Banquet of Dead Slot

One second, dear readers, I have a list that I would like to share:

• Rise of Dead
• Legacy of Dead
• Scroll of Dead
• Ghost of Dead
• Secret of Dead
• Pilgrim of Dead
• …and Scales of Dead

Oh, and now Banquet of Dead. You can never say that Play’n GO lacks creativity when it comes to gaming titles. This is, of course, their ‘of Dead’ series, which isn’t the official series name, but it seems fitting. 

This all started back in 2016, when the developer, released the slot game Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead. This game was the biggest video slot out at the time, and they more than milked it thereafter. 

While having nothing to do with the ‘Of Dead’ series, it sparked an audience wanting more games in this genre. In 2019, this ‘of Dead’ series began, and here we are with their seventh release. 

For this Banquet of Dead review, I will be discussing all the in-game features and the software performance. Will Banquet of Dead continue to make me feel bloated by the series, or will it feed my appetite for entertainment? 

The design of Banquet of Dead sees the slot placed within a huge hall, with rowed tables covered in bowled fruits and wine decanters. The hall is surrounded by an upper balcony with draped floral arrangements. Within areas of this banquet hall, there are flaming lights to complement the design. 

Visually, it looks alright, as the slot itself takes up a 3x5 layout, with strikingly large symbols that come with lovely metallic coloring and shade. The gaming symbols include the Pharoah, the Sobek, a fruit bowl, and a fan. These make up the high-prized symbols, with A, K, Q, J, and 10 being the lower ones.

Banquet of Dead comes with ten paylines that pay on two or more matching high-prized symbols that form from left to right. Or three or more of the lower-valued symbols. There is one other symbol featured: the Scatter symbol represented by the golden tomb. The Scatter symbol is what triggers the game’s main bonus feature of free spins. 

Banquet of Dead is a very simple game, and it would be fair to say that it doesn’t really offer anything new to the market. When you load the game, select the cost per spin you wish to pay and play. On the control panel, you will see the Coin Value box. Use the minus and plus tabs to increase the price of play per spin to $2.00 or decrease to $0.01. Then, on the Coins box, you can increase the number of coins from one to five. Both of these control the overall Bet amount. You can spend $100 per spin at the highest amount, but at the lower end, $0.10 per spin.

When you set the bet levels, press the green spin button to begin playing Banquet of Dead. Alternatively, the orange button provides autoplay, whereby you can set the number of spins and limits when they should stop.

To produce a win, two or more of the higher or three or more of the lower symbols must match one of the ten payline patterns. These patterns can be seen within the game’s pay table. You can access this by selecting the Information button. 

During the base game, you will have a chance to increase potential wins by triggering special features, like the bonus round or the game’s expanding reels. Let’s look at all the in-game features in closer detail.

Banquet of Dead comes with a special free spins bonus round of play. If you land three or more of the scatter symbols, you will trigger the game that rewards you with seven free spins. The Scatters will also award you a payout relative to the number of symbols that land.

During the free spins round of play, special expanding symbols feature. When a win line is created, that symbol will transform into an expanding symbol to cover the full reel it is on. This, in turn, produces a greater return from your single free spin.

When a free spin comes to an end, any lower symbols that feature during an expansion win will be removed for the remaining spins you have. Also, the expanding symbol can change during the bonus round.

Yes, the game looks nice, but when it comes to the gameplay and the core of the action, Banquet of Dead is a very basic casino game. There is nothing in this game that I have not seen in others. Perhaps this is a series that has reached its limits.

My experience was purely through the demo version. No way was I going to play this for real money. I set my pay per spin at $2 and set the auto spins to 50. Now, something strange happened that wasn’t mentioned in the game’s paytable instructions. I was given a gamble option after I landed a very minor win. Again, this is not something new but allows players to decide to collect the winnings or gamble them through a card game. Perhaps this is random; perhaps it’s only a demo-mode feature, which I cannot expand on further.

After my 50 spins, I landed about five wins and made no increase in my balance.

At the max amount, if betting at $100 per play, there is the potential to win $700,000. Now, this is slightly below the average for most Play;n GO slots, but it’s still worth a try.

This said, the volatility programming is set to the highest level, making it really hard and expensive to play. The RTP, however, comes in at a normal 96.20%. The value, the programming, and the theoretical payback rate are all oddly irregular. You expect the RTP to be less, given the prize money, which itself is bizarrely high.

If you want the opportunity to win big, then this is one of those games, but you will need some financial clout to play this high volatility slot. It’s not a game I would seek out and play again; the genre has bored me simply because no one is producing anything challenging. 

Alternatively, here are some more rounded and better Egyptian-themed slots you can play at Casinos.com for free and find within the top casinos online: Rich Wilde and the Amulet of Dead by Play’n GO, John Hunter and the Tomb of the Scarab Queen by Pragmatic Play, and Pharaoh’s Gaze: DoubleMax by Yggdrasil.