About Ancient Egypt Classic
Ancient Egypt Classic needs placing to be understood: it is Pragmatic Play's contribution to the Book slot genre, that family of machines born with Book of Ra in 2005 and since reworked by almost every studio. The game came out on 31 October 2018 on a grid of five reels and three rows with ten fixed paylines.
Several values in our listing were inaccurate. The line count shown was 5; the game has 10, a figure confirmed by Pragmatic Play's official page. The RTP displayed was 96.18%; the figure published by the provider is 96.51%. The ceiling given was 2,500x; SlotCatalog measures 5,015x, exactly double. The minimum stake was listed at 0.05 € instead of 0.10 €. And the release date sat in August 2017, more than a year too early.
The mechanic rests on a single symbol, the golden scarab, which combines two roles usually kept apart: it is both scatter and wild. As a wild it completes base-game combinations. As a scatter it triggers the feature as soon as three of them appear, wherever they land on the grid. The bonus awards ten free spins.
The heart of the game happens in the second before those ten spins. One symbol is drawn at random and designated as the expanding symbol for the whole feature. That draw takes place before the first spin, on a dedicated screen, and it determines nearly everything that follows. If the draw lands on Cleopatra, the richest symbol on the table — 500x the stake for five in the base game — the ten spins carry enormous potential. If it lands on a low-table figure, the bonus is doomed before it begins.
The behaviour of the expanding symbol is what defines the genre. When it appears on a reel, it expands to cover that entire reel, and crucially it pays on any position — the payline constraint disappears. The chosen symbol therefore only has to land on three, four or five reels for the whole grid to turn into one massive combination. The 5,015x ceiling is reached in exactly that way: Cleopatra drawn, then expanded across all five reels during the free spins.
On return, this title has an argument its rivals lack. Its 96.51% beats Book of Dead's 96.21% and crushes Book of Ra Deluxe's 95.10%. For anyone who plays this type of machine regularly, the gap with the Novomatic version amounts to 1.41 € less house edge per 100 € staked. One warning though: a reduced configuration at 95.50% is deployed at some operators, and it wipes out that advantage entirely. Checking the rules is not optional here — it is the game's only objective selling point.
The volatility is high, rated 4.5 out of 5 by BigWinBoard. That follows: the ten-line base game only produces small returns, and most of the payout is stored in a rare bonus whose value depends on a draw. Stakes range from 0.10 € to 50 € per spin, and there is no bonus buy — a regrettable absence in a genre where buying would make obvious sense.
One discrepancy remains on the date: SlotCatalog gives 31 October 2018, while other records mention October 2020, most likely a refresh on the provider's own site. We keep SlotCatalog's date.
