Curse of the Pharaoh Slot Review

Curse of the Pharaoh sends a pulp-adventure treasure hunter into a tomb, and its one interesting idea is that it lets the player shape the bonus. Land three Scatters and the game stops to ask a question: six free spins, twelve, or eighteen? Each option carries its own multiplier set, so picking one is picking a risk profile.

The rest is standard Evoplay carpentry. Five reels, three rows, 20 fixed lines, and a drop mechanic that blows up winners and refills the gaps while a small multiplier ladder ticks upward above the grid. RTP is 95.97%, low even by 2021 standards, and the ceiling is 2,803x the bet.

The reels sit inside a sandstone temple doorway, two fat carved columns bracketing the view, a strip of pale desert sky and bare rock visible past them on either side. A bearded adventurer in a brown cowboy hat, rolled white sleeves and a teal waistcoat stands at the left of the grid with a pistol on his hip. He mostly just stands there. The multiplier ladder is chiselled into the stone lintel overhead, x1 x2 x3 x5 cut straight into the block, which keeps it in view without crowding the reels.

Symbol art is cartoon-flat and colour-coded by tile: a red-hooded falcon, a blue and gold Anubis, a purple cat in a gold collar, a teal ibis, and a golden eye set inside a rayed sun disc for the Scatter. Under those sit three plain glyph tiles, a green ankh, blue water lines and a purple hieroglyph, doing the low-pay work and looking like exactly what they are. Everything reads at speed, which matters in a game built on cascades, though nothing here will surprise anyone who has played an Egyptian slot in the past decade.

Base play is quiet. A 38% hit rate means something pays roughly every third press, but most of those are three low glyphs for a sliver of the stake, cleared and refilled before the number registers. Cascades past the second drop stay uncommon, so the x5 rung sits up there looking available and mostly isn't. Stretches pass where the balance drifts down in small steps and the temple doorway sits unchanged.

Then three Scatters land and the game hands over a decision, which is a jolt no amount of base-game polish would buy. Six spins turns the bonus into a lottery on one long cascade. Eighteen grinds. Twelve is probably the sensible middle, and yes, most players settle on one after two or three triggers and stop thinking about it. What holds attention the first few times is that the choice is uncomfortable, because the three sets sit close enough together that no answer is obviously right.

Strip out the pick and this is a plain Egyptian cascade slot with a ceiling most 2021 releases had already cleared. The pick is what saves it. Giving the player control over the shape of the bonus is a small idea executed cleanly, and it puts a decision point in a game whose reels never provide one.

The gap is everything between triggers. The base game has one gear and not much happening while it runs, and even the six-spin gamble chases a number that looks unambitious next to what cascade slots were reaching for by then. It holds up fine as a low-stakes filler at 0.10 a spin. As a main game it wears thin.