Books & Temples

Travel to ancient Egypt on the slot from Gamomatto on a quest to find the legendary treasures of the Pharaoh. Books & Temples will take you on a high-volatility adventure alongside an intrepid explorer, combining two immensely popular reel mechanics in the bonus features. Eye of Horus meets Book of Dead on a 5-reel set with expanding wilds and two types of free spins that can lead to wins of up to 2,000 times your bet in a single free spin.

Slot Details

Books & Temples is a video slot with five reels, three rows and 5 or 10 pay lines, selectable before the start of any spin in the base game. Wins are awarded for two to three matching symbols on a line from left to right only. You can go on a treasure hunt on desktop or mobile from 0.10 to 100 credits per spin, or alternatively 0.05 to 50 credits if you choose to play with five pay lines only. The game has high volatility with an RTP of 96.10%.

Loading the game will take you inside an ancient Egyptian temple sparsely lit by eternal flames. They will fire up during the bonus features. The reel strips are engraved with hieroglyphs and populated mainly by Egyptian gods and the explorer. Pay symbols are increasingly ornamented the higher they are on the payout scale. An oriental soundtrack accompanies the usual Gamomat reel sounds.

The pay symbols start at the low end with the card royals from J through to A, awarding 10x your bet for a single five of a kind. The premiums are an Eye of Horus necklace, a scarab ring, a pair of cat goddesses, an Anubis statue, a sphinx statue and the intrepid explorer. Hit five on a line to win 25x to 200x your stake.

Horus is the wild symbol, expanding any time he lands to cover the entire reel and substituting for all regular pay symbols. The game has two scatters, the first being an ancient Egyptian temple and the second the fabled book. The latter will also act as an additional wild but will not expand. Landing three, four or five of either scatters will pay 2x, 20x and 200x your total bet respectively.

Books & Temples Slot Features

Gamomat took on the challenge to combine two extremely popular reel mechanics in a single slot. Eye of Horus, which was initially designed by Reel Time Gaming and later found its way into the portfolio of Merkur Gaming, is known for the symbol upgrades in the bonus feature. In turn, Book of Ra, Book of Dead and a few dozen clones have proven to be all-time favourites with a special expanding symbol mechanic in the free spins.

Horus, the falcon god in Egyptian mythology, is an expanding wild and plays a special role in the base game and free spins.  Any time he lands on a reel, he will expand to full height to provide extra potential to score a win. Plus, he will upgrade symbols in one of the features.

The first bonus feature is the Books Free Spins round. Hitting three to five Book scatters anywhere on the reels in one spin will trigger 10 free spins, which can be indefinitely retriggered. Temple scatters will not appear during the feature.

Before the bonus round starts, one of the 10 regular pay symbols is selected as the special symbol. When sufficient land on a free spin, they will expand vertically to cover the entire reel and award wins for all pay lines, even when they are not adjacent. It will need minimum three low-paying symbols or minimum two premium symbols anywhere on the screen to see them expand and award a win. The wins from the expanding symbol are paid on top of any potential line wins.

In turn, three to five Temple scatters will trigger 12 Temples Free Spins. Landing one, two or three Horus wilds on a free spin will award +1, +3 and +12 free spins respectively, no limits. Any time a Horus wild lands it will expand as usual before the win evaluation is done. Once any potential wins are paid, he will progressively upgrade the premium symbols to the next higher symbol on the paytable. A bar on top of the game window will display the progress. Upgrading to the last symbol, will result in having only card royals, Horus wilds and explorer symbols on the reels. The best moment to hit a full screen for a payout of 2,000x your bet.

Gamomat offers two gamble features for all wins in the base game as well as at the end of a free spins round. You can either take a card gamble to guess the colour of the suite to be drawn or a ladder gamble to double your winnings multiple times. Beware though, losing a gamble will see you losing the entire win.

Final Verdict

Considering the popularity of the two reel mechanics, I am actually surprised that no one has previously thought about combining them in a single slot. Gamomat has done it now with Book & Temples and it plays actually rather well. It is of course high variance as most games from this developer but catch it in a good moment and it fires up in an impressive manner. The overall win potential is probably around 5,000 times your bet while a single spin with a full screen of explorer symbols will yield 2,000 times your bet. Treasures worth a visit to ancient Egypt.

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