Spaghetti western shooter Wanted 3D: Dead or Alive drops a gun-slinging demo
What’s worse than being an undead cowboy, wreaking vengeance on your former allies? Being a living one, because getting shot can really ruin your day. That’s the premise behind Wanted 3D: Dead or Alive, which blends Blood’s gory gun-slinging with the western shenanigans of Outlaws.
What’s especially intriguing about Wanted 3D: Dead or Alive is that, like the superb Selaco, this PC game is powered by the GZDoom engine. GZDoom started life as a way of enhancing id Software’s famous shooter, Doom, but it’s evolved into an engine that’s been used for a host of games, commercial and otherwise.
Wanted 3D isn’t arriving until 2026, but developer Pavo Entertainment has just dropped a demo. After dabbling in it, we can say this retro-styled wild west shooter is shaping up to be a blast. Literally, in fact – we were feeling so smug as we gunned down outlaw after outlaw, only to meet a gruesome end when we ran into our first dynamite-flinging foe.
She wasn’t the only one who hit us for six, either. Another of the game’s digitised foes comes in swinging, wielding fists instead of a firearm. We were ready to dispatch him with Wanted 3D’s seriously cool quickfire revolver attack. Unfortunately, we realised we were out of ammo. We got one shotgun blast off but before we could reload he’d punched our head over the horizon. And don’t get us started on the ankle-stinging scorpions.
Admittedly, you’re not exactly a good guy yourself. Dubbed “The Nameless Rider”, you’re only out for revenge because your fellow villains let you take the fall. But as we rampaged through Wanted 3D’s mines, accompanied by a fantastic spaghetti western-style soundtrack, we weren’t really dwelling on the morality of the whole affair.
We’re eager to see where the full release of Wanted 3D: Dead or Alive takes us, hopefully into a mid-town shootout. For now, you can download the demo and wishlist it on Steam here.
