letters A-F and the second the numbers 1-6. You get to place four ships, with lengths of four, three, three and two spaces, filling 12 out of 36 grid spaces.
You start the game with the ability to shoot four missiles. However, each time a missile hits a previously unhit ship space, you get a bonus missile. If you hit two or more spaces on the same ship, you are awarded a prize; sinking a ship can yield a bonus, and if you manage to sink two or more ships, the bonuses escalate pretty dramatically (but it’s also difficult to accomplish).
Once you’ve exhausted your four missiles, you have the ability to buy more missles. At Circa, where I checked it out, there were five additional chances. During IGA I was told that was going to be configurable, but I don’t know if that’s how it’s worked out in practice.
If you buy a missile and hit a new ship space, you still get the bonus missile. The price of each missile reflects the odds of hitting another space and what hitting those spaces are worth.
I was sucked in. Each round wasn’t particularly long – perhaps a minute or so, more if you buy extra missiles and take your time. It was a good pace, and it was engaging – some rounds were whiffs, some got exciting quickly when the hits started piling up. It was particularly exciting when I blew up the four-space ship because the reward was pretty strong.
I never managed to sink two full ships, but given the amount they awarded, I imagine the odds aren’t particularly good, even with buying up the extra missiles.
I showed a few friends the game while I was in town, and the next day they went back over to check it out again – that’s a great sign of the attention it has been capturing. I ended up going back for another round myself as well.
I also saw a lot of instant reactions of people who tripped across the AMUSE games without knowing what they were and being drawn in. Interblock did an excellent job of packaging these games in a way that captures attention and creates something new.
Now, Destroyer Naval Strike is not perfect. When you’ve had a chance to earn some money by hitting another space on a ship, the amounts shown on the machine I played indicated what you would win in total, not the additional amount you would win by adding that space. There was nothing I could find clearly showing what your total win was – you could see how much you’d earned on each ship but had to do the mental math yourself.
When buying another missile, the end game button could easily be modified to indicate what you’d lock in if you ended right then (and might help players decide if they want to spend that extra money for another try or lock in their win or loss by concluding that round). Slingo games do this particularly well, and I think Destroyer Naval Strike would benefit from such a display here.
Ultimately, these are some fit and finish things I expect Interblock will refine as this continues to take off. But after spending time at their booth in recent years seeing them really try to shake the tree and introduce something unique and different, it’s great to see these AMUSE games finally see the light, and capture players’ attention. And this round of releases covers a first wave, and not all of the concepts they’ve been showcasing, meaning there’s likely more to come.
For all the incremental improvements on games like slots, it’s great to see companies like Interblock not being afraid to try something new, and based on how things have started it looks like they’re on the right track to liven up the casino floor in some entirely new ways.
