Egyptian Pays

Egyptian Pays Slot Review

A cracked sandstone pillar stands beside the reels, a pyramid sits faint on the horizon, and every icon on the grid has been gilded twice over. Egyptian Pays puts more craft into its tomb than this setting usually gets.

And it needs the effort, because the base game’s only real job is to walk you to the free spins round, where everything worth coming for is kept.

It’s a 5×3 reel set with up to 243 ways to win, running at 95.58% RTP on high volatility, from Inspired, whose Egyptian form already runs to Scarab Gold and Temple of Light. The round behind the door runs on three coins and a climbing ladder.

The Reels and the 243 Ways

Wins don’t follow fixed paylines here. Instead you match three, four or five symbols across adjacent reels from the left, and any win is multiplied by the number of matching symbols on each reel in the combination.

With up to 243 ways to win on a five-reel, three-row grid, a single spin can stack several combinations at once.

Two house rules keep the arithmetic tidy. Only the highest award counts per winning combination, and wins on different combinations are added together.

So a spin with a stacked reel can pay the same tier twice over through the ways, but it can’t double-count the same combination.

The Pharaoh Wild substitutes for every symbol except the Bonus, and it appears on reels two, three, four and five. It stacks, so a single reel can carry two or three Wilds at a time.

Because every position a Wild covers counts towards the ways, a stacked reel turns one premium match into several paying combinations at once. That’s the base game’s main route to a bigger win.

Two symbol tiers do the paying. The Egyptian icons pay properly; the card royals are pocket change.

• Purple Winged Goddess: 2.00 / 4.00 / 20.00 for three, four or five
• Teal Phoenix Bird: 1.20 / 2.40 / 6.00
• Scarab Beetle: 1.00 / 2.00 / 4.00
• Red and Blue Falcon: 0.80 / 1.60 / 3.00
• Eye of Horus and Ankh: 0.60 / 1.20 / 2.00
• Heart, Spade, Diamond and Club: 0.10 / 0.40 / 1.00

So the top symbol pays ten times its three-of-a-kind value for a full line of five, and the royals barely register at a twentieth of the Goddess for the same match. Almost everything the base game pays flows through the premium Egyptian symbols and the stacked Wilds that stand in for them.

The Bonus symbol is the one symbol the Wild can’t stand in for. It appears only on reels two, three, four and five, and only in the base game – it doesn’t show up inside the bonus round itself.

Three or more in view is the trigger for the round below.

Re-Life Spins

This is the round the whole game is organised around, and it works on a lives system rather than a fixed spin count. Every Re-Life Spins bonus begins with three lives, shown as coins.

The lives are the clock: lose them all and the round ends, whatever the multiplier has climbed to. The entry multiplier depends on how you got in:

• 3 Bonus symbols – the round starts at x2
• 4 Bonus symbols – the round starts at x4
• 5 Bonus symbols – the round starts at x5

From there, one rule drives everything. Every spin that doesn’t win costs a life, and once all three coins are gone the round is over.

Every winning spin does the opposite on both counts: it resets your lives to three and moves the multiplier up to the next level on the ladder, which climbs all the way to x50.

All wins are multiplied by the current multiplier, and the base prizes are the same as the trigger bet – so the round doesn’t reprice its symbols, it multiplies them. A win at x2 pays double; the same win late in a long run pays twenty-five times that.

That reset is the mechanism doing the heavy lifting. A round that finds a rhythm can extend itself indefinitely, with each win buying three more spins of insurance at a bigger multiplier.

The danger runs the other way too. Three losses in a row from the start and you’re out with nothing.

The Lifesaver Spin

On any spin where only one life remains, the Lifesaver Spin activates. A single Wild symbol occupies reel 3 for that spin, and because of it the spin is played with 81 ways to win instead of the full 243.

The guaranteed Wild locks that reel to a single position, and three reels of possibilities times three times three makes eighty-one. It doesn’t guarantee a win – a losing Lifesaver Spin still takes the final life and ends the round.

One consequence of the setup is worth spelling out. Because Bonus symbols don’t appear inside the round, there’s no retrigger in the conventional sense – the only thing that extends a Re-Life Spins bonus is winning, and the only thing that ends it is losing.

The ladder does the retriggering for you. Climb it far enough and the multiplier reaches its maximum of x50.

Our Honest Verdict

Overall Rating: 7.2/10

This is a walk down a decorated corridor with one door at the end. The base game spins up Bonus symbols and the occasional stacked Wild, but it’s the round behind the door that anybody’s here for: three coins on the clock and a multiplier that only moves when you win.

The ladder is the best idea in the game. A win refills the lives and climbs the multiplier in the same breath, so one hot streak stretches the round and grows it at once, and the Lifesaver Spin makes the final life a live spin rather than a formality. The flip side is that the round is never safe – three losses in a row end it.

It suits players who want a bonus round where every spin carries weight and who don’t mind a plain walk to get there. The tomb is beautifully painted, and the one chamber inside it is worth the trip.

Egyptian Pays FAQs

• What is the RTP of Egyptian Pays?

  Egyptian Pays runs at 95.58% RTP.
• Is Egyptian Pays high volatility?

  Yes, Egyptian Pays is a high volatility slot, so expect longer gaps between wins and bigger swings when the bonus round lands.
• How many paylines does Egyptian Pays have?

  Egyptian Pays doesn’t use fixed paylines. All games are played with up to 243 ways to win, with matches of three, four or five symbols across adjacent reels starting from the leftmost reel.
• What is the grid size of Egyptian Pays?

  Egyptian Pays is played on a 5×3 grid, with five reels and three rows of symbols.
• When is Egyptian Pays released?

  Egyptian Pays was released on 28 August 2020.
• Who makes Egyptian Pays?

  Egyptian Pays is made by Inspired Entertainment.
• How do you trigger Re-Life Spins in Egyptian Pays?

  Three or more Bonus symbols in view triggers Re-Life Spins. Bonus symbols only appear on reels 2, 3, 4 and 5, and only in the base game. The multiplier you start with depends on how many Bonus symbols triggered the round: x2 for three, x4 for four and x5 for five.
• What happens to lives and the multiplier on a winning spin in Egyptian Pays?

  Every winning spin during Re-Life Spins resets your lives to three and moves the multiplier up one level on the ladder, up to a maximum of x50. Every losing spin takes one life away, and once all three lives are gone the round ends.