Book of Dead

Book of Dead is the slot that made Rich Wilde famous, which is a strange thing to say about a man who had already been to India and Mexico before anyone noticed him. Play’n GO sent him to Ancient Egypt in January 2016, and the full title, Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead, has been parked in British casino lobbies ever since.

It is not an original idea. Anyone who has played Book of Ra will recognise the shape of it within three spins. However, it is the version of that idea most people actually play, and there are reasons for that worth understanding before you start.

Book of Dead Slot: the Basics

Five reels, three rows and 10 paylines, which you can reduce if you really want to, though we have never met anyone with a good reason. Wins pay left to right along the lines. It is a plain grid of a kind you’ll find among most 5 reel slots, and the stone temple backdrop and gold lettering do exactly what you’d expect them to.

The low symbols are the playing card ranks. Above them sit the Egyptian gods, a pharaoh, and Rich himself, who is the top regular symbol and pays 500x your total bet for five on a line. The Book is both the wild and the scatter, which is the whole engine of the game.

For UK players the stake runs from 10p to £5 a spin. That ceiling is not Play’n GO’s choice: since 9 April 2025 the Gambling Commission caps online slots at £5 a spin for anyone 25 or over, and since 21 May 2025 at £2 for players aged 18 to 24.

Free spins and the expanding symbol

Three or more Books anywhere on the reels open 10 free spins. Before the first one, the game picks one ordinary symbol at random to be the special expanding symbol for the whole round.

After normal wins are paid, that symbol expands to fill its entire reel, but only when doing so produces an extra win. It also does not need to sit on adjacent reels to pay. So if the game picks Rich Wilde and he lands on three or more reels, every one of them fills top to bottom and the 10 lines all light up at once. That is where the 5,000x maximum win lives.

If the chosen symbol is a ten, you will be watching a lot of tens fill a lot of reels for not very much. That is the honest shape of the feature: the round is a lottery on which symbol you are given, and most of the time you are given a cheap one. Three more Books during the round add another 10 spins.

There is also an optional gamble after a base game win, where you guess the colour of a card to double it or the suit to quadruple it. It does what every gamble feature does, which is give the house a second go at money you have already won.

Book of Dead RTP: which version are you playing?

This is the part most searchers are actually after, and the answer is less tidy than the number on most review pages. The default RTP is 96.21%. However, Play’n GO also supplies Book of Dead to operators at 94.25%, 91.25%, 87.25% and 84.18%, and the casino decides which build it runs.

The gap between the top and bottom of that list is twelve points of return. Same reels, same Rich Wilde, same animations, and a very different game. You cannot tell them apart by playing.

So check. Open the game at your casino, go to the paytable or information screen, and look for the stated return to player. If the figure there is 96.21%, you have the default. If it is lower, you are paying for the same reels at a worse price.

Volatility is high. The base game is long stretches of small line wins and nothing, and the free spins carry most of the return. RTP is also a long-run average over millions of spins, not a forecast of your session.

Is there a Book of Dead demo?

Not on this page. We do not host playable games. If you want to try Book of Dead in free play first, a UKGC-licensed casino is the place, and you’ll find it has to verify your age before it lets you play even the demo. The Gambling Commission has required that since May 2019, on the reasonable grounds that free versions of gambling games have no business being available to children. Free play is a fair way to learn the feature. It is not a way to learn how the paid version will treat you.

Conclusion

Book of Dead is a decade old and still the benchmark for its type, because it does one thing clearly and lets you see exactly when it is going well. If you want more of the same with a different setup, Legacy of Dead is the studio’s own follow-up, and Eye of Horus is the other ten-line Egyptian slot it usually gets compared with.

Just check the RTP before you spin. On this game more than most, it is the one number that is genuinely up to the casino.

18+. Gambling should be entertainment, not income. Long term the house wins. Free and confidential help is at BeGambleAware.org.