Obsidian Pharaoh: a book slot you can play free

An old recipe, carefully cooked

Book slots follow a pattern most players recognise within a few spins: five reels, three rows, a scatter that opens free spins and one symbol picked to expand across the reels. Obsidian Pharaoh, from Nocturn Play, keeps that structure and polishes the details. The poster shows a queen in navy and gold, a winged headdress set with turquoise, holding up a small black pyramid that catches the light. In the game, the reels sit inside a tomb lit in deep blue, and the loading screen announces that the doors are opening.

Lines, symbols and the pyramid wild

You choose between 1 and 20 lines and your bet per line; the total bet is one multiplied by the other. A win needs 3 or more identical symbols in a row from the leftmost reel, on an active line. Line wins are paid on the bet per line.

Above four lower-value symbols sit the Egyptian pieces: the canopic jar, the golden ankh, the pectoral collar, the golden scarab, the Eye of Horus, the head of Anubis and the pharaoh's mask. Two specials do the real work:

• The obsidian pyramid is the wild. It replaces every symbol except the sacred book and only appears on reels 2, 3 and 4.
• The sacred book is the scatter. Three, four or five anywhere pay at once, as a multiple of the total bet, and award 10 free spins.

Free spins and the sacred symbol

Before the free spins begin, one sacred symbol is drawn at random. Whenever it lands on a reel during the bonus, it expands to cover the whole reel. If the expanded symbol ends up covering 3 or more reels, it pays on every active line, wherever it sits; it does not need to start on the first reel. That is where the big book-slot moments come from, and why the lines setting matters: the expanded symbol pays on each line you are playing.

Three or more books during the free spins add another 10. A round can hold up to 60 free spins and stops as soon as the maximum win of 5,000× the total bet is reached.

How to test it in the free demo

There is no bonus buy here, so patience is part of the exercise.

• Play on all 20 lines; at £0.01 a line that is a £0.20 spin, low enough to run a long session.
• Aim for 300 spins or so. That gives the books a fair chance to show up and lets you see how the base game ticks along between them.
• When the free spins come, note which sacred symbol is drawn and how often it really covers three reels or more. A premium symbol such as the mask pays far more per line than a low one, so two bonuses can end very differently. Both sorts of round are worth seeing.
• Try a few dozen spins on fewer lines afterwards to see how much the expanded symbol loses.

Play Obsidian Pharaoh free

The demo opens in any browser, with no download and no sign-up. Its credits are virtual and cannot be withdrawn, and a lucky bonus says nothing about the next one. If you want to play with a real stake, the same slot runs for real money at the casinos listed below.