Played in demo · Hacksaw Gaming
Wanted Dead or a Wild, played in demo, and the four prices of the same game
Wanted Dead or a Wild is a high-volatility western from Hacksaw Gaming, and its provider does something most providers do not: it prints, on the game's own page, the four return settings that it offers to operators. Read side by side, those four numbers are the clearest lesson we know about why a game's name tells you nothing about its price.
The game in one paragraph
Wanted Dead or a Wild is a Hacksaw Gaming slot on a grid of five reels and five rows, with fifteen "paylines" and a set of "hard-edged" western symbols (a bottle, a revolver cylinder, a "bull's skull", a masked bandit) alongside the usual "card ranks". It is rated four on a scale of five for "volatility" by its own provider (the scale is the provider's, not an industry standard), and its maximum win is 12,500 times the stake, which says at once that the large wins are rare events rather than the substance of the game.
We played the provider's demo on November 12, 2026, version 1.75.0 (the number printed in the corner of the screen), with a demo balance of 5,000.00 credits and a stake of 2.00, and we read the "game data" box on the game's page on Hacksaw's site. The supplier named in the footer of that page is HGMT Ltd., under a Malta Gaming Authority licence (MGA/CRP/501/2018) and a British one.
- Provider
- Hacksaw Gaming (HGMT Ltd.)
- Grid
- 5 reels, 5 rows, 15 lines
- Volatility
- 4 out of 5, by the provider's own scale
- Maximum win
- 12,500 times the stake
- Return to player
- 96.38%, 94.55%, 92.33% or 88.42%, depending on the version
- Bonus features
- Duel at Dawn, Dead Man's Hand, The Great Train Robbery
Four returns, side by side
The "game data" box gives the return as four figures for one title (96.38, 94.55, 92.33 and 88.42 per cent), and that line is worth more than any review of the graphics. It means the provider supplies four versions of the same game, identical to the eye, which keep 3.62, 5.45, 7.67 or 11.58 per cent of what is staked over the long run (100 minus each return), and that the operator chooses which one its players meet.
Take a hypothetical player who stakes 2.00 a spin for an hour, about five hundred spins (an hour at a brisk pace), or 1,000.00 in total. At the highest setting the average cost of that hour is 36.20; at the lowest it is 115.80, more than three times as much, for the same reels, the same sounds and the same name on the button!
The number to find before the first spin
Open the rules screen of the game in the "lobby" where you play, and look for the return it prints. If it shows 96.38 per cent you are playing the best of the four versions; if it shows something else, or nothing, ask the operator which version it runs, and decide with that figure in front of you.
The three bonus features
The game has three "features", each with its own character. "Duel at Dawn" starts when a VS symbol (the letters VS on a reel) lands, setting off a duel that turns the reel into a wild with a multiplier of up to a hundred times, while "Dead Man's Hand" collects wilds and multipliers for three final spins, and "The Great Train Robbery" keeps the wilds fixed in place for the whole feature (which is where the largest wins usually come from).
A "Buy bonus" button (the option of paying a fixed price to start a feature directly) sits on the screen in the demo, and it is the quickest route to the volatility the provider advertises. Whether that button appears on a registered Alberta site depends on the operator and its settings; we would treat it, where it exists, as the most expensive way to play the game rather than the most exciting one.
Our session
We played three spins at 2.00 and the balance went from 5,000.00 to 4,998.00 demo credits. Three spins of a game rated four out of five for volatility are not a sample of anything (a few thousand would be a beginning), and they are presented only as proof that the demo described here was played and its screens read.
What the session did show was the rhythm of the game. Most spins in a game of this kind end with little or nothing, and the excitement is concentrated in features that arrive rarely. A short session will usually look like a slow loss, while a long one is a matter of waiting for an event that may not come at all.
A note on the theme
The western here is hard rather than playful, with skulls, bottles and bandits rather than cartoons, which matters in Alberta for a reason beyond taste. The province's advertising rules forbid content that appeals to minors (cartoons, child-like themes, celebrities popular with the young). A game's look is part of what operators must weigh when they promote it.
The rest is a matter of preference, and ours is not the point. What we would ask of any reader is the habit this page is about: find the return in the rules screen of the lobby you actually use, because the same title can cost three times as much in one lobby as in another.
On a registered Alberta site
The other games we tested are on the games page, the general mechanics of reels, lines and volatility are on how a slot decides, and the arithmetic of the return, including why one game can carry four of them, is explained on the page on return to player.
By the Alberta Casinos Online editorial team · Last updated: November 13, 2026 · Online since 2026
