Book of Ba’al

Book of Ba'al: Slot Overview

The low hanging fruit that is Ancient Egypt proves irresistible once again, this time to developer Iron Dog Studio who has tossed its fedora into the arena with another 'book of' style slot. This one is called Book of Ba'al, and its name is possibly one of the most intriguing things about it. A bout of research revealed that Ba'al has popped up in various guises across history, so it is hard to find one all-encompassing definition. Since we're off to Ancient Egypt in Book of Ba'al, let's stick to the Egyptian definition, which even then is difficult to nutshell. According to some, Ba'al was apparently associated with Set, who was the Egyptian god of storms, violence, and disorder, amongst other aspects. If this meaning still doesn't sit right, no problem; it seems loads of other people have used Ba'al to represent all sorts of things, so let's leave it open for now.

What is clear cut is that players are on totally familiar territory with Book of Ba'al. The game takes place inside a stone structure, perhaps a temple or a palace in the land of Egypt. Somewhere with braziers braziering, and statues of gods in between hieroglyphed pillars. It's a cosy enough view, serving up nothing new whatsoever, but also doing nothing to discourage fans up for some plain 'book' gaming. It's not completely generic, though, which the winged meter in the top right corner is evidence of. This device feeds into Book of Ba'al's one and only new bit, detailed in the features section.

Playable on any device, bets range from 10 p/c per spin, up to $/€50 for the deeper-pocketed explorers. The game is played on a 5x3 game grid, rewarding players when matching symbols land across its 10 fixed paylines, starting from the leftmost edge. Book of Ba'al offers a classic 'book' combination of a highly volatile math model and solid potential, producing a theoretical return value of 96% in the process.

Symbolically, Book of Ba'al sticks to the script as well, using 10-A Egyptian looking card ranks as low paying symbols, then ankhs, eyes, scarabs, and who else but a dashing young Indiana Jones type as the top paying tile. Values-wise, you're looking at a payout of 10-15x the bet for five low pay symbols or 75 to 500x the bet for five premiums on a single payline.

Book of Ba'al: Slot Features

As usual, the book symbol is both wild, and the game's scatter, landing on any reel. As wild, the book replaces any other symbol in the game, except expanded symbols, to complete winning lines. As scatter, landing 3, 4, 5 book symbols awards 2x, 20x, or 200x the bet respectively, plus 10 free spins.

Before free spins begin, one regular pay symbol is randomly chosen to be the Special Expanding Symbol. If special symbols can create a win during free spins, they expand to cover all positions on their respective reel. They then pay all lines from any position - expanded symbols do not need to be adjacent to each other to do so. Landing 3 or more scatters during the feature awards additional free spins.

Mini Feature Round

What helps separate Book of Ba'al from the pack to an extent is its Mini Feature Round. Each time a book symbol lands, which does not result in triggering free spins, it is collected by the side meter. When 25 books have been collected in this way, the mini-feature is triggered. One pay symbol transforms into a special symbol, and each one covers its reel. Expanded symbols are locked in place while the remaining reels spin once for free. Any new chosen symbols which land then expand as well.

Book of Ba'al: Slot Verdict

Iron Dog is a pretty creative lot. When they're not giving Megaways a nudge, they're coming up with a whole new way of marketing BTG's game engine to third parties – for good or ill, let's leave that debate alone for now. Book of Ba'al, on the other hand, feels like a game they made on cruise control. One of the most glowing things to say is at least Iron Dog didn't make any major blunder with it. There are no odd characters, no weird elements, no moments of failed bravado, not much individual soul at all, really. Book of Ba'al is basically a paint by numbers game serving little more purpose than to pad out the studio's range.

Players will have seen and done just about everything Book of Ba'al has to offer numerous times in the past. Its one innovation is the Mini Feature, which isn't bad, actually. It's a neat addition that ties into the expanding symbol mechanic these games are famous for. While the Mini Feature didn't exactly blow up during testing, it is technically possible that the handsome hero symbol could be chosen, and if all reels are full on the following spin a 5,000x the bet win is coming your way. This is just shy of Book of Ba'al's max win figure of 5,100x and achievable from the base game, which is pretty neat. Other than the Mini Feature, there isn't much else to say. The rest of the game functions just fine, if a bit blandly, but if vanilla' book' slots get you going, then Book of Ba'al probably will too.

So is the one new bit enough to tempt 'book' players away from their regular favourites? Possibly yes if they are used to playing mostly standard renditions. Not so much, if they prefer games like Book of Shadows or one of the more intricately designed or higher potential alternatives.