X Marks the Slot: 5 Treasure Hunt Titles Worth Chasing

by Kevin Lentz 06.10.2026

Treasure hunting has been a part of slot games for almost as long as there have been slot games, so picking the five best is a fool’s errand. Instead, I’ve grabbed my own personal treasure map, sprinkled with five very different titles that are all worth chasing, albeit for very different reasons.

The hunt for five slots worth chasing © MasterTux, Pixabay

The Classic: Rich Wilde and the Book of Dead

If we’re going treasure hunting, it may as well be with the man who has refused to come home for nearly a decade. Rich Wilde first cracked open the Book of Dead way back in 2016, and apparently there was a lot more treasure in there than any of us could have realized.

While we still aren’t sure how Rich made out, Play’n GO certainly struck gold. The mechanics are a bit outdated, and the graphics don’t hold a torch to today’s immersive titles, but the fact that it wasn’t overly complicated was part of its success then, and that still holds today.

Land three Book scatters, and you get ten free spins and an expanding symbol chosen at random. It’s simple, volatile, but hugely popular because it’s capable of producing some big wins in a very short space of time. Of course, even then Rich wasn’t exactly breaking new ground. Ancient Egypt, mysterious magical books, and oddly well-funded explorers are familiar territory in books, film and yes, even slots.

But Book of Dead put these pieces together in a way that led to an almost instant classic and a decade-old franchise that is still raiding tombs, temples, and just about anywhere else Play’n GO thinks one might leave behind something of value. If you’re looking for the quintessential treasure-hunting experience, Book of Dead is THE place to start.

The Immersive: Gonzo’s Treasure Map Live

Gonzo has been out searching for El Dorado since 2010, which honestly suggests either extraordinary perseverance or perhaps he should ask Dora for help reading his map. Either way, Evolution has done what it could to help him find his way in their hit live casino game Gonzo’s Treasure Map Live.

This time our long-suffering but intrepid explorer has escaped the confines of a conventional slot and landed alongside a real-life host/MC in a rather elaborate Incan-style game show. You place your bets on a giant 70-square treasure map before all those giant blocks begin tumbling down. They reveal multipliers, keys and the like that can add to your winnings or send you into the bonus game.

And that’s when the treasure hunt really gets going. Get that ruby bouncing down that wall filled with all those multipliers and you might get 500x, while Double Stones could add even more.

Sure, the results are still based on a random number generator on a server somewhere just like the good old Gonzo slots of old, but with a real, live host, an almost over-animated Gonzo, and a giant treasure map lighting up your screen, it’s starting to feel like an actual adventurer’s party, or perhaps an honest to goodness expedition. Or at least as close as you might care to get without your yellow fever shots, dysentery medicine, and folded $20s for the passport control guards.

The Newcomer: Arizona James and the Lost Relics

Speaking of tired old adventure tropes, where do some of these characters get the funds for unlimited ammunition? And how can there be so many lost temples, golden idols and mysteriously abandoned fortunes lying around for a half dozen sequels?

Well, one thing we can count on in 2026 is for Hacksaw Gaming not to overthink these little plot sticking points. Instead, they come in guns blazing with either a campy send-up or an honest homage to the genre. We still aren’t sure which.

They released Arizona James and the Lost Relics in August of this year, fedora and all, and making absolutely no attempts whatsoever at hiding their inspiration. And that’s fine with us. After all, treasure hunting slots are seldom fertile ground for completely original ideas in the first place.

Hacksaw instead concentrates on making sure the hunt is entertaining as well as bullet-laden. It’s also marked by their usual high volatility approach, Wild Multipliers, and enough shenanigans to make Rich Wilde’s expedition seem positively quaint.

Is Arizona James reinventing the treasure hunt? We think not, but after thousands of trips through tombs, temples and lost cities, simply making us want to put that fedora on one last time is something of a big deal.

The Irreverent: Fire in the Hole 3

In case you were wondering, not every treasure hunter gets a fedora, or even an ancient map, let alone a suspiciously large ammunition per diem. Some still go about it the old-fashioned way with a pickaxe, a mine cart and enough high explosives to make those folks down at OSHA shudder in their safety boots.

Welcome to Fire in the Hole 3, Nolimit City’s latest expedition for gold with a band of unhinged dwarves. Make no mistake, these guys are still treasure hunting. There’s serious wealth down there somewhere; we just may have to blast it to the surface to find it. Look for exploding symbols that crack open new rows and columns, lots of Wilds, multipliers and enough mechanics that we could fill our own version of the Dwemer books.

And that’s precisely why it lands the irreverent spot on our map. Nolimit City took one of the oldest treasure-hunting stories imaginable, obsessed dwarves who dig too greedily and too deep, and then turned the whole thing into a raucous ride through a stand-in for Moria, only, you know, with dynamite.

There are almost certainly far safer ways to look for treasure, but where would the fun be in that?

The Desert Island: Dead or Alive 2

Ok, we are stretching our own map a bit here on this last one, but hear us out. A bounty is basically a treasure with a pulse, and if we are going to be marooned on an island with only one game to play, we’re choosing NetEnt’s Dead or Alive 2 to help us hold out till help arrives.

Instead of mausoleums, maps, or labyrinth mines, we are hunting men across the Old West. And in this case, they have ammunition budgets of their own. There are enough guns, outlaws and ill-gotten gains to keep us contentedly playing for years while those search parties narrow down our coordinates.

Three Free Spin modes give you very different ways to hit really big wins, yet the brutal volatility means nothing is really ever guaranteed until it’s finished, sort of like the Old West. We suspect that’s one of the reasons it would make a lot of people’s desert island list as well, not just ours.

Is it the truest treasure hunt game on the map? Heck no. But if the boat is going down and we’ve only got room for one title on that island, this is the one we are keeping. And if here be pirates, well, they shouldn’t be the only ones looking for stolen booty.