What we like / What could be better
What we like
- RTP of 96.38% is on the higher side for a high-volatility Hacksaw Gaming title.
- The 12,500x ceiling gives real upside across the full A$0.20 to A$100.00 stake range.
- DuelReels plus climbing wild multipliers give the bonus round its own identity, not just a reskinned free spins list.
- Demo mode runs the same RTP and volatility as real money, useful before staking anything.
What could be better
- High volatility means long dry stretches are normal, not a sign anything's broken.
- The bonus buy price isn't fixed. It only appears at the point of purchase, which makes it easy to under-budget for.
- We haven't logged which specific offshore lobbies carry this exact title at time of writing (0 availability checks recorded for this page).
What Wanted Dead or a Wild actually is
Hacksaw Gaming built this slot around its DuelReels engine, reworked here for a Wild West setting: bounty hunters, saloon doors, a wanted poster as the bonus trigger. The base game runs on a 5x5 grid with 15 fixed paylines, staking from A$0.20 to A$100.00 per spin.
It released on 29 September 2021 and has stayed in most lobbies that carry Hacksaw's catalogue since. Not every pokie with a Western skin plays the same. This one is built for streaky sessions rather than steady grinding, and the RTP and volatility figures explain why.
RTP 96.38% and high volatility: what the combination means
96.38% is the return Hacksaw quotes over millions of simulated spins, not a promise for tonight's session. Paired with a high volatility rating, it tells you where that return comes from: infrequent, larger hits rather than a steady trickle of small wins.
In practice this means long stretches where the reels give back less than your stake, interrupted by wins that pull the average back toward 96.38%. A player chasing steady small wins in a high-volatility pokie like this one will read the maths as unfair. It isn't. It's distributed differently, and that distribution is the entire point of a high-volatility rating.
The 12,500x ceiling: what it pays at different stakes
The theoretical ceiling on Wanted Dead or a Wild is 12,500x your total stake. What that pays depends on what you're staking, not on the pokie itself.
What 12,500x pays at each stake
| Stake per spin | Ceiling win (12,500x) |
|---|---|
| A$0.20 | A$2,500 |
| A$1.00 | A$12,500 |
| A$5.00 | A$62,500 |
| A$20.00 | A$250,000 |
| A$100.00 | A$1,250,000 |
That bottom line, A$1,250,000 at the A$100.00 maximum bet, is the number most max win searches are after. It's a ceiling, not an expectation. High-volatility pokies with five-figure multipliers hit that top end rarely, and Hacksaw hasn't published a specific hit frequency for the maximum win. Treat the table as a reference for what's mathematically possible at your stake, not as a forecast for your session.
Bonus buy: live in offshore lobbies
Some regulated markets disable buy-a-bonus buttons outright. In the offshore lobbies where Australian players actually reach Wanted Dead or a Wild, the button stays live. Its price scales with your total stake and is displayed on screen before you confirm, so the figure to check is whatever the lobby shows you at that moment, not a fixed number we can quote here.
The arithmetic that matters: multiply the displayed price by your stake, then decide whether that single spend buys a fair shot at the free spins round compared with reaching it by playing it out. Buying the feature doesn't change the odds behind it. It only changes how you pay for entry.
DuelReels and wild multipliers: how the bonus round builds
DuelReels splits the grid into two halves that can swap positions between spins, a mechanic Hacksaw also uses in Chaos Crew and Le Bandit. Landing wilds during the base game or free spins attaches a multiplier that climbs as more wilds land in the same round, and that climbing multiplier is what carries a session toward the 12,500x ceiling, not the base symbols on their own.
Free spins are the vehicle for the big multipliers. Outside of them, the DuelReels swap adds variance to the base game without doing much for win size by itself.
Where it sits next to other Hacksaw Gaming Wild West pokies
Le Bandit runs a similar Western setting with its own wild multiplier build and a lower official ceiling. Chaos Crew swaps the setting for an urban gang theme but keeps the DuelReels mechanic that makes this grid behave the way it does.
If DuelReels is what you're after rather than the theme, comparing ceilings and volatility ratings between the three tells you more than the cowboy artwork does.
Demo mode and free play before real money
You can play Wanted Dead or a Wild for free before staking anything real. Most lobbies that carry the title run a free play demo on the same RTP and volatility settings as the real-money version.
A demo session won't tell you whether you'll reach the ceiling. High-volatility maths needs far more spins than a short demo run to show its shape. What it will tell you is whether the DuelReels pacing suits you: watch how long the gaps between wins run, not how big any single win is. That gap is what the volatility rating actually predicts.
Staking the ceiling: spins in reserve, not wishful stakes
High-volatility pokies punish stake sizing based on the win you want rather than the bankroll you have. A 12,500x ceiling doesn't change what a single spin does. Every spin is independent of the last, and nothing you do at the reels shifts that.
What you can control is how many spins your stake survives before variance has a chance to turn. As a working reference:
- Set the total session bankroll first, not the stake per spin.
- Divide it across at least 200 to 300 spins at this volatility level. Fewer than that and a dry stretch can end the session before a bonus round ever appears.
- Set the per-spin stake from that division, not from wanting to see A$1,250,000 on the screen.
- Run the demo first if you haven't played a DuelReels title before, so the pacing isn't a surprise once real money is on the line.
None of this changes the RTP or improves the odds of hitting 12,500x. It changes how long you get to find out.
Where you can actually spin it
Australia's Interactive Gambling Act 2001 keeps locally licensed operators from offering this pokie to Australian residents, so access runs through offshore lobbies rather than a domestic license. We track which lobbies carry Hacksaw Gaming's catalogue, but we haven't run a title-by-title availability check against Wanted Dead or a Wild specifically at time of writing. The panel below reflects catalogue-level tracking, not a confirmed sighting of this exact game.
18+, and how this review is funded
This page is written for readers 18 and over. If gambling stops feeling like something you control, Gambling Help Online (1800 858 858, gamblinghelponline.org.au) offers free, confidential support around the clock.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. We may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Our approach to reading paytables and volatility ratings like this one is set out on our methodology page (/en-au/methodology/).