Tome of Madness Demo and Review

Played and reviewed 30 August 2026

Overview

Play’n GO’s Indiana Jones-style adventurer is back in this 2019 game, but this time in a new format compared to his famous 2016 Book of Dead appearance, which made its name as the most widely copied book slot online, a format where wins run in lines from the left edge of the screen across.

In the Tome of Madness, this time things are different and Rich Wilde travels away from Egypt and book slot dynamics into a more ‘cosmic horror’ theme, taking on a 5×5 grid with a fill-up meter mechanic introduced by Reactoonz and Gemix. This meter format continued for all the Tome games, of which this one is the first. Anytime you see a Rich Wilde game titled with Tome, you’re looking at a 5×5 grid cluster system, as opposed to a book slot system on the other titles.

As in Rich’s previous adventures, this one is highly themed and atmospheric, built on author H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu (kuh-THOO-loo) character, a freaky octopus-headed sleeping god, who, when awakened, causes absolute symbol-clearing chaos on the grid. Who would have thought summoning a villain paid off so well! H.P. Lovecraft was an American horror writer, writing from the 1910s to the 1930s, who invented the cosmic horror genre, and this game is set in that universe.

Look and sound

This game certainly has more of a fantasy horror feel, with a creepy and ominous setting in what seems to be a grand gothic library and dramatic pumping music. The occasional narrator’s voice announcing the various cluster wins in the bonus round is dramatic and fun, and adds a lot to the excitement as your wins build.

How a win works

With the portal meter that gets filled up to shoot out special wilds and the eventual bonus round on the left, and Rich Wilde positioned on the right holding the Necronomicon tome that summons special features, the grid is a 5×5 cascading system. The cluster pay mechanic: if four or more of the same symbol touch each other anywhere on the board, they vanish, giving you a win. More symbols drop from above to fill the holes. If that new combo makes another win, it happens again.

All wins feed the meter, so every symbol that clears starts to fill it up, and you only need to hit one or two before you already earn some wilds and glorious animations, eventually chaining up to throw you into the sole bonus round.

The symbols

There are eight falling symbols overall. The four lower rank ones are roughly cut colored gems with alien symbols on them, and above them sit a Cthulhu skull mask, an ornate mystical dagger, an ornate ring, and an octopus amulet, which is the top symbol of the game.

Those top rates are only paid when at least 10 symbols are won, so a 10+ set between the best gem and the amulet is about 17 times more before any wild gets involved.

The wilds

So how do the wilds work? Well, you’ve got the Tome book itself, which helps glue a cluster together, and the Rich Wilde portrait is a multiplier wild that doubles the cluster that he sits in. The Mega Wild is the monstrous octopus Cthulhu himself, which is a block wild of two-by-two squares of tentacles that stands in for every tile underneath him (it?). He only appears in the bonus round, however, and slithers down the grid as tiles keep falling.

The Portal meter

The portal is the charge meter on the left and is fed by every tile that pays. As those clusters vanish, the number on the left rises within the charge meter, but resets back to zero after any spin that does not pay, which can leave quite a dead feeling base game, until the action ramps up once you get a cluster combo or two, but when that happens, the wins come through thick and fast, chaining and feeding each other, which leads to very exciting animations and a quite easy to reach bonus round.

Another feature of the game is that there are eye marks sitting in various positions on the grid, and they open up when a paying cluster covers that particular square, dealing out 2 more Book Wilds in the base game. Only a few positions are marked, but in the bonus round it could be 11 or 12 at once, and opening up every eye summons the Mega Wild Cthulhu octopus monster, which is what you really want.

Meter checkpoints

The exciting part is trying to hit the checkpoints on the meter. Each checkpoint is earned through winning tiles, and each one delivers a different result from the portal meter:

It’s fun when book wilds are shot out from the portal meter at random squares, but they frequently seem to land on the sides or corners, reducing the chances of clusters, which seems to happen a bit too often for our liking, which confirms other user experiences we’ve seen.

The Other World bonus

When you fill up the vault with 42 winning symbols, the Other World bonus round kicks off. The Other World bonus round is one free spin with three portal packages attached, each drawn at random from three kinds:

• Four Book Wilds drop
• Four Book Wilds + Abyss (entire column/row wipes)
• Four Book Wilds + Void (removing symbols from grid)

Collect past 42 before the round starts and you get an extra package for every 3 extra symbols, up to a maximum of seven.

When the spin is played, the symbols pay and fall. When the falls stop, the packages in the queue start to fire, dropping the Book Wilds on the board. In this bonus round, there’s an increase in closed eyes that sit in 11 or 12 positions behind the symbols. If a win covers one, it opens and keeps giving Book Wilds, and if a win covers every one of them, that’s when Cthulhu appears in a 2×2 block and slithers down the screen as symbols continue to fall. This is the best part of the game, as Cthulhu is a monstrous symbol eater, giving you continuous wins as he crawls down the screen.

Bonus buy and ante bet

And if a dry period leaves you hungry for the bonus round and you’re not having any luck, this game has no bonus buy button or even an ante-bet toggle feature.

Verdict

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All Play’n GO games

Demo–Gemix1 Dec 2014RTP 96.83%VolatilityVolMediumMediumDemo–Alice Cooper and the Tome of Madness7 Oct 2021RTP 96.2%VolatilityVolHighHighDemo–Rich Wilde and the Tome of Insanity30 May 2024RTP 96.2%VolatilityVolMediumMediumDemo–Reactoonz23 Oct 2017RTP 96.51%VolatilityVolHighHighDemo–Legacy of Dead2 Jan 2020RTP 96.58%VolatilityVolHighHighDemo–Moon Princess 1007 Apr 2022RTP 96.2%VolatilityVolHighHighDemo–Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead14 Jan 2016RTP 96.21%VolatilityVolHighHigh

Demo–Gemix1 Dec 2014RTP 96.83%VolatilityVolMediumMediumDemo–Alice Cooper and the Tome of Madness7 Oct 2021RTP 96.2%VolatilityVolHighHighDemo–Rich Wilde and the Tome of Insanity30 May 2024RTP 96.2%VolatilityVolMediumMediumDemo–Reactoonz23 Oct 2017RTP 96.51%VolatilityVolHighHighDemo–Legacy of Dead2 Jan 2020RTP 96.58%VolatilityVolHighHighDemo–Moon Princess 1007 Apr 2022RTP 96.2%VolatilityVolHighHighDemo–Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead14 Jan 2016RTP 96.21%VolatilityVolHighHigh

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