Book of Dead is Play’n GO’s 2016 Egyptian slot starring explorer Rich Wilde, which Play’n GO’s chief executive called the world’s most popular online slot in 2023. It plays ten lines with a golden book that is both wild and scatter, and ten free spins where one random symbol expands to fill its reel. It returns 96.21% with a 5,000x cap. Play the official Book of Dead demo below free.
The Book of Dead slot runs on five reels and three rows with 10 lines that pay left to right. Play’n GO’s own guide says the lines can be set from one to ten, while one database lists them as fixed, so line choice may depend on the casino. The four high symbols pay from two of a kind and the royals from three. A spin usually costs 10 cents to $100 with all lines active. The default return is 96.21%, but casinos can pick 94.25%, 91.25%, 87.25% or 84.18% builds of the same game. Volatility is high in most sources and very high in one, and none of the sources checked gives a hit frequency. The top win is 5,000x the total bet for a screen full of Rich Wilde, which is $500,000 at the $100 maximum.
Book of Dead Pokies Characteristics
Wins run left to right from reel 1. The royals, 10 to A, sit at the bottom of the paytable, with Horus, Anubis, Osiris and Rich Wilde above them. The golden book is the only special symbol: it substitutes for every other symbol as a wild, and three or more anywhere pay as a scatter and start the free spins.
There are no multipliers, cascades, respins or bonus buy, and no jackpot either; Play’n GO’s guide calls the 5,000x full-screen Rich Wilde award a jackpot, but it is a fixed multiple of the stake. Autoplay runs to 100 spins with loss and single-win limits, and Fast Play speeds the reels up.
Wins below are multiples of the total bet with all 10 lines active, for two, three, four and five of a kind; multiply by ten for line-bet multiples.
The book pays 2x, 20x and 200x the total bet for three, four and five anywhere, on top of starting the free spins. Five Rich Wildes on a line pay 500x the total bet, or 5,000x the line bet, and the 5,000x cap needs Rich Wilde on every position, in the base game or as the expanded symbol in free spins. These figures come from one detailed paytable that matches every partial figure Play’n GO and the game databases publish.
Three or more books anywhere award 10 free spins. Before they start, the book’s pages turn and one ordinary symbol is picked at random as the Special Expanding Symbol for the whole round. On each spin, regular wins are paid first; then, if the chosen symbol can make extra wins on active lines, it expands to fill its reel, and the expanded reels pay even when they are not next to each other. Three or more books during the round add 10 spins at the end, and no retrigger cap is stated.
The pick decides the round. A full screen of an expanded 10, J or Q pays up to 100x the total bet, while Rich Wilde across all five reels is the 5,000x result. Expansions only pay on active lines, so playing fewer than 10 lines cuts what the feature can return; lowering the coin value is the better way to reduce the stake.
After any winning spin there is an optional card gamble: guess the colour to double the win or the suit to multiply it by four. One review puts the limits at five gambles in a row and 500x the total bet, and one database mentions only the colour option. It turns a small win into a bigger one or into nothing, quickly, and skipping it costs nothing.
At the default 96.21% the game keeps about 3.8 cents of every dollar bet over the long run, which is fair for an online pokie. The lower builds look identical but cost more: 91.25% keeps almost 9 cents and 84.18% nearly 16, about four times the default. High volatility means long quiet stretches between free-spin rounds, and a round can pay modestly when a low card is the expanding symbol.
At $1 a spin, 10 cents a line, $100 covers 100 spins. The long-run cost of that turnover is about $3.80 at 96.21% and about $15.80 at 84.18%, though a single session can land far from either figure in both directions.
Play’n GO counted 11 Dead series titles by February 2024. Legacy of Dead, its first release of 2020, keeps 5 reels and 10 lines but drops Rich Wilde, allows up to nine special expanding symbols and up to 72 free spins, caps at 5,000x and returns 96.58% according to one review. Cat Wilde and the Doom of Dead (2020) gave Rich’s daughter her first solo game, built on expanding wilds; Scales of Dead (2023) adds Sandstorm free spins with a random multiplier, and Banquet of Dead (2024) is another 5×3 game with expanding symbols. Rise of Dead, Pilgrim of Dead, Secret of Dead, Ghost of Dead, Scroll of Dead and Cat Wilde and the Pyramids of Dead are the other titles named.
Rich Wilde’s own series runs from Aztec Idols (2013) and Pearls of India (2014) through Tome of Madness (2019), Shield of Athena, Amulet of Dead, Gerard’s Gambit (2023) and Tome of Insanity, announced in May 2024. Rich Wilde and the Tome of Dead (April 2025) moves the idea to a 5×5 cascading grid with cluster pays and multiplier wilds up to 10x in the bonus. Away from online casinos, Book of Dead reached UK betting-shop terminals in July 2023 and UK casino floors in 2025.
The setting is an Egyptian burial chamber and the hero is Rich Wilde, Play’n GO’s recurring treasure hunter. Horus, Anubis and Osiris sit above the royals, Rich Wilde is the top symbol and the golden book doubles as wild and scatter, all over a ritual-style soundtrack. One review traces the formula to Novomatic’s Book of Ra Deluxe, a different game, and finds the interface less polished than newer releases, with the mobile layout the easier of the two. It runs in HTML5 on desktop, tablet and phone, iOS and Android included.
There is no Book of Dead slot machine on Australian club, pub or casino floors. Play’n GO is an online studio, and its land-based placements since 2023 have all been in the UK, with no mention of Australia. Online it is easy to find: one slot database found it at 108 of the 161 casinos it scanned for Australia. The same database lists the return at those casinos as unknown, so the information screen is the only way to tell 96.21% from a lower build. We could not confirm it in the specific lobbies we checked, so a lobby search for the title is the quickest test. Play’n GO publishes an official free demo in practice mode on its own game page, with no real money involved.
Book of Dead suits players who like a simple game with one big idea: ten free spins, one expanding symbol and a 5,000x ceiling when Rich Wilde is the pick. It does not suit anyone who wants steady small wins or a bonus buy, and for cascades or multipliers Tome of Dead and Scales of Dead are the follow-ups to try. At 96.21% it is a fair game, and at 84.18% it is an expensive one that looks exactly the same, so the one thing to check is the RTP in the paytable before playing.
96.21% by default. Casinos can also run 94.25%, 91.25%, 87.25% or 84.18% versions, and the paytable shows which one is live.
Land three or more books anywhere for 10 free spins with one randomly chosen expanding symbol. The books also pay 2x, 20x or 200x the bet, and three more during the round add 10 spins.
5,000x the total bet, from a screen full of Rich Wilde in the base game or a free spin. That is $500,000 at the $100 maximum stake.
One symbol is chosen at random before the free spins. When it can make extra line wins it expands to fill its reel, and it pays even on reels that are not next to each other.
Not in pubs or clubs: the only physical versions are in the UK. Online, one database found it at 108 of the 161 casinos it checked for Australia, and Play’n GO offers an official free demo.
No. Legacy of Dead (2020) drops Rich Wilde, allows up to nine expanding symbols and up to 72 free spins, and one review lists its return at 96.58%.
