Curse of the Pharaoh Bonus Buy Slot Review

A pulp adventurer poking around an Egyptian tomb, with symbols that explode and drop and a win multiplier that climbs while they do. This is the buy edition of Curse of the Pharaoh, and the shop button is the whole reason it exists as a separate game. Same 5x3 grid, same 20 fixed lines, same 95.97% base RTP, same 2,803x ceiling.

What changes is choice. The original hands you three free spins modes with a multiplier set bolted to each one, take it or leave it. The buy menu breaks that link and lays out nine tiles instead: 6, 12 or 18 spins crossed with any of the three multiplier sets, priced from 12x to 108x of your total bet.

That is a wider shop than most 2021 buy editions bothered with, and the bottom of its price list is low enough to matter.

The reels sit inside a sandstone doorway braced by two fat lotus-capital columns, with pale cliffs and bright blue sky showing at the edges. So much for the tomb, this is a daylight dig site. The explorer stands to the left in a brown wide-brim hat, blue neckerchief and teal waistcoat, revolver on his hip, hands resting on his belt. He never does anything. Above the grid a carved lintel carries the x1 x2 x3 x5 ladder, and the live step lights gold as drops chain.

Symbols are cut into stone tiles. A purple Anubis in profile and a turquoise ibis in a gold collar carry the premium end, while the Scatter is a golden eye inside a radiant triangle that flares when it lands. The low end is teal ankhs, a blue zigzag water mark and a purple double hook. Warm and tidy, and about as standard-issue as Egyptian slots get, though the carving detail on the tiles is better than the theme deserves.

The base game is quiet. Twenty fixed lines on a 5x3 with tumbles produces small hits often enough, but most of them die on the first or second drop, so the ladder spends its life around x2. Three paying drops in a row off one spin, the thing that gets you to x5, does not come around often. Even when it does, the line values are slight, so nothing in the main game moves a balance on its own.

Which is why the shop changes the shape of a session rather than just speeding it up. The question stops being when three Scatters will show and turns into a budget decision every round. A 12x tile is a nibble you can afford to lose four or five times running, and six spins on the weakest set has very little room to work. The 108x tile is a different animal, and two flat ones back to back on that price sting. The 18x tile is probably the sweet spot: short bonus, middle multipliers, entry cost you barely feel.

The medium volatility tag fits, and that cuts both ways. The drops keep the reels busy, but outside the bonus the swings never get dramatic enough to be interesting.

The shop is the product here, and it is a better one than the three-mode pick it replaces. Uncoupling spin count from multiplier set creates six combinations the original never deals, and the short, cheap tiles at the bottom of the list are what make this edition worth loading ahead of the base game. Everything around them is a 2021 Egyptian tumbler with a fair but unspectacular ceiling and a main game that marks time between bonuses.

Anyone treating the top tile as the strongest option is in for an unpleasant surprise. In this shop the priciest purchase returns the least: 18 spins on the top set for 108x sits 0.17 of a point below the base game, while the 12x purchase sits above it. Read the price list before spending, not after.