Here's the thing: it's dead simple to remove the supernatural elements from Weird West, since, in the 8-page Basic Rulebook they're actually quite few. "Not another occult Western game," you may be saying. So, when Stuart Robertson released a Western RPG of his own, I took notice.Ĭalled Weird West, Robertson describes it as a "streamlined and fast playing adventure roleplaying game for weird western worlds of cowboys, kung-fu, magic and otherworldly malevolence." Now, I'm sure some of you are already disappointed to read this description. Despite this, I've long been on the lookout for a good Western RPG and have even been toying around with one of my own over the past year ( Saloons & Shootists is its working title). That said, my direct experience with Western-themed RPGs is quite limited, with TSR's Boot Hillbeing the only one I played successfully for any length of time. Certainly I talk a great deal more about fantasy on this blog than I do about Westerns, but that's more an acknowledgment of how large fantasy looms in our hobby than it is a reflection of my personal tastes. Until then, players can delve into some of the titles mentioned above for a truly memorable experience inside the western fantasy horror that is the Weird West.After science fiction, I'm hard pressed to decide whether I like fantasy or Westerns more. Hopefully, the new emergence of this genre into gaming is one that will find some measure of success, allowing more developers to delve into this complementary mashup of styles with more and more frequency in the future. The brilliance of the Weird West is that it takes two genres that are somewhat niche on their own and combines the best of both worlds into something special. Players take on the role of a female bounty hunter searching for her kidnapped family, a pigman monstrosity searching for his humanity after a transformation due to occult magic, and even a werewolf trying to awaken the power of the Blood Moon in his battle against a coven of witches.Īll of these are surrounded by bounty hunting missions, gunslinging duels, and all manner of western tropes that make its experience simultaneously refreshing and familiar. In the aforementioned Weird West, players can control five different characters, all connected by an unseen entity that inhabits them all. The Weird West genre works because it tells new stories, ones that only a mashup of this magnitude can provide. Even larger studios, like Shadow Warrior developer Flying Wild Hog, are getting into the genre with its upcoming third-person shooter Evil West. Meanwhile, others like throwback shooter Blood West created a homage of sorts to Darkwatch with a story of a resurrected desperado, brought back to life by Native American mysticism. Indie games like the appropriately named top-down immersive sim Weird West, developed by former Dishonored developers Wolfeye Studios created a western world full of evil cults, shunned hybrid pigmen monstrosities, and heroic bounty hunters. However, after Darkwatch failed to impress in terms of sales, few companies would attempt another Weird West style release for over a decade until very recently, when a slew of similar games have emerged. Darkwatch combined solid steampunk western gameplay with a horror setting and made many players fall in love with its unique setup and tone. The game stars Jericho Cross, an outlaw who, after being bitten by a vampire, uses his newfound powers for good as part of the Darkwatch organization, which battles supernatural threats in the wild west. The introduction of the Weird West into games arguably came in the form of the 2005 PlayStation 2 and original Xbox first-person shooter Darkwatch: Curse of the West, a cult-classic and overlooked shooter.
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