Book of Ra Slot Review
If you’re an online slot player one of the most useful bits of tech you can have is a time machine. Really. I’m not sure why everyone who designs slots is so dissatisfied with the present, but there is an endless stream of games set in ages past. With the Book of Ra slot, it seems it’s the further back the better, as we’re off to Ancient Egypt, the first civilisation about which we know much.
This time capsule comes from Novomatic and is a 5-reel game with a pretty standard set-up that betrays its roots as a bricks-and-mortar casino machine. It’s kept its simplicity in its online version, with the mobile version having a particularly well-designed interface that makes it super-easy to play on little touch screens.
Be sure you know which Book of Ra slot game you are playing because the range has expanded to become a whole family of games, including Book of Ra, Magic and Book of Ra Gold.
The Developer of Book of Ra Slot Machine
Novomatic is a massive company. The biggest in the world by some measures, employing tens of thousands of people and measuring its turnover in the billions of Euros. It’s been enormous in real casino games for aeons but is expanding into the online market, often under the Novo Line brand.
Among its many games – and it specialises in series – are Summer Queen slot (and Autumn Queen and Winter Queen), Lord of the Ocean, and Amazon’s Diamond.
The Basics
Book of Ra game is a classic five-by-three grid slot machine with a 15 symbol screen and 10 pay lines. Pay-lines pay from left to right only. A line can only pay out one win and will pay out the highest if there is more than one win unless there are also scatter wins, which can be added on.
The paytable starts with the 10, Jack and Queen from the deck of cards. They all pay 5 coins (for a one-coin bet) for three, 25 for four, and 100 for a full house. Then the King and Ace paying, 5, 40, and 140 coins.
Then we head into the Egyptian themed symbols.
A scarab beetle tile and a winged god statue pay 5 for two, 30 for three, 100 for four, and 750 for a set of five.
The sphinx head pays out from a pair of symbols upwards, rewarding players with 5, 40, 400 and 2,000 coins. The archaeologist (who the owners of the copyright on the Indiana Jones films should have no problem with, honestly) pays out from two symbols too, offering 10, 100, 1,000 and 5,000 coins.
Finally, there is a wild scatter in the shape of the Book of Ra itself – which looks far too long for me, perhaps it’s a skim-read – which substitutes for all symbols and pays 2 coins for three, 20 for four, and 200 for a set of five. More importantly, it triggers a free spin round of 10 spins with expanding wilds.
Book of Ra Bonus Game
The bonus game is triggered by three or more of these scatters. At the start of a round of these spins, a random symbol is picked that might expand after regular pay-outs to deliver more wins. The free spins game can be retriggered if you get enough scatters during the round.
Betting is by pay-line and amount. You can set the pay-lines from one to 10 and set the bet per line as high as 1,000 coins in the demo mode. You’ll need to check the details on the site you’re playing to get the correct details of the top prizes, but we reckon the biggest possible single-spin win is 50,000 coins.
The Book of Ra slot machine has a theoretical return to player of 95.5%. This is quite low in the current market, where typical RTP’s now tend to be above 96%. Please remember that this is not a measure of what you will win when you play the game, but a measure of how the machine is expected to run over its lifetime.
Book of Ra Casino Slot Look
Book of Ra slot is typical of the look and sound of Novomatic games. That makes it quite old-fashioned looking in the current market.
It has cartoon-style graphics for its symbols and bright colours that could have come straight out of a land-based casino on the reels.
The backdrop is a pair of temple columns. The reels appear to be transparent and are divided by a striped column.
The controls sit at the bottom of the screen on a panel straight out of the standard real-life fruit machine armoury with credit, messages, and the last win shown on the top line, and the actual control buttons at the bottom.
To the far top right of the screen are a fast forward/play button that sets up quick spins, and the sound control.
How to play Book of Ra Slot
If you’ve played any fruit machine you’ll soon find your way around this game.
The control panel at the bottom of the screen reads like this:
On the top line from left to right are a “credit” window showing your balance, a message window, and a window showing your last win.
The bottom line’s controls are – again from left to right – a green autoplay option, the paytable button, the pay-line selector and window, the bet-per-line window and the total bet amount. Then there is a gamble button and a start button that doubles as a collect button when you’ve won a prize.
The pay-table button opens up a single page pay-table and also turns the gamble button into a “more information” button that opens a two-page description of the bonus game.
The Autospin function is a simple Start and Stop button.
The Verdict
This is a game for hard-core players rather than browsers. It’s low on frills but delivers an excellent potential top prize from a good standard game. If you like special effects and gameplay that echoes the best video games then this is not for you, but if you like a very good version of a classic slot machine then you should check out Book of Ra slot at your favourite casino now.
