It’s hardly a secret that the ancient Egyptians had a thing for cats, and the cat god, Bastet, is present in different forms as 3 premium symbols in Book of Cats Megaways from BGaming. Cleopatra is the top-tier symbol though, and she winks seductively at you when she forms a winning combo. The presentation doesn’t really stick out too much from many other’book slots’, but it looks decent nonetheless.
Some changes have been made since the originalBook Of Cats, and most notably you’re getting a larger and dynamic grid via the Megaways engine. The base game is as dry as a desert pilgrimage, which is not unusual for this genre, and the expanding symbol bonus round twist is multiplier wilds up to x10. The10,000x potentialis twice the “standard” max win, and the96.95 % RTPis also well above average.
The premium symbols pay between 2 and 10 x your stake for 6 of a kind wins, and theBook symbolsserve double duty asboth Wild and Scatter. The book can appear on reels 2 to 6 only, and as a Wild it steps in for pay symbols to help complete wins. As a Scatter the book pays5x, 25x or 100x your stakefor 3, 4 or 5 in view, respectively, and this also triggers the bonus round.
The Bonus Round comes with12 free spinsno matter how many triggering scatters you landed, and you retrigger the feature with the same amount if you land3+ scattersin view on the same free spin. What’s more, thebook wildcomes with arandom multiplier of x2, x3, x5 or x10when it lands, and if more than one wild is part of the same win the multipliers are added together before boosting the payout.
Thespecial expanding symbolis chosen upfront as is usually the case in ‘book slots’, and it expands to cover the full reel if enough instances land to create a win. The special expanding symbols don’t need to be adjacent to create win either, so they can land on any reel to give you full payline wins.
TheChance x2 featurecan be activated between base game spins, and it doubles your bonus round chances. It costs50 % more per spinto keep it activated. TheBonus Buy optionis available in some jurisdictions, but not in the UK for sure. It comes with2 options, and you pay100x your stakefor the regular bonus round trigger. You can also pay150x your stakefor a bonus round where you are guaranteed to get a premium symbol as the special expanding symbol.
You get to see mostly dead spins in the base game, before we purchase the top-tier bonus round at 0:45 into the 2-minute highlights video. We triggered the feature with 3 scatters, and you can see for yourself what special expanding symbol we got, and how we fared, by hitting the play button below.
While the original Book of Cats came with higher than usual symbol values, the opposite is true for Book of Cats Megaways. In addition, BGaming has dropped the whole extra reel Winline Expanding feature, and the lower symbol values are due to the up to 117,649 win ways the Megaways engine can dish out. Both games are capable of payoutsup to 10,000x your stake, which is twice the usual ‘book slot’ potential.
Audiovisually, not much has changed in this follow-up, but you get the dynamic grid experience which comes across as more ‘grand’ than the regular setup. There are no base game features, so you might as well turn on the ante bet to double your bonus round hit rate (if you can afford it, that is). The multiplier wilds you get in the bonus round is the “big twist”, and they can certainly come in handy. Overall, a decent Megaways adaptation with a somewhat original bonus round twist.
Pros
Cons
Book Of Cats- is the original ‘book slot’ from BGaming, and it plays out on a 6×3 grid where only the middle position is active on the 6th reel in the base game. If part of a win, however, the symbol in that position expands to cover the full reel. The 6th reel is fully active in the expanding symbol bonus round, and you can win up to 10,000x your stake.
Scroll of Dead- is another ancient Egypt installment in the ‘book slot’ series from Play’n Go, and it also comes with a 6th reel that becomes active in the expanding symbol bonus round. You can thus win up to 7,500x your stake from a single spin, which is higher than the 5,000x you get from most installments in the book series.
Book of 99- is Relax Gaming’s ode to Homer’s Odyssey, and it comes with a highly unusual 99 % RTP. You bring King Odysseus home to Ithaca by collecting 99 book scatters, and you can also trigger the bonus round the regular way. You get the usual expanding symbol in the feature, and the max win is 12,075x your stake.