Oasis of Dead Slot Overview
Oasis of Dead is the latest entry in Play'n GO's long-running 'Dead' series, sitting alongside Book of Dead and Legacy of Dead. Built on a 5x3 grid with up to 10 selectable paylines, it sticks firmly to the classic 'book' slot formula. You get an Ancient Egyptian backdrop, a combined wild/scatter symbol, and Expanding Symbols during Free Spins. Released on 4 July 2024, the default RTP lands at 96.58% with high volatility and a 5,000x max win.
Right, chat, if I'm honest with you, the first impression here is 'polished but familiar.' The background features ivy-covered stone structures, pyramids, and a lotus flower water feature. Sandy gold tones with purple and blue accents keep things visually pleasant. Play'n GO knows how to make these Egyptian slots look sharp, even when the mechanics underneath are well-trodden ground.
Symbols and Paytable
Lower-paying symbols are the standard 10, J, Q, K, and A card ranks. Five of a kind on a payline awards between 8x and 12x your stake. Four high-paying symbols fill the premium slots: snakes, scarabs, crocodiles, and pharaohs. Five matching high pays are worth between 60x and 500x, with the pharaoh sitting right at the top.
A golden building symbol pulls double duty as both wild and scatter. It substitutes for all regular symbols on paylines. Landing 3, 4, or 5 of them anywhere triggers the bonus and pays an instant 2x, 20x, or 200x your bet respectively. High-paying symbols only need two on a line to start paying, which keeps the base game ticking over, even if big hits remain rare outside of Free Spins.
Symbol Payouts
Bonus Features
Three or more wild/scatter symbols trigger 8 Free Spins. Before the round starts, one regular pay symbol is randomly selected as the Expanding Symbol. Whenever enough of that chosen symbol lands, it expands to fill its entire reel and pays across all active paylines. Crucially, these expanded symbols do not need to be on adjacent reels to form wins. That mechanic is where the real money lives in this slot.
Retriggers are possible. Landing 3 scatters during Free Spins grants another 8 spins and selects an additional Expanding Symbol. A tracker above the reels shows which symbols have been chosen. You can technically convert all 9 pay symbols into expanders during a single bonus round, though that would take a ridiculous number of retriggers.
After any base game win or at the end of a Free Spins round, there is an optional Gamble Feature. Guess the colour of a face-down card to double your win, or guess the suit to quadruple it. You can chain up to 5 correct guesses, capped at 2,500 coins. Get it wrong and you lose everything. I used it a fair bit during testing; it adds a layer of tension, but the risk is real.
Bonus Buy Options
Land 3, 4, or 5 scatter/wild symbols to trigger 8 free spins with a cash payout of 2x, 20x, or 200x respectively. One random symbol becomes a special expanding symbol that covers entire reels. Retrigger with 3 scatters for 8 more spins and an additional expanding symbol.
After any base game win or free spins round, guess the colour of a face-down card to double the prize, or guess the suit to quadruple it. Can be played up to 5 times consecutively with a limit of 2,500 coins.
RTP, Volatility, and Max Win
Default RTP is 96.58%, which is above average. Be aware that operators can choose from four lower settings: 94.51%, 91.51%, 87.56%, and 84.55%. Always check the info screen at your casino. Volatility is rated high at 8 out of 10, and the max win caps at 5,000x your total bet. One stat that stood out to me: the max win hit frequency is reportedly 1 in 1,000,000,000 spins. So while 5,000x is decent on paper, actually landing it is astronomically unlikely.
