Video games, being a fairly young medium, tend to benefit from the use of tropes and cliche styles even more so than film and television. This can help a title quite a bit by allowing it to display its influences front and center, like a badge of honor to lure us in before hooking us further with mechanics. If those two things are executed well enough, a complicated and gripping story doesn’t need to be a focus. Especially if the game is so challenging some players may never see much of that story in the first place. Roguelike twin-stick shooter West of Dead from indie developers Upstream Arcade thoroughly utilizes this philosophy.
To say that West of Dead wears its influences on its sleeve would be an understatement, but also a compliment. It utilizes them in unique ways that set this title apart from its influences, giving a constant sense of familiar unfamiliarity that works well for the unsettling tone of the world. The art style is quite obviously influenced by the work of Hellboy’s Mike Mignola, right down to the color palette and pose of the main character on the box art being a direct reference to the titular devilish cat-lover of that comic. I will also go out on a limb and say that the casting of the great Ron Perlman as West of Dead’s protagonist William Mason was not a coincidence either. Mason himself looks as if Eastwood’s Man with No Name became a Ghost Rider. Everything is blended nicely to create a fresh look at well-tread comic book, western, and horror tropes. The story follows Mason in the land of Purgatory, Wyoming in 1888, after he has died under unknown circumstances, as he hunts down a mysterious Preacher for answers. It’s pretty cliche but is about all you need to get things moving here. And the Purgatory bit seems more on the nose than just being a weird place in Wyoming, as you die and return Groundhog’s Day-style back at the beginning, ad infinitum.
The gameplay does a lot of things that will be familiar to players of roguelike titles, procedurally generated maps, tough enemies, dungeon crawling, permanent death, and twin-stick aiming. The gunplay is quite satisfying, with each gun type handling differently and having a nice weight to the shots despite the isometric camera angle and distance from the action. Unlike bullet-hell type roguelikes, the shots are slow and deliberate, making the player take their time to line up critical rifle shots and using cover around the environment to plan a course of action. The cover will degrade from enemy fire, so you have to time dodge rolls to stay out of harm’s way. Rooms can be dark, but there will be lanterns you can light to not only brighten the playing field but to also stun enemies within sight of the lantern for a few moments to take them out or catch your breath. There are a variety of enemies, including riflemen, dudes who throw explosives, big baddies with you-sized cleavers, feral giants in skull masks who leap at you, and melee combatants in the form of zombies and bone-armored dogs. There is also a Windigo, all of that I know for sure, but if there were other enemy types that weren’t just reskins of those or other bosses, I didn’t get to see them.
Herein lie the problems that I had with West of Dead, a major of which being the difficulty. Now, I understand that there is an element of this that is on me. My personal style leans closer to games that are more relaxing or that challenge me mentally. We don’t talk about it enough because it sucks, but as we get older our reaction times don’t stay as quick as they always were. I find that as I get older, twitch aiming and dodging while doing two other things have become more difficult. It’s disappointing, but it is what it is. In six hours I may have gotten better, but I never quite got “gud.” The controls are decently tight and feel good, but I had a certain plateau I reached after a while, and no matter how comfortable I was with them, I still made dumb mistakes and mistimed because of my aging, rotting brain. There are shrines that you can use to upgrade your health, damage output, and lower item cooldowns that can help quite a bit. And the combat is so satisfying I wanted to just keep trying, no matter how rough things would go, because at the end of the day, when things went right it was so much fun.
Another issue, and again it’s a personal one, is the lack of feeling of advancement. I understand that permanent death is a big piece of roguelikes, and actually I enjoy this aspect a lot. It helps excuse resetting the world and I’m a sucker for a time-loop scenario. However, the procedurally generated maps really did keep me from feeling like I was moving forward. I know it’s easier to program -and the title is made by a team of what seems like four people- but I never felt like I was getting anywhere. While I was getting better at the gameplay (to what degree I could) I could never plan a course of action or strategize how to knock out areas. Part of surviving the torment of a Groundhog’s Day scenario is learning more about your surroundings each go-around. Everything was new every time and a tragically placed camera could be the end of me as I consistently stumbled into the unknown.
The lack of camera controls plus random map layout actually equaled frustration, as ladders to second-floor areas would at times be placed in the foreground, so I couldn’t see the enemies lying in wait at the top until the camera whipped around dramatically to show my ambush. The right stick controls the aiming, and that works, but not being able to manage the camera can get tough, especially in tight corridors and at that angle. The camera zooms out to show a whole room only once you’re well into it, making it impossible to spot enemies in the corners at times. The walls will go transparent when you get close to allow you to see where Mason is, but at times you could be standing in a doorway, and won’t realize it’s not a wall until you take a bullet to the skull. These issues causing cheap deaths can put a damper on things.
As can a couple of the bugs I ran into. In one area, my shot wouldn’t hit an enemy, though my targeting showed I was both locked onto him and my arrow was manually pointing right at him. If it was an issue with the gun stats, like drop off or spread, it was not indicated by the game. While I could see my shotgun blasts only go a few feet out, these shots hit the other side of the room, just not on target. In another situation, I was fighting the first boss and the game gave me a death-state from his attack, despite my health meter still having twenty-eight hit points, even after the death animation. It was weird, and only happened once out of the dozens of deaths I experienced, but it did happen.
West of Dead is every bit as tough as it paints itself to be. The combat is ruthless, and while it is satisfying, it is equally if not more punishing. There are checkpoints you can use to return to the area if you quit the game, but if you die, even on the boss in the final room of two dungeon floors, you’re going back to the beginning. And with random map setups, for some folks it can make progress feel like a slog, if it even happens at all. However, if you are a glutton for punishment and a fan of the tone of things like Hellboy, then this might be a title for you. It will certainly give plenty of playtime for the price, as it is currently available for Game Pass subscribers on both Xbox and PC, and is only $19.99 for those platforms, as well as PS4 and Nintendo Switch.