Book of Atem Slot – Free Demo

The golden volume at the centre of All41's Egypt

Are you going to unseal it, players — yes? Well, so is everyone else who has ever opened a golden volume on five reels. The book slot literally wrote the book on flouting the payline. Get set to plunder the crypt with All41 Studios' Egyptian themed Book of Atem slot, if you're feeling the urge to blow the dust off something antique, and the pharaohs burst in a blaze of gold in a payline slot cramming in a feature as ancient as the sands.

I've been aching to see this slot in action ever since it was unveiled by All41 Studios, being a devotee of the genre myself. It is a family where one symbol carries the wild, the scatter and the trigger between them. As luck would have it, I get it in a book slot format. That is a field which has been laboured over many times and that has been mastered by very few.

A book that pays from anywhere on the grid

So, starting up the game, what is the initial impression? A banner above the grid states that three or more scatters award 10 free spins. Admittedly, it could have been a touch more in your face visually. But the palette, the soaring pillars and the crypt's gold drag ancient Egypt screaming back to life. Holding centre stage is a 5x3 grid that spins in Egypt flavoured symbols to produce winners via 10 fixed paylines. Those lines are always all in play, since the number played cannot be changed.

Wins are secured by landing matching symbols from left to right on neighbouring reels along a payline, and the book is the anomaly. Only the highest win is paid on any one line. It is wild and scatter in one symbol, and it pays wherever it lands. Five of them are worth 200 times the stake. Its scatter wins are multiplied by the total bet and added to the payline wins, and three or more of them also trigger the feature I will discuss in the next section.

What five-of-five volatility did to 490 spins

Before then, I'll examine the math model. The longest gap I hit was 20 losing spins in a row, ending on spin 422. It is every bit as brutal as you might anticipate from a tomb raid, and for one, volatility has been fixed at the top of the scale (5/5). That may cause the game to appeal to a more seasoned gambling crowd. The balance closed at 95,033.50, which was also its low point.

The default theoretical RTP clocks in at 96.45%, so marginally above average. Second best in my run was 144.00 on spin 94, worth 9.6 times the stake.

Where Atem sits among the other books

Notably, the first slots that leapt to mind during testing were the other books, Book of Dead and Book of Ra. They are the whole family of tomb slots built on the same framework. It's the symbols that rang the bell, since they have comparable looking low pays composed of card ranks, with premiums portraying the dynasty. The Pharaoh is the most valuable in the pack worth 500 times the stake for five, as you'd anticipate, and the book wild is useful here, substituting for any symbol to help assemble a line.

The Expanding Symbol drawn on the way in

Magnifying the effects of the book is the Free Spins feature, and three or more Wild Scatters grant 10 free spins, retriggerable, with the bet and lines carried over from the triggering spin. Wins from the expansion pay on top of the normal free spins wins. On entry, one symbol is chosen at random and becomes the Expanding Symbol. It only expands when the expansion will form part of a win. This can also apply to low pay symbols. Once the initial wins have paid, that symbol can expand to fill its reel. The expanded combinations need not be neighbouring or begin on reel 1, the Wild Scatter cannot be selected, and it cannot substitute in an expanded combination either.

How hard does the slot version dig?

'I want the book', murmurs every player who has ever sat down in front of one of these. So players are no doubt pondering just how hard the slot version digs. Over 490 spins the third book never arrived. Well, it digs. But it could have dug harder truth be told, and it's hard not to crack a smile over what All41 Studios has done here, if you enjoy the theme or the format though.

Book of Atem is one of the more identifiable shapes to hit slots. That factor alone is certain to draw some punters through the gate. What changes the shape, when the feature does land, is an expanded symbol paying from positions that need not start on reel 1. From a purely gaming viewpoint, however, it's a well-known version of a slot you have played before in many ways, and needless to say, it is a game that will suit a very specific audience.

What 7,350.00 in stake bought

Those seeking high volatility and enormous payouts may well find them with Book of Atem, and potential weighs in at 9,000 times the stake. That is about what I typically find from this sort of game, and pretty respectable still. Across the run, 389 spins came back with nothing at all. With that said, sizeable wins were scarce in my own run: 490 spins at a stake of 15.00 wagered 7,350.00 and returned 2,383.50, a session return of 32.4%, with the balance never once rising above the 100,000.00 it began with. The bonus never appeared at all in those 490 spins. So no expanding symbol was ever drawn either. So I never got to see whether it collects those hefty jackpots as efficiently as the format implies.

So yes, All41 Studios has gone for the deep end in regards to the math model, and put it this way; only 101 of my 490 spins paid anything. Half of those paid less than the stake. The best of the lot was 255.00 on spin 148, worth 17 times the stake. Only one other spin in the run cleared 100.00. It's a lengthy wait between anything worth seeing. The 490 spins cost 4,966.50 in all. That is more the vein Book of Atem the slot taps into.

Minty’s Expert Conclusion: A 32.4% return across my run, 101 paying spins out of 490 and a best worth 17 times the stake, is the base game on its own, because the third book stayed away and the Expanding Symbol was never drawn.

For the admirers of the book format

Overall, Book of Atem is another book slot release from All41 Studios. The free spins and the expanding symbol are the whole of the feature set. Those who will get the most pleasure of this slot, of course, are all the admirers of the format, me included.