It comes to a point where any developer must feel the pressure of getting their ‘book slot’ debut over with already, and Book of Thieves is Blue Guru Games’ first ever ‘Book mechanic’ release. The title did admittedly make us curious, and the base game plays out with a typical medieval town in the background. The characters seem loosely inspired by Robin Hood, but then again not really, but they certainly look capable of taking down a score when duty calls.
The base game comes with a somewhat unusual twist, although hardly unheard of, as you get a random ‘Book style’ expanding symbol at random times. The expanding symbol box above the grid turns into 3 boxes in the bonus round, meaning that you can get up to 3 expanding symbols per free spin. The symbol values are lower than usual, but the5,337x potentialis a bit above what most ‘book slots’ offer. A decent debut overall, but it could’ve been polished and developed even more.
The 4 premium character symbols pay between 50 and 250 x your stake for 5 of a kind wins, and the Book scatter is not the wild symbol in this game. Instead, you get a dedicatedWild symbolthat can appear on any reel to help complete and/or improve line wins. The Wild pays the same as the top-tier female symbol should you land 3 to 5 wilds on a payline. Wilds do not substitute for special expanding symbols, just to be clear.
You will see a box above the middle reel, and it can land either a pay symbol or a wall of bricks blank symbol per spin. If a pay symbol appears on this box, it acts as the chosen expanding scatter pay symbol for that round. If you land enough instances of this symbol anywhere on the reels to create a win, they all expand to award a full-payline win after the regular win calculation.
You need at least3 scattersin view to trigger theBonus Round, and this gives you10 free spins. The bonus round comes with3 special symbol boxes above the grid, and this means that you can getup to 3 special expanding symbolsper free spin. Wall of bricks can still block the special symbol positions though, and special symbol wins take turns expanding after the regular line win calculation. You retrigger the bonus round with10 new free spinsif you land3+ scatterson the same free spin.
TheBuy Bonus featureis available in some jurisdictions, but not in the UK for sure. If eligible, you can purchase the bonus round for70x your stake,and this gives you a top-tier RTP of 96.08 %. The bonus buy RTP is thus a tad lower than the overall RTP.
You get to see a few base game wins, before we purchase and trigger the bonus round at 0:42 into the 2:24-minute highlights video. You get to see several expanding symbol wins, and only 2 character premium symbols in view are needed to trigger the ‘Book mechanic’ in this game. Anyway, you can check it all out for yourself by hitting the play button below.
You can count on Blue Guru Games to deliver innovative slots that stick out from most run of the mill releases, but Book of Thieves is, all things considered, a somewhat underwhelming ‘Book of’ mechanic debut. The medieval visuals are decent, but the presentation doesn’t quite hit the spot for some reason. Perhaps a Robin Hood theme would’ve served this game better, as it would’ve provided a set of recognizable characters with starpower.
It is what it is, however, and we do like that you get a random expanding symbol on occasions also in the base game. It doesn’t happen all that often though, and keep in mind that the symbol values are lower than in most ‘Book slots’. This is the price you pay for up to 3 expanding symbols per bonus round spin, but at least the5,337x potentialis a tad higher than what you get in most similar games. Overall, an okay ‘book slot’ debut from Blue Guru Games, but we don’t see this one threatening the top 10 positions in the genre.
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