Book of Dead slot online from Play'n GO

Book of Dead is the Egyptian-themed pokie Play'n GO released on 14 January 2016, and it remains one of the most widely stocked pokies in the world. The player follows Rich Wilde, an explorer already familiar from the studio's earlier titles, through a tomb in search of the book itself.

The grid is a plain 5x3 with 10 adjustable paylines, and wins pay from the leftmost reel. Card ranks from 10 to Ace comprise the low-paying symbols. Above them sit Horus, Anubis, the pharaoh and Rich Wilde, who pays the most. The book is both wild and scatter.

The default return is 96.21%, and volatility is high, which is the pairing that defines a session here. Long stretches return little, and almost all of the value sits inside one bonus round. Stakes run from NZ$0.10 to NZ$100 per spin, and the max. win is 5,000x the bet, capped at 250,000 coins. There is no jackpot, no bonus buy and no multiplier mechanic.

“The RTP printed on most review pages is only the best-case build. Play'n GO certifies five versions of this game: 96.21%, 94.25%, 91.25%, 87.25% and 84.18%. A casino chooses which one to run, and the gap between the top and bottom setting is 12.03%. Open the paytable, find the RTP line, and check it before the first spin.”

The feature list is short by modern standards: one bonus round and a Gamble feature.

Game symbols

The book does double duty. As a wild, it substitutes for every other symbol to complete a line. As a scatter, it pays from three or more anywhere on the reels and triggers the free spins, so it does not need to sit on an active payline to count.

Free spins and the expanding symbol

Three or more books award 10 free spins. Before the first of them plays, the game riffles through the paytable and picks one regular symbol at random to serve as the special expanding symbol for the entire round. 

That choice decides the round. When the chosen symbol lands and can form a win on an active line, every instance of it expands to fill the whole reel it sits on, and the expanded symbols do not need to be adjacent to pay. Draw Rich Wilde and a single landing on each reel is worth 5,000x the bet. Draw the Jack, and the same round returns pocket change. Three books during the feature retrigger another 10 spins, with no cap on how often that happens.

Gamble feature

Any base-game win can be staked on a card gamble instead of being collected. Guessing the colour doubles the prize, guessing the suit pays four times, and a wrong call forfeits your winnings. The gamble does nothing for the game's return and simply raises the variance of a session that is already volatile.

Simplicity is the reason this pokie has outlasted its imitators. The graphics and sound still hold up, and 5,000x is a respectable ceiling for a game with no jackpot attached.

The costs are equally clear. Community trackers put the bonus trigger at roughly once every 190 spins, so the drought before it arrives is real, and the round can still end with a low-paying expanding symbol and no way to influence it. There is no bonus buy, no cascade and no multiplier progression. If you want the same format with more features, you can look at Legacy of Dead, while Reactoonz offers a different Play'n GO maths model entirely.