Book of Dead Slot Review and Free Demo

What Book of Dead is

Play'n GO released Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead on 14 January 2016, and it quickly became the provider's best-known slot. It is part of the Rich Wilde series: the adventurer who earlier chased the Pearls of India and the Aztec Idols now heads to Ancient Egypt. The provider files the game in its Dead series, which later grew with Legacy of Dead.

The layout is deliberately classic. Five reels, three rows, up to ten paylines that pay left to right, one symbol that doubles as wild and scatter, and one bonus round. There are no cascades, no multiplier meters and no feature buy. Everything interesting happens inside the free spins, where a randomly chosen symbol can expand to fill whole reels and pay on every line at once.

Play'n GO rates the game high volatility, 7 on its own internal scale. In practice that means long runs of small or no wins, broken up by rare rounds where the expanding symbol lines up on four or five reels.

How a spin works, step by step

1. Choose lines and coin value. Up to 10 lines can be activated, always in numerical order. You also pick coins per line (up to 5) and a coin value between 0.01 and 2.00. The provider lists 0.01 as the minimum bet and 100 as the standard maximum.
2. Spin. Five reels stop on a 5x3 window.
3. Line wins are checked. Wins pay left to right from reel 1, and only the highest win per selected line is paid.
4. The book substitutes. The book is the scatter, and the rules state that it acts as a wild and substitutes for all other symbols.
5. Scatter check. Three or more books anywhere award 10 free spins.
6. Optional gamble. Play'n GO lists a gamble mode for this title, so after a win you can usually collect or risk it on a card guess. Operators can switch it off.

A practical point about lines: at full stake you play all ten, and every paytable value below is a multiple of the bet on one line. At a 1.00 total stake with ten lines, each line carries 0.10.

Symbols and paytable

The reels hold four premium symbols drawn from the Egyptian setting (the provider's artwork lists Rich Wilde, Osiris and Anubis among the characters), five card-rank symbols and the book. Play'n GO's official rules sheet gives these multipliers of the line bet:

Two details matter. First, the four premium symbols pay for just two in a row, which the card ranks never do. Second, the book has its own award of 2, 20 and 200 for three, four and five; the rules sheet does not make its basis fully clear, so open the in-game paytable to see whether it multiplies the line bet or the total stake in your build.

The book: wild and scatter in one

The book carries two jobs. On a line it replaces any symbol, so a book on reel 2 can complete a premium line that starts on reel 1. Anywhere on the screen, three or more books start the free spins. Five books on the same line also form the top wild combination, which the sheet prices like the top premium symbol.

Because one symbol does both jobs, a single spin can pay twice: a line win using the book as wild, plus the scatter award and the feature. That is the moment most sessions are built around.

Free spins and the special expanding symbol

Three or more books award 10 free spins. Before the first spin, the game picks one ordinary symbol at random to be the special expanding symbol for the whole round. The rules then work in this order:

• Regular line wins are paid first, exactly as in the base game.
• The special symbol may then expand to cover all three positions on its reel, but only when that creates an additional prize on active paylines.
• Expanded symbols do not need to sit on adjacent reels. Reels 1, 3 and 5 count as three of a kind.
• Three or more books during the round retrigger another 10 free spins. The special symbol stays the same.

That third rule is the core of the game. An expanded reel pays on every line, and the adjacency rule is lifted, so a handful of scattered symbols can turn into a full-screen payout.

Worked example: what an expansion pays

Take a 1.00 stake on ten lines, so each line carries 0.10. The game picks premium HP3 as the special symbol.

• Three reels. HP3 lands on reels 1, 3 and 5. All three expand, and every one of the ten lines now shows three HP3. Each line pays 40 x 0.10 = 4.00, so the spin pays 10 x 4.00 = 40.00, or 40 times the stake.
• Four reels. The same symbol on reels 1, 2, 4 and 5 pays 400 x 0.10 = 40.00 per line, or 400.00 for the spin.
• Five reels of the top symbol. If HP4 is the special symbol and fills all five reels, each line pays 5,000 x 0.10 = 500.00, and ten lines make 5,000.00. That equals the provider's 5,000x win cap, so this is the ceiling of the game.

The low symbols tell the other side. If a card rank is chosen and expands on three reels, ten lines pay 5 x 0.10 x 10 = 5.00, five times the stake. The symbol draw at the start of the round decides a lot, and you cannot influence it.

Book of Dead versus Book of Ra

The comparison with Book of Ra is natural, because both rest on the same idea: a book that is wild and scatter, and a free round with one expanding symbol. The verified differences:

The gap in return is the key point: about four percentage points in the default builds. If you like the book format but also want the ten-line setup of the Novomatic range, Book of Ra Deluxe is the closer match on lines.

RTP builds and volatility

Play'n GO publishes five return settings for this game: 96.21%, 94.25%, 91.25%, 87.25% and 84.18%. The default configuration is the 96% one, but an operator can choose another. The difference is not cosmetic. Over a long run, RTP of 96.21% returns about 96.21 per 100 staked on average, while 84.18% returns about 84.18, so the lowest build costs roughly three times as much per spin.

On volatility, the provider label is high. The expected value of the game sits heavily inside free spins with a well-placed expanding symbol, so a short session tells you almost nothing about the long-run return.

How to test it in the demo

The demo on this page is Play'n GO's own practice version, running on virtual credits. A useful way to spend it (see our demo guide):

• Open the paytable screen first and write down the values at your stake, including the book awards.
• Play at least a few hundred spins to feel how rarely three books arrive.
• In each free round, note which symbol was chosen and how many reels it covered. You will see how much a premium draw changes the outcome.
• Check the rules screen for the RTP figure and the bet limits of that build.

Bankroll and stake sizing

With a high-volatility book slot, the size of your stake relative to your balance matters more than any feature. Pick a stake small enough to ride out long gaps between features; a balance of a few hundred spins at your stake is a sensible floor. Reducing the number of lines lowers the cost per spin but also shrinks what an expanding symbol can pay, since expansions only pay on active lines. Decide on a stop point before you start, and skip the gamble feature if you want the session to follow the game's normal math.

Where to play Book of Dead for real money

Welcome bonus up to 500% on the first deposits18+ · Terms apply · Check that the platform is available in your country

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PaylinePilot editorial team · Numbers on this page come from the in-game rules and paytable, not from press releases.