Rich Wilde And The Tome Of Madness (Play'n Go) Slot Demo & Review

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Rich Wilde and the Tome of Madness Slot Review
Provider Play'n Go
Reels5
Rows5
PaylinesCluster Pays
Bonus Rounds1
Bet Range0.10 - 100
VolatilityHigh
Max Win2,000x
Bonus BuyNo
RTP96.59%
Our Rating7.5

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Game Overview

We first met Rich Wilde – which is, without doubt, his real name, by the way, so stop it with the unfunny jokes. The fact that he is gay and married to Rob Banks, the International Baddie who sneaked into the world security conference is unquestionably not funny either. Protagonist aside, we have a Play’N’Go grid slot here that uses a 5×5 grid, cluster pays, and an RTP of 96.59%. You can win 2,000x your stake from a single spin, according to the paytable. With the vital statistics and name-based messing around out of the way, let’s talk about the machine!

As soon as I began spinning this slot, it reminded me of several other Play’N’Go machines, namely Golden Ticket and Rise of Olympus. These guys tend to shy away from simply cloning their machines in the way some other developers like to do. The game will look and play similarly to the previous titles, but will usually feature some iterative improvements over the mechanics used in their older slots. Is Rich Wild & the Tome of Madness a simple clone? Read on to find out.

Hate my cliffhanger style second paragraph? Don’t worry, there is a free demo slot of Rich Wild & the Tome of Madness available right here if you would prefer to give the game a spin over reading the rest of my review. I won’t take it personally!

Rich Wilde And The Tome Of Madness Slot Theme,stakes, Pays & Symbols

Paytable For Rich Wilde And The Tome Of Madness Slot Game

At first, I assumed that this game was nothing more than a sequel to Play’N’Go’s super-hit Book of Dead. How wrong I was – it turns out that the Tome of Madness forms part of H.P.Lovecraft’s legendary collection of hit novels. The book is simply one of many that sit on the shelves of the fictional library of the Cthulhu Mythos. I’d guess that means there is plenty of scope for Play’N’Go to create a sequel or two, so I took a look into my crystal ball and what do you know – Riche Wilde’s adventures have indeed continued. This explains where the inspiration for the graphical elements and symbols came from, which I was surprised to see were different from Book of Dead – Play’N’Go has re-used those symbols many, many times now! The sound is suitably atmospheric, with a dramatic effect played each time you spin the reels. Altogether, this adds up to a very tidy package of presentations from Play’N’Go.

The paytable in Rich Wild & the Tome of Madness video slot is an interesting one – the top symbol is an octopus pendant, and a cluster of ten or more of these will pay 100x your bet. The dagger is the next one down the list, paying 60x your stake if you can gather a cluster of ten. The ring is worth 40x whilst the skull is a little lower at 30x. Four gemstones complete the symbol line-up, but their payouts are extremely low indeed – I would have expected a little more, but it seems Play’N’Go decided to focus the majority of this game’s RTP at the top end of the scale. I should add, various wild symbols can either appear on the reels or be triggered by certain modifiers, but none of these has any payout of their own.

The betting range is standard Play’N’Go fare – bet €0.10 per spin if you’re just low-rolling for a bit of “what-if” fun, or slide the bet slider to right for a multitude of options that go all the way up to €100.00 per spin. Occasionally, I like to play a few high-value spins just in case they should happen to trigger a feature – it has happened once or twice, and the returns have been incredible. When I say high-value, however, I am talking about €10.00-€15.00 per spin – nothing like €100.00. I cannot imagine having the sort of bankroll to be spinning away that kind of money every five seconds. Take care when choosing your bet size, and always make sure that you do not exceed the maximum allowed wager if you are playing with a bonus.

Base Game And Modifiers

Play With 5 Reels, The Cluster Pays Mechanic, And Win Up To 2,000x Your Bet Per Spin In Play'n Go's Rich Wilde And The Tome Of Madness Online Slot

Base gameplay in Rich Wild & the Tome of Madness takes place on a 5×5 grid for a total of 25 positions on which symbols can land. When you consider that the top payout requires ten matching symbols, this means that you must cover 40% of the play area with matching symbols if you are to receive those all-important maximum payouts. Sounds tough? Don’t worry, Play’N’Go have included some innovative and interesting modifiers to save the day.

