Developer: Blue Manchu
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Verified
Rrp: £27.79 (Epic), £27.99 (Humble and Steam)
Wild Bastards is a roguelite FPS set in a space western. You play as a gang known as the Wild Bastards, or rather you play as what remains of the gang. Over the course of the game you gather together the other members of your gang. By ‘gather together’, I mean collect and resurrect their corpses. While you do this you’re being pursued by the Chaste Family, who seem to have a real distaste for your motley crew of mutants, robots and aliens.
You collect one member of your crew in every system, once they’ve been brought back you can use them in your attempts to gather the rest. Each time you stop at a planetoid you send down between two to four outlaws (depending on what that planetoid demands). On the planetoid the outlaws you picked will form up into groups of two. Each time you enter into a combat, either by attacking a roadblock or finding a patrolling guard, you get to swap between your two outlaws at will. Each of the outlaws requires you to adapt your playstyle as they will only ever use the weapon they start with. Sometimes that will mean playing as a sniper then swapping to a much more close ranged outlaw like one that only uses a laser lasso.
There is so much about this game I could go into that I could easily fill up a full review. However, to do that would spoil what each of the outlaws can do. A good example here being that early in the notes I have for this game I wrote that the outlaws can’t run and shoot. Except that’s only true for most of the outlaws, a few can and that’s part of what makes their character work. I found that to be the case with most of the early notes and I quickly worked out that these little realisations are a core part of the enjoyment of this game.
Do I recommend this game? It depends on whether you enjoy roguelites really, I find them engaging and mixing them with FPS gameplay seems to be a real winner for me. I found the mechanics of this game to be deeply satisfying and I was actually a little saddened when I rolled credits. Since then I’ve replayed it several times on harder difficulties (I started on normal) which I suppose is a recommendation in itself.
