Wanted Dead or a Wild is Hacksaw Gaming’s 2021 Wild West slot that introduced its DuelReels mechanic. On a 5×5 grid with 15 lines, VS symbols that complete a win expand into wild reels, and a duel between two outlaws sets a multiplier of 2x to 100x for each. Three bonus games run from medium to very high volatility, with a 12,500x top win and a 96.38% return. The free demo below is a similar pokie.
Wanted Dead or a Wild runs on five reels and five rows with 15 fixed lines that pay left to right from the first reel. Bets run from 20 cents to $100 a spin. Hacksaw publishes four return settings, 96.38%, 94.55%, 92.33% and 88.42%, and the casino picks one; the paytable screen shows it. Hacksaw rates the volatility 4 out of 5, and reviews call it high or very high. Game databases put the hit frequency at 19.36%, a win about once every 5.16 spins. The maximum win is 12,500 times the bet, $1,250,000 at the $100 maximum; it can be reached in any of the three bonuses, and the round ends when it is hit.
Wanted Dead or a Wild Pokies Characteristics
Wins need three or more matching symbols on a line from the leftmost reel. The sheriff’s badge is the wild and stands in for everything except the VS symbol and the scatters. The VS symbol, covered below, is the base game’s feature. Three scatters, Train Robbery, Duel and DEAD, each open their own bonus when three or more of the same kind land anywhere.
Outside the UK each bonus can also be bought. There is no jackpot, Hacksaw describes no gamble feature, and autoplay and turbo are available.
Figures are multiples of the total bet for three and five of a kind; four-of-a-kind pays differ between published tables and are left out.
No pay is published for the scatters, which start the bonuses. The top line pay is 20x the bet, and every three of a kind except the revolver returns the stake or less. A VS reel is what lifts these numbers: a 20x line through a 100x DuelReel pays 2,000x.
VS symbols land in the base game and in Duel at Dawn. One only expands when the reel it would cover is part of a win. It then fills the reel and turns it wild, two animated outlaws duel on it, each holding a multiplier from 2x to 100x, and the survivor’s multiplier applies to that reel. When several DuelReels are part of a win, their multipliers are added, not multiplied, and the total applies to the line wins: reels at 10x and 25x give 35x. VS symbols on all five reels turn the whole grid wild.
Three or more Train Robbery scatters award 10 free spins. Every wild that lands sticks until the round ends and can be part of any number of wins, and Hacksaw describes the aim as filling the screen with them. Reviews rate it medium volatility, the lowest of the three bonuses, and at 80x it is the cheapest to buy.
Three or more Duel scatters award 10 free spins in which several VS symbols are much more likely to land together, up to five DuelReels on one spin. Because the multipliers add up, two or three winning VS reels can lift a modest line into hundreds of times the bet, and five turn every position wild. Reviews rate it very high volatility, the most extreme of the three.
Three or more DEAD scatters on one spin start Dead Man’s Hand, a high-volatility round in two parts. The collect phase is a respin game in which only wilds, plus-sign multiplier symbols and blank skulls land. It starts with three spins, each wild or multiplier collected resets the count to three, and each plus symbol adds 1x to the multiplier, up to caps of 20 wilds and 31x. Three spins in a row with nothing collected end it. The Showdown follows: three spins on the normal grid, with the collected wilds dropped onto random positions on every spin and the multiplier applied to every win.
The UK build has no bonus buy. Elsewhere each bonus can be bought. Prices are multiples of the bet, shown with the published return for a bought round:
Those returns come from one game database, with a second review giving the same range. At the 96.38% top setting, buying costs about the same in the long run as spinning for the bonus; the difference is that the whole outlay rides on one round.
At 96.38% the game keeps about 3.6 cents of every dollar bet over the long run; at 88.42% it keeps nearly 12, more than three times as much for the same game. A 19.36% hit rate means about four spins in five pay nothing, and most small wins return the stake or less. The volatility sits in the VS reels and the bonuses, so a session can run a long way on small wins before either delivers.
At the 20-cent minimum, $20 buys 100 spins, about 19 of them winners. The expected cost of those 100 spins is about 72 cents at 96.38% and $2.32 at 88.42%, though one session at this volatility will land far from either figure. At the same stake the three buys cost $16, $40 and $80.
None of the main slot databases lists a Wanted Dead or a Wild 2 or any other sequel. Hacksaw has reused DuelReels instead. Duel at Dawn is a standalone Western slot that shares its name with one of this game’s bonuses, with VS multipliers from 2x to 200x and an Outlaw feature that adds up to six wilds. Phoenix DuelReels (January 2025) moves the duel to a phoenix and water dragon theme on a 5×4 grid with 14 lines, 96.28% and a 10,000x cap, and Eternal Duel pits Hades against Zeus.
NetEnt’s Dead or Alive (2009) and Dead or Alive 2 (2019) are unrelated 5×3, nine-line games, though Dead or Alive 2’s Train Heist mode echoes the train robbery here. Wanted Dead or a Wild is not a Pragmatic Play game either: only one slot has this name.
The setting is a dark, gritty Wild West, a long way from the friendlier Western slots: the grid sits outdoors under a low sun, with twisted trees and a barbed-wire fence behind it. The signature moment is two gunslingers facing off on a VS reel before the survivor’s multiplier lands, and two matching scatters set the other reels blazing to tease a bonus. The Wanted Dead or a Wild slot is an HTML5 game of about 25.6 MB that runs in Android and iOS browsers.
Wanted Dead or a Wild has only ever been an online game, so it is not on Australian club, pub or casino floors. Hacksaw is an online studio with no Australian regulator among the seals on its site, and Australian law does not license online casino games, so real-money play means an offshore casino. Four of the offshore casinos we review for Australians have a live game page for it, but we checked from outside Australia and lobbies can differ by country, so the lobby search is the way to check. Hacksaw publishes an official Wanted Dead or a Wild demo on its own game page for free play.
Reviewers have called Wanted Dead or a Wild Hacksaw’s masterpiece, and the label fits. The base game is thin, but the VS reels give any spin a route to a big multiplier, and the three bonuses cover three different levels of risk. It suits players who accept long quiet stretches for a real chance at a four-figure multiple of the bet, not anyone after steady small wins. The one thing to check is the RTP in the paytable screen, which can be one of four settings, from 96.38% down to 88.42%.
96.38% at the top setting. Casinos can also run 94.55%, 92.33% or 88.42%, and the paytable shows which.
Land three or more of the same scatter anywhere: Train Robbery, Duel or DEAD. Outside the UK they can also be bought for 80x, 200x and 400x the bet.
12,500 times the bet, and the round ends when it is hit. The biggest win on record is US$13.95 million, 9,300x on a $1,500 spin, landed live on Twitch in March 2022.
No, they are added: two DuelReels at 50x each give 100x, not 2,500x.
Only online, at offshore casinos; there is no venue version. Several that accept Australians list it, but lobbies can differ by country, so search after logging in.
No sequel is listed by the main slot databases. Hacksaw has reused DuelReels in Duel at Dawn, Phoenix DuelReels and Eternal Duel.
