Banquet of Dead Slot by Play'n GO

Nitocris and Her Deadly Feast

Banquet of Dead slot by Play'n GO draws from the legend of Queen Nitocris, a pharaoh who allegedly drowned her brother's murderers by flooding a banquet hall mid-feast. Dark source material for a slot, and the game leans into it with a lavish setting - marble columns, flickering torch sconces, overflowing fruit platters, and grapevines draped across the foreground. It sits on the familiar 5x3 grid with 10 fixed paylines that the entire 'of Dead' franchise uses, and it runs at high volatility with a default RTP of 96.21%.

The visual design is rich without being cluttered. Card symbols from 10 through Ace carry ornate metallic detailing with oil lamps, goblets, and scarabs woven into each letter. Four premium symbols round out the paytable: a ceremonial fan, a fruit bowl, the crocodile god Sobek, and Nitocris herself. Sobek pays 120x your total bet for five of a kind. Nitocris tops the chart at 150x. High-paying symbols only need two on a line to register a win, which keeps the base game from feeling completely dead between bonus triggers.

The Hourglass - Wild and Scatter in One

Play'n GO kept the dual-role scatter/wild that defines every 'Book of' style slot. Here it's an hourglass-topped golden tomb rather than a literal book, but the function is identical. It substitutes for all regular symbols on paylines and also triggers the bonus round. Three scatters award 7 free spins plus a 2.5x bet payout. Four give 25x, and five pay 150x alongside the spins. Two scatters on screen still return 0.5x your bet - small, but better than nothing on a slot with only 10 lines.

Gamble Feature

Every base game win opens a gamble option. Pick red or black to double your payout, or guess the exact suit for a 4x multiplier. Standard Play'n GO fare, available on most of their catalogue, and absent in some regulated markets.

Free Spins and the Symbol Removal Mechanic

This is where Banquet of Dead separates itself from the rest of the series. Three or more scatters trigger 7 free spins (retriggerable up to a maximum of 25 total). Before the round begins, one symbol is randomly selected as the special expanding symbol. When it appears on a reel in sufficient quantity, it expands to cover that entire reel and pays on all active lines regardless of position - the same mechanic Book of Dead popularized back in 2016.

The twist: every time an expansion occurs, the current lowest-paying symbol on the reels gets permanently removed for the remaining free spins. If you land your expanding symbol and it triggers a payout, suddenly the 10 disappears. Next expansion, the J goes. Then Q, K, and A. Each removal concentrates the symbol pool, making premium hits and scatter appearances more likely on subsequent spins.

If the expanding symbol itself gets removed (because it was a low-pay card), a new expanding symbol is randomly chosen from whatever remains. This creates an interesting dynamic. Getting a low-value expanding symbol isn't necessarily bad - you trigger expansions more frequently, clear out junk symbols faster, and eventually the game reassigns you a premium.

35,000x - Seven Times the Usual Cap

Most 'of Dead' slots cap at 5,000x or 10,000x. Banquet of Dead advertises 35,000x, which is massive for this series. The math makes sense: if you strip the reels down to just Nitocris and the scatter through successive removals, five Nitocris symbols across all reels on all 10 lines would produce enormous payouts. Getting there requires a long free spins session with multiple retriggers and consistent expansions - the probability sits at less than 1 in 100 million spins according to provider data. A number worth knowing before chasing it.

Where It Fits in the 'of Dead' Lineup

Play'n GO has built an extensive franchise around this mechanic. Book of Dead (2016) started it all with 5,000x potential. Rise of Dead (2019) added a Mega Stacks feature and bumped paylines to 20. Legacy of Dead (2020) introduced additional expanding symbols on retriggers - a different approach to the same problem Banquet solves. Scroll of Dead, Ghost of Dead, Secret of Dead, and Pilgrim of Dead each added their own variations between 2021 and 2023. Scales of Dead brought yet another interpretation.

Banquet of Dead's symbol removal is arguably the most elegant evolution yet. Where Legacy adds complexity by stacking more expanding symbols, Banquet simplifies - fewer symbols on the reels means a cleaner path to premium wins. The trade-off is those initial 7 free spins. That's a tight window. Legacy of Dead gives 10 spins by default. With only 7, you need either quick expansions or retriggers to make the removal chain meaningful.

Bet Range and Practical Considerations

Bets run from 0.10 to 100.00 per spin. Play'n GO uses its traditional coin system: pick a coin value between 0.01 and 2.00, select 1 to 5 coins per line, multiply by 10 lines. At the maximum 100 per spin, that 35,000x ceiling translates to 3,500,000 in currency - though individual casino operators almost always enforce their own win caps well below that.

No buy bonus exists. Play'n GO has historically avoided bonus buy mechanics across their entire portfolio, so triggering free spins requires patience and the natural 3-scatter landing. No ante bet either. The game is mechanically simple in the base game - spin, hope for scatters, gamble small wins if you feel like it.

RTP ranges from 84.21% to 96.21% depending on operator configuration. The 96.21% default is solid for a high-volatility slot with this kind of max win ceiling, but the lower tiers drop substantially. Play'n GO offers these configurable rates across most of their recent titles.