Rich Wilde & the Tome of Dead – Q&A with Erik Hellstrom Game Retention Lead at Play'n GO

Rich Wilde made his way through the jungle and onto our screens over a decade ago with the Aztec Idols. Today, we see him return in the Tome of Dead with one thing on his mind – big wins! 

This fantastic addition to the Rich Wilde series of slots features all-seeing eyes, a ritual meter and free spins, which should keep us all entertained as we play for that 5,000x max pay-out. 

Slot Gods caught up with Erik Hellstrom, Game Retention Lead at Play’n GO, to talk us through how Tome of Dead came together, the challenges the team faced and what’s next for this world-famous developer.

Name:

Rich Wilde and the Tome of Dead

Developer:

Play'n GO

RTP:

96.21%

Max payout:

5,000x stake

Volatility:

Medium

Theme:

Adventure, Egyptian

Release date:

24th Apr 2025

Play Rich Wilde and the Tome of Dead here:

We’re sure Rich Wilde & the Tome of Dead is destined for success! What made you decide to add to the series rather than create new characters?

It’s quite simple really, it’s not a case of looking at all the characters and picking one over the other, it’s a matter of looking at what the market needs and wants at any given time and building a story from there, regardless of whether it’s Rich, Cat or Gerard Wilde.

I’d expect to see new Play’n GO games featuring Cat and the rest of the Wilde family in the not-too-distant future. Who knows, we might even see some new family members join the fray. 

How long does it take to put a game like Rich Wilde & the Tome of Dead together from initial idea to release?

That’s a tough question to answer, because it can range quite a lot depending on the complexity of the game we’re making, there are a lot of things that you have to take into account such as art-style, features and mechanics. I’d say the shortest time to produce a game might be two or three months, whereas something huge might take up to a year to produce.

Many recent Play’n GO titles have favoured progressive achievements to release a small number of free spins rather than, for example, landing 3 scatters to play 10 free games. What’s the reason?

These are what are known as 'perceived persistent state features'. They have been a mainstay in land-based games for quite a long time and offer a different way of delivering bonuses. What we’ve been doing is adding them as an additional feature, often offering instant prizes.

For me they are fantastic at adding another layer of suspense into the game and we’ve had some great feedback. As long as we’re entertaining players we’ll continue to utilise them in future releases.

Were there any technical challenges creating a progressive modifier/bonus format?

I wouldn’t say there were any challenges, but it does certainly take more time when we’re implementing something for the very first time. New mechanics and features are time consuming as we don’t have those reference points from previous games, nor do we have any data we can lean upon. 

Some games like Rich Wilde and the Aztec Idols have seen the max win over 20,000x. Why is this version sticking to a relatively small 5,000x max pay-out?

Great question! That’s something we are always actively looking at and the short answer is quite simply, variety. There isn’t a golden number or one-size-fits-all approach. Some games work well with 5,000x, some work well with 20,000x, and then you have different markets that lean towards different max wins entirely. 

It’s also all about trends in the market, if you cast your mind back to a couple of years ago, studios were fighting to put out games with huge maximum wins reaching into the hundreds of thousands, but now we don’t see that as much. 

What feedback did you get while testing this? Did it influence the final version that’s heading out to slot sites later this month?

We have a few different ways of getting feedback for our new releases. One of those methods is a really fun internal testing round where anyone in the company can play the game. We have a leader board for people to record their highest wins and a forum for colleagues to leave their feedback. Whether that be the odd improvement here or there, or if they’ve spotted an early bug that needs to be fixed.

Elsewhere we have all of the different people in our commercial and game production team who have a great knowledge of slots. They look at each and every release and provide feedback. 

Finally, our partners play a huge role in the development of our content. We do a lot of one-on-one game demos with operators to get their feedback on games well before their launch. 

How do you decide on volatility for each slot? What’s the thought process?

This answer is very similar to the one I gave on maximum wins. Ultimately, it’s all about variety. What’s more, certain features align with a certain volatility level, and they have to complement each other in order to work.

When we first begin to design a brand-new game, we sit down and work out who it’s aimed at, then we reverse engineer it from there on. So, we’ll be asking ourselves questions such as how volatile does it need to be, and what does the maximum win look like?

We have 9 Rich Wilde slot reviews on our site with Tome of Madness and Wandering City rated highest. Would you agree with that assessment, or do you have another personal favourite?

I probably wouldn’t have scored them as my highest, but of course, online slots are very subjective! I’ve got a few favourites within the Rich Wilde franchise, but it’s really hard to look past the original Book of Dead if I’m being completely honest.

I’m a big fan of the more modern Rich Wilde games and the Wildest Gambit is one that really stands out for me, especially with the innovation around level progression and being able to unlock all three characters’ special features.

What’s next for Play’n GO? Do you have any exciting news to announce!?

We’ve got lots of exciting games on the roadmap as we head into the Summer – too many to mention all at once! But some highlights include Crabby’s Gold, our second IP title in the Spinnin’ Records series called Raving Reels, City of Sound, and Fire Joker 100. Watch out for these as we think they’re going to be huge hits for Play’n GO.

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