Dead or Alive is NetEnt’s 2009 Wild West slot and its most famous high-volatility game: nine lines, a thin paytable and one free spins round where every wild sticks in place and every win is doubled, up to a 3,000x ceiling. The Dead or Alive slot returns 96.82%, and two sequels followed. The free demo below is a similar Wild West pokie you can play free, with no download.
Dead or Alive runs on five reels and three rows with nine fixed lines that pay left to right. Coins go from 1 cent to 50 cents with one to four coins per line, so a spin costs between 9 cents and $18, though several casinos cap it at $9. The original return to player is 96.82%, but since May 2021 NetEnt has supplied operator-selectable settings of 95.03%, 94.03%, 93.06%, 92.06% and 90.07%, and most lobbies do not show which one is running. Volatility is high, or very high by some trackers. Something pays on about 31% of spins at the top setting, with published hit rates from 29.8% to 31%. The most it can pay on one spin is 3,000x the total bet, from a full screen of wilds in the free spins, or $54,000 at the maximum stake.
Dead or Alive Pokies Characteristics
Wins need three matching symbols on a line from the leftmost reel; only the highest win per line is paid. The wild is a Wanted poster, one outlaw per reel: Apache Kid, Della Rose, Jesse James, Belle Star and Billy the Kid from reel 1 to reel 5. It substitutes for every regular symbol, pays as the top symbol on its own line, is neither stacked nor expanding, and only turns sticky inside the free spins. The crossed pistols are the scatter: they land anywhere, pay on two or more and start the feature on three.
That is the whole game: no gamble, no bonus buy, no jackpot and no respin, and autoplay from 10 to 1,000 spins. If you want to pay for the feature you need Dead or Alive 2, covered below.
Figures are coins per line for three, four and five of a kind at one coin per line; divide by nine for the multiple of the total bet.
The scatter pays on the total bet: 2x for two, 4x for three, 25x for four and 2,500x for all five. Five wilds on a line are worth 1,500 coins, which is 166.66x the total bet in the base game and 333.33x inside the free spins; the badge pays 111.11x for five, and five tens return less than three times the stake. One review lists the whiskey glass at 15 coins for three rather than 10.
Three or more crossed pistols anywhere award 12 free spins at the triggering bet, with the scatter payout paid first. Every win is doubled, and any Wanted poster that lands stays locked until the round ends. Once all five reels hold a sticky wild the game adds five extra spins; sources agree on the condition but not on whether it can happen twice, and a lone claim that scatters retrigger the round is unsupported.
The maths of the feature is the game’s reputation. Five sticky wilds across one payline is the wild line: 1,500 coins doubled, or 333.33x the total bet on every remaining spin. A full screen of 15 wilds pays all nine lines at that rate for 3,000x per spin, the only route to the ceiling. Most rounds end nowhere near either, and a few times the stake is a normal result.
At 96.82% the game keeps a little over 3 cents of every dollar bet over the long run. The 95.03% setting keeps 5 cents and the 90.07% build keeps 10, and because the lobby rarely says which is loaded, that is the biggest unknown about playing it offshore. High volatility means roughly seven spins in ten pay nothing. NetEnt publishes no trigger rate for the original; for Dead or Alive 2, on the same grid, it is about one spin in 195.
At 9 cents a spin, $18 buys 200 spins, roughly one feature on average and often none. At 90 cents the same $18 is 20 spins. The feature pays at the triggering stake: at the $18 maximum a wild line is worth about $6,000 per spin and a full screen $54,000; at 9 cents the same screens pay $30 and $270.
Dead or Alive 2 (23 April 2019) keeps the reels, lines and paytable and moves the whole game into the feature: on three scatters you pick one of three modes, each starting at 12 spins. Train Heist is the gentlest, every wild adding one to a global multiplier, capped at 16x, and one extra spin. Old Saloon is the original feature. High Noon Saloon turns two or three sticky wilds on the same reel into 2x or 3x multiplier wilds that multiply each other along a line, and the only mode that reaches the 111,111x cap, at published odds of about one in 142 million spins. The return is 96.8%, and a Buy Free Spins option at 66.66x was added in May 2020 outside the UK.
Dead or Alive 3: Wanted followed on 26 March 2026 on a five-by-five grid with 21 lines. Wanted Wilds carry a multiplier from 2x to 100x, and Bounty Hunter wilds cover a full reel and collect the multipliers of every Wanted Wild in view. Three scatters award 10 free spins, four add 50x and five add 2,500x; a Super Bonus symbol upgrades the round to Super Free Spins with a Bounty Hunter on every spin. A five-tier feature buy runs from 2x to 1,000x. The return is 96.03%, with 94.02% and 92.08% alternatives, and the ceiling is 33,333x, or 66,666x with the 5x buy option. The comic-book town gives way to a darker, cinematic desert.
The setting is a comic-style frontier main street: gunmetal-grey card symbols, shot glasses, spurred boots, Stetsons, holstered revolvers and a sheriff’s star. Sound is sparse: twangy guitar, clanging bells and a gunshot when a sticky wild lands. The 2009 Flash original was ported to NetEnt Touch in 2016 and runs in HTML5 on iOS and Android. It looks its age next to Dead or Alive 2’s smoother animation, but the stark presentation suits a game that is mostly about waiting.
Dead or Alive has only ever been an online game; it has never been on an Australian club, pub or casino floor. The bigger problem is NetEnt’s distribution policy. Its standard supplier terms, reproduced in several casino help centres, list the territories where NetEnt games may not be offered, and Australia is on that list alongside the UK and the USA. In practice the offshore casinos that take Australians either hide the NetEnt catalogue from Australian-registered accounts or show the game and block it at launch. A third-party scan lists a few Australian-facing brands as carrying it, but none is confirmed, so availability varies and a lobby search is the only reliable check. NetEnt publishes no public demo that we could verify, and third-party demos block some countries.
Dead or Alive is a one-feature pokie with a very long memory. The base game is thin and the feature comes rarely and usually pays little; what it offers is a 333.33x wild line and a 3,000x screen that are mathematically real rather than marketing. It suits players who want high variance, a published 96.82% return and no multiplier gimmicks, and who can sit through 200 dry spins. It does not suit anyone who wants regular small wins or a bonus buy. The one thing to check, before the RTP setting even, is whether the game loads at all from an Australian account.
96.82% in the original setting. Since 2021 operators can also choose 95.03%, 94.03%, 93.06%, 92.06% or 90.07%.
Three or more crossed-pistol scatters anywhere: 12 free spins with every win doubled and every wild locked in place, plus 4x, 25x or 2,500x the total bet for the scatters.
3,000x the total bet on a single free spin from a full screen of sticky wilds, or $54,000 at the $18 maximum. The 12,000x some sites quote is not supported by the paytable.
Five sticky wilds across one payline in the free spins, paying 1,500 coins doubled, or 333.33x the total bet, on every remaining spin.
NetEnt lists Australia among the territories where its games may not be offered, so most offshore casinos hide it from Australian accounts or block it at launch.
Same reels and paytable but three free spins modes, a 111,111x cap and a 66.66x bonus buy outside the UK. Dead or Alive 3: Wanted (2026) moves to 5×5 with 21 lines, multiplier wilds and a 33,333x cap.
