Cat Wilde and the Pyramids of Dead: Slot Overview

Remember Dr Evil, Austin Powers’ arch-nemesis who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, yet Scott just didn’t seem overly enthused? ‘Scott, you just don’t get it, do ya? You don’t.’ One dad who doesn’t have that problem is Play’n GO’s Indiana Jones-style adventurer, Rich Wilde. The smooth-talking explorer has popped up around the world in multiple online slots, and for some time now his daughter Cat has been busy collecting her own passport stamps too. Here she returns to familiar ground in Cat Wilde and the Pyramids of Dead, another entry in Play’n GO’s ever-growing ‘of Dead’ slot series.

Immediately familiar, Pyramids of Dead has that idealised postcard vibe, though it isn’t especially inventive at the same time. The action takes place in an Egyptian pyramid setting, with the reels planted in the middle of a temple-like structure lined with columns covered in hieroglyphs. Potted plants sway softly, birds glide past, and with a little imagination it’s easy to picture life during the Dynasties, when Egypt—Kemet as it was known then—must have felt like the centre of everything. In their wildest dreams, no one living there could have foreseen just how often their mysterious land would be revisited thousands of years later in online slots.

The game runs on a 5-reel, 3-row layout with fixed 10 paylines for landing winning combinations. Alongside the attractive visuals, Play’n GO delivers its typically dependable maths, at least when looking at the default RTP configuration, with volatility firmly placed on the medium end of the scale. On top of that, the stake range sits at 10 p/c to $/€100, and the slot is playable on any device.

Wins are formed by matching symbols from left to right starting on the first reel, requiring at least three low pays or two high pays. The low symbols are 10-A card royals, paying 6-8 times the stake for five of a kind, while five of the premium scarab, Anubis, Pharaoh, or Cat symbols returns 40-1,000x the bet. The higher-than-usual Cat symbol fits nicely with the expanding mechanics typical of a ‘book’ game.

Cat Wilde and the Pyramids of Dead: Slot Features

In Pyramids of Dead, it isn’t strictly essential to land the top-paying symbol with the first free spins trigger. Before explaining why, let’s look at the Pyramid Wild Scatter. This icon is wild, meaning it can replace any pay symbol to help complete standard win lines. On top of that, when at least 3 Pyramid Wild Scatters appear, they activate one of the three bonus games – a Jackpot Round, an Instant Prize, or Free Spins.

Instant Prize

When this feature activates, each scatter on screen shows a value in coins which is totalled up and paid out. The reward can reach up to 500x the bet.

Jackpot Round

Trigger the Jackpot Round and 12 pieces of pottery show up on the screen, with 4 jackpots displayed above them. Players click pots to reveal one of the jackpots, and once 3 of one kind have been uncovered, the matching jackpot is awarded. The four prizes are called Khufu, Tiye, Tutankhamun, and Mereneith, worth 20x, 100x, 250x, and 1,000x the bet, respectively.

Free Spins

Activating this bonus grants 8 free spins, with one pay symbol randomly selected at the start to become a special expanding symbol. If that expanding symbol forms part of a win, it expands to cover all of the positions on its reel and pays across all lines, no matter where it lands. Retriggering the feature not only adds more free spins, but another pay symbol is also turned into a special expanding symbol.

Gamble Feature

After regular line wins, or after bonus feature wins, players may be given the chance to gamble their winnings. Choosing the correct colour of a face-down card doubles the payout, while selecting the correct suit boosts it to four times. To be clear, a wrong guess means the entire win is lost.

Cat Wilde and the Pyramids of Dead: Slot Verdict

If any studio has deep experience building Egyptian-themed slots, it’s Play’n GO. Interestingly, even with that background, it feels like they’ve found a particular sweet spot and levelled off. Much like Cat Wilde and the Lost Chapter and Cat Wilde and the Doom of Dead, Cat Wilde and the Pyramids of Dead looks great without being truly eye-popping, while an appropriately familiar soundtrack ticks along overhead. It’s the kind of game that will easily satisfy a ‘book of’ fan, though there isn’t a lot that feels especially standout given how frequently PnG has been releasing these.

Even so, if Play’n GO has reached a plateau with its ‘of dead’ designs, it’s still a plateau sitting above much of the competition. The visuals may feel well-worn, but the quality is strong, and Play’n GO has included one or two additions you don’t see every day in this type of slot. The instant cash prize is fairly lightweight, offering nothing remarkable. Would it have been better to put that slice of the RTP into stronger line wins instead? Maybe. The free spins behave as you’d expect from a ‘book of’ game, and while gaining extra expanding symbols on each retrigger isn’t common, it’s not truly unique, and it’s not especially groundbreaking either.

That leaves the pick-me jackpot round, which again raises the question: would that portion of the RTP have been better directed into free spin payouts? Possibly, since it’s during free spins that players can, in theory, reach the game’s larger-than-usual max win of 10,000x the bet. Here’s hoping the coveted 1,000x Cat symbols are the ones chosen to make that possible.

All in all, Cat’s trip to the land of Pyramids is worth checking out if this style of slot is your thing. Play’n GO has packed in the core elements ‘book of’ slots are known for, while adding a couple of less common touches. The upside is that if Pyramids of Dead doesn’t quite grab you, there are plenty of alternatives out there—and almost certainly many more still to come.