Quick verdict: Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead is the slot that turned Play'n GO into a household name among UK players — a 2016 Ancient Egypt adventure built around a single, brilliantly simple idea: an Expanding Symbol that can turn a modest free spins round into a five-figure-multiplier session. There's no wild symbol cluttering the base game, no cascading reels, no bells and whistles — just a tight 5x3 grid, a scatter that unlocks the bonus, and one randomly-chosen symbol that expands to cover its reel throughout the free spins. It's high volatility and can run dry for long stretches between scatters, but when the Expanding Symbol lines up in the bonus round, few classic slots hit as hard.
The Story
Book of Dead is the second chapter in Play'n GO's long-running Rich Wilde series, following an explorer whose earlier expeditions took him to the Pearls of India and a run-in with the Aztec Idols. This time Wilde heads into the sands of Ancient Egypt, chasing legends of a hidden door where, as Play'n GO's own framing puts it, "the secrets to ancient civilisations and the afterlife await." He picks his way through tombs lined with hieroglyphics and gold leaf, never quite sure whether the Book of Dead he's hunting is real treasure or myth, until he finally reaches a golden sarcophagus and opens it to find the book itself. It's a light framing device rather than a deep narrative — Play'n GO built the whole game around archaeology-adventure atmosphere rather than plot beats — but it set the template Wilde would go on to star in across more than a dozen sequels, from Book of Dead 2 to Book of Dead GO Collect.
Theme, Gameplay & Symbols
The game plays out on a 5-reel, 3-row grid with 10 fixed paylines, framed by sandstone columns and torch-lit temple walls that never let you forget where you are. Low-paying symbols are the standard 10, J, Q, K, and A royals, rendered in Egyptian-gold typography; the higher tier brings in Egyptian iconography proper — Horus the falcon god, Anubis, and a golden winged scarab artifact — before topping out with Rich Wilde himself as the highest-paying regular symbol. The golden sarcophagus/tomb symbol is the scatter, and landing three or more anywhere on the reels is the only way into the game's single bonus feature.
What makes Book of Dead distinctive is what it doesn't have: no wild symbol appears anywhere in the base game. That's unusual even by 2016 standards and remains rare today — every win has to come from a genuine matching combination rather than a substitute bailing out a near-miss. The trade-off is the Expanding Symbol mechanic reserved for free spins, described in detail below, which is where almost all of the game's win potential actually lives.
Presentation & Sound
Book of Dead's art direction has held up well for a game pushing a decade old: warm sandstone temple backdrops, gold-leaf borders, and richly painted character portraits for Rich Wilde, Anubis, and Horus give the reels a hand-illustrated quality rather than the flatter, more graphic style many modern slots lean on. The soundtrack is a understated Egyptian-adventure score that stays in the background during normal play and swells noticeably once free spins begin, giving the bonus round a sense of occasion that the base game deliberately keeps low-key. Symbol animations are simple but satisfying — falcon wings flutter, gold leaf catches the torchlight — without ever slowing the pace of a spin, which is part of why the game still feels fast today despite its age.
How to Play Book of Dead
- Set your stake. Adjust coin value and the number of coins per line; total stakes run from around 0.10 up to 100.00 per spin, though UKGC rules cap online slot stakes at £5 per spin (£2 for 18–24-year-olds) for UK players.
- Spin the reels. Symbols land across the 5x3 grid and the 10 fixed paylines pay left-to-right for three or more matching symbols.
- Watch for the golden tomb scatter. It pays its own scatter prizes and, more importantly, unlocks the bonus once three or more land anywhere on the reels.
- Enter the Free Spins round. Three or more scatters award 10 free spins and reveal the Expanding Symbol screen before they begin.
- Let the Expanding Symbol do the work. One regular symbol is chosen at random to act as the Special Expanding Symbol for the whole free spins sequence — whenever it lands and a win is possible, it expands to fill its entire reel.
- Retrigger for more. Landing three or more scatters again during the free spins awards a further 10 spins, restarting the sequence.
