Pharaoh's Treasure Deluxe Slot – Free Demo

The Not Active plate over the reels

This one is a revamp of a slot a lot of punters already recognize. The first thing my capture showed was a plate sitting above the reels reading "Progressive Jackpot: Not Active". Most would likely concur. The progressive that plate names sits behind the Sarcophagus Chamber, which the free games and one branch of the pick round both lead to. Playtech have built a standing for sturdy, reliable slots, and players have come to anticipate (if not require) something recognizable each time.

Well, hold on folks. The mode is a purchase rather than a trigger condition — a multiple of the total bet buys scarab symbols onto the reels. Not only is there a deluxe version of a Playtech staple, but a paid Power Play Spins mode fuelling the action. The 1,690.00 I wagered across the session is exactly 338 spins at 5.00, so none of it went on Power Play.

The first glimpse of the game unveils a new, yet familiar layout full of Egyptian imagery. The panel along the bottom carries the total bet, the line count and a Power Play button sitting beside Spin. There is a classic menu panel to set preferences along with it, and Cleopatra sits at the summit of the paytable, even with the wild. Below her the table runs sphinx, ankh and cat statue before the card ranks.

Twenty lines at 0.25 apiece

Launching the game produces a 5x3 grid, and this is a simple payline slot. The lines are not adjustable — they are fixed, and the stake moves as a total bet. That means there are 20 fixed lines to keep track of. Scatters are the exception to the line rule and trigger from any position. Wins pay left to right, the largest win only per line. Each payline win is multiplied by the line bet, which is the total bet divided by 20. At the 5.00 total bet I played, that put 0.25 on each line.

Helping draw combinations together is the Pharaoh's Treasure Deluxe logo. It stacks: one frame from my session had reel 3 filled with three of them and a 15.00 win registered. It serves as the wild, and it stands in for everything except the scatter symbols. Cleopatra matches it at five, four and three of a kind, so the wild's own combination never beats the symbol it most often replaces. For five it pays 500x the line bet, the highest line pay in the game. Across 20 lines that is 25x the total bet from one line.

RTP, meanwhile, rests at 94.13%.

Scatters on reels 1, 3 and 5, then a choice of two

The feature kicks in when the Bonus scatter lands on reels 1, 3 and 5. One scatter on each of those three reels, anywhere on them, is the whole trigger condition. The player then chooses one of two features. In my session that choice came up once, on spin 164.

The Tomb of Tutankhamun Bonus is a pick round, and every pick grants a cash prize. There is no losing pick in it, then; the only question is how long the round carries on. A pick may also conceal a key that travels deeper into the tomb for further prizes, a key that leads to the Sarcophagus Chamber, or Collect. That second key is the only route out of this branch and into the progressive. That concludes the round.

The centrepiece is the Curse of the Ancients Free Games. That is the branch the game handed me on spin 164. They deliver 15 free games with vanishing symbols, and symbols can vanish from the reels after any spin, boosting the chance of a win. Nothing retriggered for me: the 15 games ran once and stopped. Moreover, once the free games finish, the Sarcophagus symbol on reels 3, 4 and 5 on any spin dispatches the player to the Sarcophagus Chamber for a shot at the progressive jackpot. So both branches of the pick end up at the same chamber by different routes.

There is also Power Play Spins. Its button sits next to Spin, one press away at any point in the base game. It is a paid mode where a scarab can transform into a Wild, a Multiplier, a Cash Prize or a Bonus scatter, and 10x the total bet contributes one scarab to reel 3. One of those four transformations is the Bonus scatter itself, the symbol the feature trigger is built on. 20x contributes three, to reels 1, 2 and 3. At the 5.00 total bet I ran, those two levels would have cost 50.00 and 100.00.

The Minty Summary: One trigger in 338 spins, and the branch I took paid 90.00 against a 5.00 stake — 13% of everything the session won, inside a 40.8% return on 1,690.00 wagered.

What 338 spins at 5.00 did to the balance

The magnifying glass comes out for some close scrutiny, as with any Playtech launch, and let's attend to the outer casing before analysing the features. At first the game may come across as a little plain. I ran the whole session in turbo mode, with the jackpot plate overhead reading the same thing on every spin.

It can even become a bit of a pastime after a few sessions, trying to predict which of the two features to pick before the game reveals its hand. The pick is offered once per trigger, and the branch not taken does not run. It's silly, but quite amusing. With one trigger in the session, I made that call exactly once. When there is no telling how deep the tomb is going to let the player go it is especially tricky, and it can be quite a spectacle. The free games branch is the one with a fixed length at 15; the tomb branch runs until a pick turns up Collect.

Playtech has carved out a familiar world. It is easy, and enjoyable, to sit in, but at the same time the tomb-raiding theme can feel like one of those theme evenings where everyone arrives dressed as the same pharaoh. Enjoyable for sure, but lacking a little character. The longest dry run I hit was 18 spins, ending on spin 222.

But then again, there is no need for all the additional bells and whistles, not with something as involved as the two-way feature pick. The pick is the only decision the base game asks anyone to make. The features carry the game just fine, though the game is not especially well balanced. My 338-spin session at a stake of 5.00 never again touched the 1,000.00 credits I began with before the balance struck zero, returning 40.8% of the 1,690.00 wagered. Wins came to 690.00 in total. Only 87 spins paid anything at all, 50 of those for less than the stake. Spin 119 paid 60.00 and spin 66 paid 37.00, the next two best. The single bonus round I witnessed, on spin 164, delivered its 15 free games and paid 90.00, or 18.0x the stake. It took the balance from 552.50 to 637.50. That was the largest win of the session. The 174 spins after it ran the balance the rest of the way down to zero.

The veteran crew has come back to an old slot with another dressed-up version. The pick round is the half of the feature set my session never opened, and it is what a second run would be for. They have put a twist on their pick-a-feature mechanic, and whether the deluxe version blows up like the original remains to be seen.

Where else Playtech does Egypt

Interested in playing other Playtech slots in this vein? Have a look at the slot this one is founded on, Pharaoh's Treasure. Two more Playtech titles on the same Egyptian ground are Desert Treasure, five reels and 20 lines from 2005, and Sahara Riches Cash Collect, five reels and 30 lines from 2021, which collects its jackpots on the reels. That is the version without the vanishing symbols and the Power Play Spins.