Play Demo
The first thing you notice is the temple! Stone columns, warm amber light, hieroglyphs running down the walls. Play’n GO didn’t just tick the Egyptian box here, they committed to a setting that actually feels immersive. Rich Wilde sits at the top of the paytable as the swagger your average adventure hero only dreams of, and everything from the gold-accented framing to the crisp reel symbols carries a premium polish that makes this slot feel like an event rather than a backdrop. Nearly a decade on from its 2016 release, the design still holds up in a way most of its imitators can’t claim.
The golden Book of Dead symbol does double duty on every spin. As a wild, it substitutes for any other symbol to complete combinations across the 10 paylines. As a scatter, it pays anywhere on the reels regardless of position: three books pay 2x your total bet, four pay 20x, five pay 200x. Landing three or more simultaneously triggers the free spins round. It’s a compact but effective design where one symbol handles two of the most important jobs in the game.
Three or more Book symbols anywhere on the reels award 10 free spins. Before the round begins, one regular symbol is randomly selected as the Special Expanding Symbol for that bonus. When it appears during free spins, it expands to fill its entire reel. The expanded symbol doesn’t need to sit adjacent to copies on other reels; it only needs to land on the correct positions for a payline to complete. When the expanding symbol lands across multiple reels simultaneously, wins stack fast.
Free spins can be retriggered by landing three or more Book symbols during the round, adding another 10 spins each time. There’s no cap on retriggers, so a fortunate session can extend well beyond the initial 10.
After any win in standard play, an optional gamble feature activates. Guess the colour of the next card correctly for a 2x multiplier; guess the suit correctly for a 4x multiplier. It’s a clean risk/reward option that adds a layer of variance to an otherwise straightforward session, particularly useful for compounding smaller wins that wouldn’t otherwise feel significant. Worth noting that Play’n GO offers Book of Dead at multiple RTP configurations. The default is 96.21%, but operators can select lower settings of 94.25%, 91.25%, 87.25%, or 84.18%. The in-game paytable screen will confirm which version is active in your chosen demo.
Book of Dead plays on a 5-reel, 3-row grid with 10 adjustable paylines. Bets run from £0.10 to £100 per spin with paylines set to 10, though lines can be reduced. Running fewer than all 10 changes the maths and reduces overall winning potential. All wins pay left to right along active lines, except scatter wins which pay anywhere. Only the highest win per selected line is paid.
Symbol values below are shown in coins at maximum lines, multiplied by your bet staked per line. Scatter wins are multiplied by the total bet and added to payline wins.
| Symbol | x2 | x3 | x4 | x5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rich Wilde | 10 | 100 | 1,000 | 5,000 |
| Pharaoh | 5 | 40 | 400 | 2,000 |
| Anubis | 5 | 30 | 100 | 750 |
| Horus (Falcon) | 5 | 30 | 100 | 750 |
| Symbol | x3 | x4 | x5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 5 | 40 | 150 |
| K | 5 | 40 | 150 |
| Q | 5 | 25 | 100 |
| J | 5 | 25 | 100 |
| 10 | 5 | 25 | 100 |
| Count | Payout (total bet multiplier) |
|---|---|
| x3 | 2x |
| x4 | 20x |
| x5 | 200x |
Base game payouts.
Multiplier payouts.
The free spins trigger explained.
There are dozens of Book of Ra-inspired slots on the market and most of them are trying to replicate what Book of Dead achieved in 2016. The difference is that Play'n GO built the template rather than copying it. Sharper visuals, cleaner code, a gamble feature that adds genuine variance, and a free spins round with enough expanding symbol drama to justify the high volatility wait. Against modern Megaways titles it looks lean on features, and the long dry spells between bonuses are real, but for players who want a game that rewards patience with decisive, high-impact rounds, this still makes a strong case.
The session opened in exactly the way Book of Dead tends to. A steady drip of small line hits from the royals, the occasional Pharaoh or Anubis combination nudging the balance upward without doing anything dramatic. Play’n GO’s production quality is immediately apparent in the demo. The reels move cleanly, sound design is restrained without being dull, and the overall presentation gives the game a polish that sharper-edged competitors from the same era lack. It genuinely looks better than Cleopatra at the same age, and by most modern standards too.
Variance during the session sat lower than Book of Dead’s reputation might suggest. Several gamble opportunities came up on modest wins, a feature that gets overlooked in most reviews but adds real decision-weight to what would otherwise be forgettable 5x or 10x line hits. Taking the gamble on colour (2x) a couple of times returned positive results and compounded those wins into something worth logging. It’s an optional layer that suits the game’s high-volatility profile well. When you’re waiting on a bonus, small wins feel like filler unless you do something with them.
The free spins round in this game lives and dies by the expanding symbol draw. Rich Wilde as the special symbol is the obvious ideal, since a full-screen Wilde across five reels at the right bet level is where the 5,000x top end comes from. Landing a royal as the special symbol narrows the ceiling significantly, and that randomness is the game’s most honest limitation. There’s no way to influence which symbol gets chosen, so the same free spins trigger can result in wildly different outcomes across sessions.
What Book of Dead does better than most of its follow-on titles is create atmosphere without overcomplicating the loop. There’s a clarity to the session: spin, look for the Book, wait for the expanding symbol moment. That simplicity makes it easy to stay focused over an extended free play run. The Rich Wilde series has since expanded significantly (Legacy of Dead, Rise of Dead, Tome of Madness, Amulet of Dead, Wandering City), and most of those games add features and systems on top of this framework. Some improve on it. None of them fully replicate the stripped-back tension of the original round working exactly as it should.
Play’n GO has been running this format for nearly ten years now, and Book of Dead remains the clearest expression of what the studio does at its most focused. The expanded Rich Wilde catalogue gives players options at every volatility tier, but the original still defines the benchmark. Within Play’n GO’s current library, which now includes far more complex systems, it occupies the position of the entry point that never stopped being worth recommending.
The reels are alluring, still glistening with gold more than 10 years after the game’s 2016 release.
