Rich Wilde's Tomb Raid: What Book of Dead Is
Book of Dead is a high-volatility Egyptian-adventure slot from Play'n GO, released in 2016, with a 96.21% RTP and a 5,000x max win. You play as adventurer Rich Wilde, picking through a tomb in search of the Book of the Dead. It is a deliberately stripped-back machine: five reels, three rows, ten fixed paylines and a single bonus that does the heavy lifting — no cascading reels, no buy-feature menu, no sprawling paytable.
Theme, Sound and Presentation
The art leans on a pulp-adventure mood: sun-bleached stone, gold hieroglyphs and a deep indigo sky behind the reels. Rich Wilde stands beside the grid in his explorer's hat, and the symbols are crisp rather than cluttered. The soundtrack is a low ambient hum that swells the moment a Book lands.
Reels, Bets and Paylines
Book of Dead uses a 5x3 grid with 10 fixed paylines, all paying left to right from the leftmost reel. Because the lines are fixed, you cannot toggle them on or off; you simply choose your total stake. Bets run from 0.10 per spin. There are no megaways or expanding reel sets, just the fixed ten-line structure.
Symbols and the Golden Book
The paytable splits into two tiers. The high-value end is Egyptian, and the in-game paytable ranks it clearly: Rich Wilde leads by a distance at 5,000 for five on a line, then the golden pharaoh mask at 2,000, with Anubis and the falcon sharing third place at 750 each. Playing-card ranks from A down to 10 fill the low-value slots. Above them sits the golden Book, which does double duty: it is a Wild that substitutes for every other symbol to complete a line, and it is also the Scatter that pays from any position and triggers the bonus.
The Free Spins and Expanding Symbol
Land three or more Book Scatters anywhere on the reels and you win 10 free spins. Before the round begins, the game randomly selects one regular symbol to become the expanding symbol for the duration. During those spins, whenever the chosen symbol appears it stretches to cover all three rows of its reel, and it pays as a scatter across reels rather than only on a payline. Landing three more Books retriggers another 10 free spins.
RTP, Volatility and the 5,000x Ceiling
The default return-to-player is 96.21%, just above the 96% industry baseline, though Play'n GO supplies configurable RTP versions so a given casino may run a lower setting. Volatility is high: most of the theoretical return is locked inside the free spins rather than dripped out in base-game wins, so expect long quiet stretches punctuated by sharp spikes. The maximum win is capped at 5,000x your total stake, reached when the expanding symbol covers all five reels during the bonus.
Mobile Play
Book of Dead runs in the browser on phones and tablets without a separate app. The layout keeps the five reels readable, the spin and bet controls sit within thumb reach, and the expanding-symbol animations carry over to smaller screens. It is a light build that loads quickly even on a modest connection.
If You Like Book of Dead, Try These
Dawn of Egypt shares the tomb setting with a brighter palette and its own free-spins twist, while Doom of Egypt reworks the expanding-symbol formula with a darker mood. For a direct book-mechanic cousin from another studio, Book of Gods by Big Time Gaming swaps Egypt for a mythic pantheon while keeping the expanding-symbol idea. All three are in our demo library.
