Tome of Insanity

Tome of Insanity – or Rich Wilde and the Tome of Insanity to give it its full name – is the latest instalment in PlayNGo’s Wilde family series of games that started with Book of Dead, and is a direct sequel to Tome of Madness which came out in 2019.  Both of the “Tome” games are themed on HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos but while in Tome of Madness the ultimate aim was to summon Cthulhu himself, in Tome of Insanity the big bad wild is Yog-Sothoth and instead of travelling from the top of the grid to the bottom he walks around the grid three times.

How to Play Tome of Insanity

Just like its predecessor, Tome of Insanity is a grid game (like Viking Runecraft and Reactoonz) rather than a slot game with reels (like Book of Dead).  It’s played on a 5×5 grid with cascading symbols and two types of wild symbol, Rich Wilde himself (who applies a multiplier of 2x – 5x to any wins he forms part of) and Book Wilds (which are added to the grid via bonus features).  Wins are awarded for clusters of 4 or more matching symbols.  And again as in Tome of Madness, the grid may contain an Eye Mark (a purple frame) which adds Book Wilds, but this time it’s 2-4 wilds rather than just 2.

Tome of Insanity also closely resembles Tome of Madness in that it has Portal Effects, triggered by charging up the Portal with winning symbols, but the effects themselves are different to the original, typically involving more wilds.

• Ruin – triggered by 8 charges.  Awards 2-4 Book Wilds
• Harvest – triggered by 16 charges.  Awards 2-4 book wilds.  Each of these wilds that forms part of a win then destroys all available symbols 2 symbols away diagonally and 3 symbols away horizontally or vertically (this happens after the other winning symbols drop down but before any more symbols drop in, so some of those spaces may not have any symbols in).  Destroyed symbols count towards charging the portal.
• Abomination – triggered by 30 charges. Awards 2-4 book wilds. Each of these wilds that forms part of a win then upgrades all instances of a gem (low paying symbol) to a ritual item (high paying symbol).
• Damnation – triggered by 48 charges.  Awards the Damnation Free Spin.

The Damnation Free Spin takes place with 3 Portal Effects, plus one extra Portal Effect for every 4 charges beyond 48, up to a maximum of 7 Portal Effects (again this is very similar to what happens in Tome of Madness).  A random Portal Effect is triggered every time there are no more wins, until all the Portal Effects are used up.

During the Damnation Free Spin, one of three possible patterns of 12 regular Eye Marks (pink) and a fixed pattern of 6 Special Eye Marks (green) is present on the grid.  You need to open all 12 regular Eye Marks to summon Yog-Sothoth.  In the meantime you can get win multipliers for it by opening the Special Eye Marks – 2x for opening 4, 3x for opening 5 and 4x for opening all 6.

If you manage to summon Yog-Sothoth, he appears on the grid when all the Portal Effects have been resolved in the form of a 2×2 wild symbol which steps around the grid 3 times (after all wins have been collected and before the cascade takes place) and then disappears.

All of this makes for a game that is even more entertaining than the original.  If you are a fan of the grid and clusters style of game you’ll definitely want to check it out.

Volatility and Return To Player

If you’ve played any of the games in the Rich Wilde series previously you will not be at all surprised to hear that Tome of Insanity is a high volatility slot, but not super high; the maximum win is 5000x stake.  It can be played from 10p a spin.

Return to Player is more complicated as it has several possible values – we’ve seen 96.2%, 94.2%, 91.2% and 87.2% at different UK facing casinos and we understand there is also an 84.2% variant.  Be careful where you play this game!  If you want to check the RTP of the version of Tome of Insanity you are playing, look for the tiny question mark on the left at the bottom of the game screen (circled red in the screenshot) and tap or click it to bring up the game help files.

Where To Play Tome of Insanity

At the time of writing (June 2024) most of the big name UK facing brands – Paddy Power, Mecca, Gala, Jackpotjoy and so on – have the RTP of Tome of Insanity set at 94.2%, whereas networks of skins such as Aspire and Progress Play tend to have it set lower.

If you would like to play Tome of Insanity with 96.2% RTP the choices are bet365 (where you’ll find it in the Games part of the site) and MrQ.