Should we forgive Play ‘n Go for the unforgivably clunky naming of this slot? You’ll have to decide that yourself. We’re going to guess that the terrible name – which is just awful English – is the result of some sort of SEO tactic to get this game listed close to some other big titles.
It’s part of a big family of games that are themed around archaeology and particularly the Indiana Jones-style swashbuckling archaeologist (any British TV watcher of a certain age will remember Time Team and the shocking revelation that most archaeologists actually wear comfy sweaters while doing their valuable work). The hero here gives us the full name, Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead, a five-reel game that boasts of its big free spins round.
Is it worth digging in to explore this version of Ancient Egypt? Let’s have a look in our Book of Dead slot review.
As most of these Egyptian-themed machines, the Book of Dead slot is set-up as if the reels were in a temple. So the backdrop looks like stone.
The reels are big and square and the symbols feature a lot of gold, even on the fonts used to delineate the card symbols.
It’s a striking and effective bit of design.
The control panel runs along the bottom of the screen. It’s quite crowded, and you might need to keep your wits around you as you consider where to click or tap. There’s a further set of controls in the game’s frame.
Wins are shown with lit up pay-lines.
Play n Go make Book of Dead, and a whole series of games based around the character, Rich Wilde. The company is a big provider of slots and table games as well as a load of the backroom things.
Among their most popular titles are this one, Rise Of Olympus, Sizzling Spins, Fire Joker, and Legacy Of Egypt.
So we have a five-reel slot with three rows to give us 15 symbols on the reels.
The Book of Dead slot game gives players a theoretical return to players of 96.21%. Remember that this is a long-term measure of the game’s performance, and shouldn’t be taken as a measure of how you can expect any particular session with the game to go. It has been rated as having a high variance, which means that it is more likely to pay out relatively bigger wins less often than smaller prizes more often. The maximum prize is a 250,000-coin jackpot from betting between 0.01 and 50 coins. There are 10 pay-lines.
You should be able to play this game, which uses Flash, Javascript, and HTML5 on any mobile or tablet, as well as your desktop machine.
The Book of Dead slot game has been around since January 2014 and is still popular with UK casino players.
The game is not straightforward because there is a bonus game.
Let’s have a look at the standard pay-table though.
The base of the pay-table is designed around the deck of cards. The 10, Jack and Queen all pay five times your bet for three, 25-times for four, and 100 times for five. Then we have the King and Ace, both of which pay five-times stake for three, 40-times for four, and 150-times for five.
The high paying symbols start paying out from just two symbols. The first is the falcon god, which pays five-times stake for a pair, 30-times for three, 100-times for four, and 750-times for five. This same pay-table applies to the jackal-headed god. Next is a golden pharaoh’s head that pays five-times stake for two, 40-times for three, 400-times for four, and 2,000-times for five. The final symbol is our hero himself, who pays 10-times stake for two, 100-times stake for three, 1,000-times stake for four, and 5,000-times stake for five.
The bonus symbol is a scatter representing the golden Book of Dead. It’s also the wild.
It pays in its own right: twice stake for three, 20-times stake for four, and 200-times stake for five. If you see three or more of these little babies you have triggered the free-spin round, which is where you’ll see the biggest wins.
In the free-spin round, you’ll have the benefit of a random expanding symbol. This will expand after each win.
There is also a gamble feature within the main game. This gives you the chance of a red or black choice to double your win or picking the suit of a card to quadruple it. You can keep gambling up to five times or to a maximum win of 2,500 coins.
You can get your head around this game pretty quickly.
The controls are standard, even if the layout is a little more complicated than it needs to be. The panel runs in two rows.
The top row features your balance on the left, with an information window next to it. Then there’s a panel with your bet amount in it, before – on the far right – the pay-table button, which opens a simple, three-page guide to the game’s prize structure.
On the bottom line, you’ll find, from left to right, the coin value window. Next to that, are the controls that set the number of coins you’re betting. Then the number of lines on which you’re betting. Click the next button to maximise your bet. Then there’s the “spin” button – some minor originality points are scored for making it blue rather than green. Finally, there’s an auto-spin button. This can set up to 500 spins, with the option to stop the process if you win a prize, if you trigger bonuses or if wins or losses pass trigger amounts that you set. The auto-spin feature will turn off the opportunity to gamble your wins if you don’t set it to stop.
This is an entertaining and rewarding game that hold up the possibility of really big wins. It’s not the most original game in the world – and we won’t be the first reviewers to mention its similarity to the Book of Ra – but then not much is original these days. We’ve also got some issues with the way the screen is set up, particularly if you’re playing on a small screen on the go.
The big wins, lovely graphics and loads of great effects make this worth a try if you enjoy the theme or fancy a big win next time you play at your favourite online casino.