Book of 99 Slot – Free Demo

Two things called 99

A book slot with a 99% RTP is a claim worth checking, as far as I'm concerned. The same number sets the size of the collection meter, which fills at 99 wilds.

A 2021 book slot with the edge cut to 1%

Book of 99 is a 5-reel, 3-row slot with 10 fixed pay lines, and its math model is engineered to grant the casino a 1% advantage over the players (99.00% RTP). That is remarkable by today's benchmark. All ten lines are always active, they pay from the leftmost reel inwards, and only the highest combination on each one counts.

Principal features include a bonus game with an expanding special symbol and a collection meter that fills with wilds, and the innovation factor is comparatively low with a configuration and features I've seen in countless slots before. In my session the two bonuses arrived 221 spins apart. In fact, the book format has been done to death by every provider going - how about that. Both of mine came from wilds landing on the reels rather than from the meter filling.

Visually, the slot transports you to Greek myth where the treasures of Odysseus await you, and it landed on May 4, 2021. The studio's other high-return outlier is Epic Joker, a 3-reel, 5-line game from 2018 running at 97.00%, while Ignite the Night from 2019 sits on the same 5-reel, 10-payline geometry as this one. It has that distinctive Relax Gaming feel to it.

The book does two jobs at once

On the reels, you will spot nine standard symbols. Four of them are characters and the other five are card ranks. Among them are Circe, the Cyclops and the Siren as well as Odysseus. Circe comes next after him at 200 times the stake for five, with the Cyclops and the Siren both on 75 times. The latter is the most rewarding symbol, paying 500 times the stake for five across a pay line. Two Odysseus symbols on a line return the stake, and three pay ten times it.

The book is the wild, every single one you land in the main game advances the Collection meter by one, and if you fill the meter with 99 wilds it grants you the bonus outright. That makes the meter a second and far slower route into the feature, and once it pays it resets to 0 with any wilds past 99 carried into the next fill.

The wild symbol stands in for all other symbols bar the special expanding symbol. That exception only applies inside the bonus, where the special symbol is the one thing the book cannot cover. It is of great importance in the bonus, as you will see.

Minty Slots Verdict: The rules screen prints 99.00% and my 430 spins came back at 40.9%, which is the gap the rest of this page is about. Half of the 86 spins that paid anything paid less than the 5.00 stake, the two bonus rounds were worth 150.00 between them, and the balance never got back above where it started.

Ten spins and one symbol picked at random

3 or more wild books anywhere on the reels will award you 10 free spins, and while in the bonus, another 3 or more wilds will award another 10 free spins. Neither of my two rounds retriggered.

Once inside the free spins game players will benefit from one thing - the special symbol, one of the nine regulars chosen at random for the round - so land 2 of them for a high payer, or 3 for a low payer. Any normal line wins on that spin are paid first, and the expansion is settled after them. They expand across the reel and pay on all 10 lines regardless of placement. What comes back is set by how many landed and the matching paytable value for that count. Wilds are ignored for that payout.

430 spins against the 99.00%

Book of 99 has all the components and elements to become a hit slot, except for one vital thing - the execution. While testing the slot I ran 430 spins at 5.00 a spin, and I handed back 2,150.00 to receive 879.00. The balance closed at 3,729.00 after dipping to a low of 3,709.50. That is a session return of 40.9%, with the balance never once rising above the 5,000.00 it started with. Only 86 of those 430 spins paid anything at all.

It's puzzling why a slot promoting a 99% RTP would let 43 of its 86 paying spins land under the stake. My best spin outside the bonus was 105.00 on spin 408, 21 times the stake. It doles out two bonuses in 430 spins worth 145.00 and 5.00 between them. That is 150.00 in all, about 17% of everything I won back.

Hardcore players, on the other hand, will battle to remain motivated through a 31-spin dry run.