- Try the Gamble feature (optional). After any win, you can choose to gamble it on a card colour guess (double) or suit guess (quadruple) rather than collecting — entirely optional, and the stake is limited to that single win.
Features & Mechanics
Book of Dead's entire bonus structure rests on two connected mechanics: the scatter-triggered Free Spins round, and the Expanding Symbol that runs through it. There's no separate pick-a-prize screen, no multiplier ladder, and no bonus-buy option — Play'n GO built the whole game around making that one mechanic count.
- Free Spins: landing three or more golden tomb scatter symbols anywhere on the reels immediately awards 10 free spins.
- Expanding Symbol: before the free spins begin, one ordinary paying symbol is chosen at random to become that round's Special Expanding Symbol. Whenever it lands during a free spin and completing extra winning combinations is possible, it expands to cover all three positions on its reel — since it's chosen fresh each time the feature triggers, a run where Rich Wilde himself becomes the Expanding Symbol can produce dramatically bigger wins than a low-paying royal doing the same job.
- Retriggers: landing three or more scatters again during the free spins round awards a further 10 spins on top of whatever remains, with a new Expanding Symbol chosen for the extended sequence.
- Gamble feature: any win, base game or free spins, can optionally be pushed into a double-or-nothing card gamble — guess red or black to double it, or the exact suit to quadruple it. A wrong guess forfeits that win, and the feature only ever risks the win just landed, never your remaining balance.
Volatility & Win Potential
Book of Dead is rated high volatility, and it plays that way — the golden tomb scatter can be slow to show up three-at-a-time, and a session can run through a lot of spins between meaningful hits. Play'n GO's default configuration carries a 96.21% RTP, though as with most of its catalogue, operators can run the game at lower configured settings (94.25%, 91.25%, 87.25%, or 84.18% have all been documented), so it's worth checking the paytable/info screen at whichever casino you're playing to confirm which version is live. The maximum win is 5,000x your stake, reachable when the Expanding Symbol lands on a high-value regular symbol — ideally Rich Wilde himself — repeatedly during the free spins. Stakes run from roughly 0.10 up to 100.00 per spin, giving the game a wide enough range for cautious and confident players on the same reels – though note that UKGC rules cap online slot stakes at £5 per spin (£2 for 18–24-year-olds), so UK players can't stake anywhere near the top of that range. Third-party trackers have estimated the hit frequency in the mid-20% range for a winning spin, consistent with the "long dry spell, then a real swing" pattern typical of high-volatility Play'n GO titles, though Play'n GO hasn't published an official figure for this one.
Pros & Cons
- Pro: the randomly-chosen Expanding Symbol makes every free spins round genuinely unpredictable — the same scatter trigger can pay very differently depending on which symbol gets picked.
- Pro: a clean, uncluttered 5x3/10-payline layout with no gimmicks bolted on, which is exactly why it's stayed in near-constant rotation at UK operators for almost a decade.
- Pro: a genuine 5,000x stake ceiling gives the free spins round real teeth compared to many low-volatility classics.
- Pro: retriggerable free spins mean a hot run of scatters can chain into an extended, high-value bonus sequence.
- Con: high volatility and no base-game wild mean dry spells between scatter triggers can run long, a real contrast to the frequent small wins of a low-volatility classic like NetEnt's Starburst.
- Con: published RTP is a top/reference figure — several lower-RTP configurations exist, so it's worth checking which one your casino runs.
Final Verdict
Book of Dead earned its status as one of the most-played slots in UK online casino history by doing one thing extremely well: building an entire game around a single, tension-filled mechanic and trusting it to carry the whole experience. The Expanding Symbol free spins round is still one of the most replayable bonus features in the genre, precisely because you never know in advance whether it'll expand on a 10 or on Rich Wilde himself. It isn't a slot for players who want frequent, gentle wins — the high volatility and absence of a base-game wild see to that — but for anyone chasing the format that half of Play'n GO's later catalogue has tried to recapture, the original is still very much worth spinning, and it's easy to see its influence on other Egyptian-set "book of" games like Pragmatic Play's John Hunter and the Book of Tut.
