Return of the Dead Slot Review, Demo Play, Payout, Free Spins & Bonuses

Return of the Dead Review

While most Book of Ra clones are visually modernized compared to the original, Pragmatic has taken this one in the opposite direction. It’s back to the basics also when it comes to the audiovisual experience, but we had really hoped for more originality when it comes to the bonus round. The smiling explorer character has forgotten his hat in this game, and he looks more like a caffe latte hipster than an Indiana Jones-style adventurer.

If you have a nostalgic relationship to the old-school slot machines, you might appreciate what Pragmatic has done here. However, once the novelty wears off most players will probably return to Book of Dead, or similar clones that offer more interesting bonus rounds than what you get here. Just like the main character lacks a hat, so Pragmatic seems to have forgotten to put on their creative hat with this title, and we don’t see Return of the Dead being a huge success.

Return of the Dead slot from Reel Kingdom Screen

Return of the Dead Features

There is nothing much new to see here for players familiar with the book slot genre. It’s all about triggering the free spins bonus round. This is done by landing at least 3 book scatters, and the book serves double duty as a high paying wild symbol also. It can therefore step in for all regular symbols to help you form winning combos, and it pays 500x for 5 on a payline.

You can also land scatter wins via the book symbol, and you get 2x, 20x or 200x your stake when you land 3, 4 or 5 book scatters anywhere on the same spin. Of course, this also triggers the bonus round, and you get 10 free spins to start with no matter how many scatters you landed.

The book opens, and a random regular symbol is chosen to be the expanding symbol for the duration of the feature. Every instance of the chosen symbol will expand to cover the full reel, and a new payout calculation is made. The expanded symbols don’t need to be adjacent to win, and they will only expand if a win is created from it.

You can still land scatter/wild books during the bonus round, and you get 10 extra spins if you land at least 3 on the same free spin. There is no upper limit as to how many retriggers you can get here, and filling the screen with the “smiling dude” treasure hunter lands you the game’s max win of 5,000x your stake.

The 200 Spins Return of the Dead Experience

Having played our fair share of Book of clones in our time, we can surely make space for a brief session on yet another one.

It took us a while to trigger the bonus round here, which was expected, but we got it towards the end of our 200 spins session. The base game grind is mostly edited out in the highlights video below, and you can skip directly to the bonus round at 1:13 into the video.

Review Summary

Return of the Dead has an old-school brick and mortar vibe to it, and the default RTP of 96.71 % is also higher than many other games in this series (including Book of Dead). This is perhaps the best reason we can come up with to choose this copycat game, but we have to say we prefer book slots that bring some kind of innovative twist to the table.

Nothing like that is included here, and the main character looks more like a semi-creepy skirt chaser than a treasure hunter. Keep in mind that operators can adjust down the RTP to lower levels due to Pragmatic’s customizable RTP ranges. So, unless you find a casino that lets you play with the highest payout percentage, there really isn’t much reason to pick this game over many more interesting alternatives out there.

Pros

• Wild and scatter wins
• Bonus round with randomly chosen expanding symbol
• High volatility and 5,000x max win potential

Cons

• Book of copycat which adds nothing new to the series

If you enjoy Return of the Dead you should also try:

Right now we have 144 Book of slots in our catalog, and you can check them all out via the link. We have also taken the liberty of hand-selecting some of the best book slots out there for you, and we’ll present them all briefly below.

Book of Dead - has still not been dethroned by any of the copycats at this time, and it probably never will be. It’s basically the same game as the one at hand, but the max RTP is a bit lower. Wins up to 5,000x is possible, and the game that started it all is really a must try for book slot fans.

Book of Ra deluxe - also comes with a smiling explorer, but he looks less creepy due to the hat.

The brick and mortar feel is strong with this one too, and wins up to 5,000x is possible in the expanding chosen symbol bonus round.

Ali Baba's Luck - is a somewhat underestimated addition to the book slot saga. It comes with up to several expanding symbols also in the base game, which is a very interesting twist indeed. Red Tiger has really revolutionized the series with this game, and it’s among the best clones in our humble opinion.

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