Temple of Dead Bonus Buy Slot Review

Evoplay's answer to the Book of Dead formula, with the free spins available over the counter. Egyptian tomb, ten fixed lines, one Scatter that also plays as the Wild, and a single randomly chosen symbol that expands during the bonus and decides how the round goes.

The original Temple of Dead landed in January 2021. This version arrived seven months later with a Bonus Buy tab clipped to the left edge of the reels, and that tab is the only reason to pick it over the first one. Buying costs a little in return as well: 96.02% in normal play, dipping to 95.96% and 95.95% on the two larger packages.

The ceiling is 10,068x the bet. Reaching it means a long free spins run with one of the top symbols expanding across most of the grid, which is rarer than the headline number suggests.

The action happens deep inside a torchlit temple. Sandstone columns banded with blue and teal chevrons rise on both sides, cobwebs strung between them, and a pair of winged spearheads stands planted either side of the grid with a red gem set into each shaft. Above the reels a carved beast mask stares down with two orange slits for eyes. Below them a doorway glows furnace-orange while sand streams past two seated statues, and a fat dark blue amphora sits in the foreground like set dressing from an adventure film.

The reel panels are deep navy, so everything on them pops. Three queens carry the premium end, each framed on her own coloured tile: red for the one in the beaded multicolour collar, green for the emerald headdress, purple for the gold-striped nemes. The Scatter is a stone tablet holding a rolled scroll and a glowing gold ankh tied with a red ribbon. Royals fill the rest in gold-edged lettering, each letter its own colour, which is more care than most Egyptian slots put into their card symbols.

It looks good and it looks familiar. The queens share more or less the same face in three palettes, and the flat navy rectangle of the reel area never quite belongs to the room behind it.

The base game is quiet. Ten lines and low pays topping out at 15x the line bet mean most spins hand back a coin or two, and the stretch between triggers gets long enough that the shop tab starts looking like the sensible option. Which is presumably the design. Buy versions of Book games tend to hollow out their own middle, and this one does.

Tension in the bonus arrives before the reels even move, in the second the symbol gets drawn. A royal, and you are probably watching ten spins of nothing. A queen, and the round has legs. There is no input either way, no gamble, no reroll, no pick round, and for players who like feeling involved that is the frustrating part. For everyone else it is the appeal.

Spins run fast and wins land in short bursts. The swings are wide enough that a 221x purchase can be gone inside a minute, which is the trade high volatility always makes.

The shop is the point. Anyone loading this instead of the original Temple of Dead is doing it to skip the hunt for three tablets, and 75x for the smallest package is a fair entry price by 2021 standards. The bonus itself is unchanged from the base version, so what the money buys is access, not a better feature.

What holds it back is how much rides on the random draw. Buy 30 spins, land a J, and the round is over before it starts. That is the Book formula working as intended and plenty of players enjoy exactly that gamble, but Evoplay did nothing to soften it and nothing to modernise the ten-line skeleton underneath. The art is warm, the reels move quickly, the expanding non-adjacent wins are a nice touch. Beyond that it is a straight Book clone with a till attached, from a studio that has made far stranger and better things.