Mysterious Egypt

Our slot of the month award for January goes to Pragmatic Play’s Mysterious Egypt. This five reel slot is currently going down a storm with players thanks to a highly-polished design, expanding mystery symbols and a standout free spins round.

Theme/Visuals

Alright, so as far as theme goes, there’s nothing all that original about Mysterious Egypt. Just as well then, that the people at Pragmatic Play have outdone themselves in the visuals department. The game area is backed by a smooth rendering of a River Nile pyramid setting – play is accompanied by a pleasantly-dramatic soundtrack complete with plunking oud and sweeping orchestral strains.

Low value symbols are made up of playing card letters that resemble hieroglyphs – a pair of gold-encrusted medallions emblazoned with the animal gods, Horus and Baste, serve as medium-to-high value symbols. A pyramid and the eye of Ra make up the remaining standard symbols and are the most lucrative, while an intricately designed Egyptian queen represents both the scatter and wild.

How to Play Mysterious Egypt

To win in the base game, you’ll need to land at least three standard symbols from left to right across a pay-line. The most rewarding symbol is the Eye of Ra which pays out up to 500x your stake when five appear.

However, for each spin, a mystery symbol is randomly selected via a carousel that sits above the main reel set. Should enough land on the main reels, they can potentially expand to cover all positions thus generating some substantial winnings. If this occurs, your pay-out will be calculated according to the symbol selected. The main advantage here is that these symbols don’t need to be adjacent to form winning combos.

Bonus Features

In order to gain access to the free spins bonus feature, you’ll have to land three, four or five Egyptian Queens on a single spin. 2, 20 or 200 times your stake will then be awarded as well as 10 free spins. Before the start of the round, two expanding mystery symbols are randomly selected and remain in play for the whole round.

As is the case with the base game, these don’t have to be next to each other to create winning combinations. Unveil at least three Egyptian Queens during the free spins and you’ll re-trigger 10 free spins. Happily, there are no limits on these re-triggers.

A ‘buy the bonus’ round option is also available, although this isn’t available to UK players. For games with similar features permitted in this country, see our section on UK bonus buy slots.

Conclusion

Although expanding symbols are certainly nothing new (see Book of Dead), Pragmatic Play has made the wise decision to include them in both the base game and free spins round. Even in the base game, this mechanic has the potential to generate payouts of 5,533 x your stake. That it’s been included in the free spins round is an added bonus…so to speak. So although Mystery of Egypt isn’t likely to win awards for originality, the game does at least offer a refreshing, potentially lucrative take on a rather tired theme.

RTP: 96.05% (may be adjusted by operator), Minimum Stake: 0.10