Eye Marks Feature

It took me a while to understand this one – if you look carefully at the grid you will see a letter “I” of sorts laid out across a large portion of the available positions. Scoring a win in any of these spots will result in the portal adding two extra wilds to the reels, which can help you to build up your portal meter very quickly. At first, I thought the wilds were random, and the way the feature is described in the paytable does not help matters. Play’N’Go could do better here.

Portal Feature

The portal is the eye-shaped object positioned to the top right of the play area. This is partly why I was confused by the Eye Marks feature – I figured it must have something to do with this portal, but didn’t realize that the highlighted squares formed the letter “I” for more than half the time I was testing this slot.

The portal is a very useful feature because it tells you the meaning of life each time you glance at it and it also behaves like a clock in that each time you reach one of the horizontal or vertical positions (3,6,9,12) it will throw you some wilds onto the reels. If you win with one of the special wilds thrown out by the portal, a secondary “Abyss” feature will begin and remove a row or column from the playfield. After “Abyss” has done its business (ahem), a tertiary feature will then be awarded by the portal named “Void”. The void feature picks one symbol and removes all of them from the playfield, giving you an excellent chance of hitting further wins.

In short, if you can get the portal just to the three o’clock position, the features it awards you can often propel you all the way to the bonus round.

Super Wild Features

All those portal effects can do even more than what is described in the previous section – the special book wilds can trigger multiplier wilds which feature the image of Riche Wilde himself (Rob Banks does not appear in this game – I don’t see him in my crystal ball either… perhaps they’ve had a falling out?).

Finally, the mega wild symbol is a 3×3 monster that moves down the grid awarding multiple wins as it does so. I never saw this during regular play, but it is possible according to the game’s documentation.

Rich Wilde And The Tome Of Madness Free Spins Feature

Collect A Total Of 42 Winning Symbols In One Spin Series To Trigger The Bonus Feature On Rich Wild And The Tome Of Madness Video Slot

Finally, let’s talk about the free spins feature. You’ll need to hit 42 cascading winning symbols in a row to trigger this, but if you manage to get the portal charged above the minimum 42 symbols then your feature will benefit from additional portal effects during the bonus round. There are seven different portal effects, although some of them are very similar to others so I won’t detail them all here. Let’s get to it though:

Other World Feature

After collecting 42 cascading winning symbols, the game will let you know you are being transported to another world. I have to say, I was a little disappointed to still find myself at my messy desk once I got there – alas, I guess slot developers can’t do everything… yet. I have high hopes for Virtual Reality slot games in the future.

For the time being though, we’ll have to accept that, despite how it may appear, you definitely are being transported to another world where portal effects such as the previously mentioned Abyss and Void occur on every spin, and 4 special wilds are added to the grid seemingly every spin.

The paytable states that 11 or 12 “eye marks” are visible during the bonus round and if you score a win in all of these positions then Cthulhu will be summoned and ensure that the end of your feature goes out with a bang.

Every time I made it to this stage,I seemed to trigger the Cthulhu bonus, but my win was typically only around 100x stake – far less than the games maximum pay out of 2,000x your stake. Maybe I was just unlucky, but I ended up playing a whole lot of bonus rounds with a top win of just 181x my stake… a little disappointing considering I triggered the best possible feature on every occasion.

That said, if it wasn’t for Cthulhu, I would have finished these rounds with extremely poor results – on the whole, I didn’t feel disappointed with my bonus rounds, despite not winning any life-changing sums.

Rich Wilde And The Tome Of Madness Slot Review Final Thoughts

So, what to make of Rich Wild and the Tome of Madness video slot? Honestly, I’m still not quite sure. It definitely has more going on than Book of Dead, but does that make it better? I’m not convinced. The modifiers appear to have so much potential, yet the wins I received speak fror themselves. Other review sites reckon this is a high variance game – I would argue that this is medium variance at best. It all comes down to what you enjoy in a slot, and for me, this one just didn’t quite do it. Maybe next time, eh Rich?

Author Bio

Chris Howlett

Article by Chris Howlett

11 Years Slots Playing Experience

About Chris Howlett

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