Rich Wilde and the Tome of Madness

Rich Wilde and the Tome of Madness, listed by Play'n GO as Tome of Madness, is the June 2019 chapter of the Book of Dead series that sends its explorer into Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. It is a 5x5 cascading grid where clusters of four or more pay. Wins charge a Portal that adds special wilds and grid-clearing effects, and 42 winning symbols open the Other World Free Round. There is no buy, so we tested the Tome of Madness demo with 100 spins at $1.

What is Rich Wilde and the Tome of Madness?

The grid hangs in a ruined gothic hall, with Rich Wilde standing to the right holding the tome. On the left sit the Portal counter, the list of the round's wins and a small 5x5 map that shows where the Eye Marks sit.

A cluster is four or more matching symbols touching horizontally or vertically. Each one pays for its size, the winning symbols vanish, new ones drop in and the grid keeps cascading until nothing more connects.

The four high symbols are an octopus amulet, a dagger, a ring and a skull. At a $1 bet ten or more amulets pay $100, daggers $60, rings $40 and skulls $30, while four of them pay 70 cents to $2.

The four gems fill most of the grid and pay far less: four of them 10 to 40 cents, and ten or more $2 to $6.

The bet is picked from five buttons, 0.50 to 2.00 around the default, with a minus and a plus for further steps. The server lists coin values of 0.01 to 10.00 at 10 coins, so the demo runs from $0.10 to $100. Wins pay out by themselves, and there is no gamble.

Base spin 100 of 100 at $1, settled: four blue gems for $0.20, an Eye Mark on reel 1 and the Portal counter at 4 of 42. FluxPlays demo test, 19 October 2026.

Tome of Madness bonus features

Eye Marks

Eye Marks appear at random positions on the grid. A win that includes the marked position opens the eye, and once no further wins come, 2 special wilds are added to the grid.

The Portal: special wilds, Abyss and Void

Every winning symbol charges the Portal, and it pays out in three steps within a round:

• 7 winning symbols: 2 special wilds are added to the grid
• 14 winning symbols: 2 more special wilds; a win with one of them sets off Abyss, which removes a row or column from that wild
• 27 winning symbols: 2 more special wilds; a win with one of them sets off Void, which removes every copy of one random regular symbol

Symbols removed by Abyss charge the Portal further, and if Abyss removes another special wild, that wild fires its own Abyss. When a later step is reached before an earlier one has played, only the later one is awarded.

Paytable page 2 in our demo session: the Portal, its special wilds and the Abyss and Void effects that clear the grid. FluxPlays demo test, 19 October 2026.

The three wilds

The tome is the special wild that drives the Portal effects. Rich Wilde himself is a multiplier wild that doubles wins; in our session the x2 showed on the cluster he was part of. Cthulhu is the Mega Wild, which moves down the grid with each cascade. The paytable says that all wild symbols substitute for every regular symbol, Rich Wilde included.

Paytable page 3 in our demo session: the special wild tome, the Rich Wilde multiplier wild that doubles wins, and the Mega Wild. FluxPlays demo test, 19 October 2026.

Other World Free Round

Winning on 42 symbols opens the Portal and awards one free round in the other world with 3 random Portal Effects, plus one more for every 3 winning symbols beyond 42, up to 7. Each effect adds 4 special wilds; two of the three kinds also bring Abyss or Void when one of those wilds wins.

An effect fires whenever the cascades stop, and the round ends once every effect has been used. The other world shows 11 or 12 Eye Marks, and opening all of them summons the Mega Wild Cthulhu, who moves down with each cascade before he disappears.

Paytable page 4 in our demo session: the Other World Free Round, opened after winning on 42 symbols, with up to 7 effects. FluxPlays demo test, 19 October 2026.

RTP, volatility and max win

Paytable page 5 states the cap: 2,000x the bet, $2,000 at $1. No RTP appears in the help text, on the paytable or on Play'n GO's page. Review sites list 96.59% and rate the game high volatility, and the demo does not show which RTP version it runs.

Our Tome of Madness demo test

Our test used Play'n GO's official practice demo at $1 a spin, 10 coins at 0.10. Its credits carry no currency label, so each one counts as a dollar here. The demo opened on the 1.00 bet; the first spin was a click and a script started the rest one at a time, without Auto Play. The session ran 10.5 minutes with no reload and no error.

The 100 spins returned $101.90 and finished at 25,001.90, in line with the server balance and the screen. Only 23 spins paid, 15 of them under $1, and the longest run without a win was 12 spins, 56 to 67.

Almost all of it came on spin 8. One cascading spin paid $18.40 and charged the Portal past 42: the counter stopped at 53 of 54, one winning symbol short of a seventh effect, so the free round began with 6 Portal Effects.

Base spin 8 of 100 at $1: the Other World Free Round awards 6 Portal Effects after a $18.40 spin, Portal at 53 of 54. FluxPlays demo test, 19 October 2026.

The round finished at $79.80 for the spin, 79.8x the bet. Its win list closed with an 8-symbol cluster doubled by Rich Wilde to $48.00. We did not record which Portal Effects fired, and the Mega Wild was never summoned.

Base spin 8 of 100 at $1, collected after the free round: WIN 79.80, with an 8-symbol cluster at x2 for $48.00 in the list. FluxPlays demo test, 19 October 2026.

That round is a single result. Without it, the other 99 spins returned $22.10 from 22 wins, the best $3.00 on spins 68 and 86. The balance sat at its low of 24,993.30 just before spin 8 and peaked at 25,072.10 right after it. One hundred spins cannot measure the RTP or the volatility.

Is Tome of Madness worth trying?

Tome of Madness packs a lot into a 5x5 grid. The Portal pays out in steps inside a single round, so a good cascade keeps feeding itself with wilds, then row and column clears, then a symbol wiped from the grid. The Other World Free Round builds the same tools into a planned run of up to seven effects.

The cap of 2,000x is modest for a high-volatility grid, and the gems that fill most clusters pay cents. Our session shows the shape: one round carried a session of mostly small or empty spins.

Rich Wilde is the hero of Book of Dead, which by its rules is a 10-line reel slot with expanding-symbol free spins and a gamble; this chapter keeps the hero and swaps everything else for a cluster grid.

Against Reactoonz, by both games' rules, the closer cousin is the meter. Reactoonz charges every 25 winning symbols on a 7x7 grid of five-symbol clusters and lines up its features for later, while Tome of Madness fires its Portal steps at 7, 14 and 27 symbols on a 5x5 grid of four-symbol clusters. In our single sessions, Reactoonz returned $33.60 from 42 wins, and Tome of Madness $101.90 from 23, most of it from one free round.