West of Dead is probably the worst roguelike I have ever tried so far, and I am not even kidding.

While the art style could be a positive, I found it very distracting and borderline annoying. The camera is placed in all the wrong places, the shooting feels slugish and unfun, the VA from Ron Perlman feels like he did this for a bottle of whiskey or something, because he sounds so tired and bored out of his mind.

You can easily do everything in this game under 7 hours, if you are not bored already, so if you want to experience style over substance, go on, try it.

One of those roguelikes that would've been better if it wasn't a roguelike. All its faults could be forgiven if you had the sense of making real progess each session but instead its a slow and pretty easy experience until it gets a bit hard then 2 hours is wasted.

Commits a lot of the sins of the genre in that it starts out as pretty barebones and you have to repeat multiple times to unlock more interesting items. It doesnt hold up for multiple runs though and each time you play the slowness and clunkiness gets more annoying.

The moments I enjoyed just reinforced to me that this would have made for a pretty great 4-5 hour linear game instead of being a 3 hour game stretched out by half arsed roguelike ideas

aesthetic is wonderful, the ideas are good, the combat has direction, but it just falls apart in execution.

the gun variety exists but is incredibly shallow. it's pointless to take any gun that isn't the precision revolver that gives you crits for perfect aim, if you take two of those you basically win every run (i did three runs after buying the game on steam and i beat every single one and completed the game in about 5 hours). abilities are pretty useless as well in all honesty, some of em are pretty good but really if youre just shooting everything dead quick enough it doesnt matter.

the game is slow. it would work if the combat felt slow in a good way, but it feels pretty artificial because of how reloading is slow, movement speed is slow, taking cover is sluggish, etc. it really doesn't work great later on when enemies also hide behind cover and you have to figure out a good way to hit them, or just wait for them to peak out after like 10 seconds. not to mention the rare overbearing enemy type, like the spawners in the churchyard and the rock guys that are a pain in the ass to deal with in addition to being buggy as fuck.

the controls arent great either. everything feels sluggish from the menus to the dialogue button to the rolls and dealing with cover. its so strange.

the aesthetic really is the saving grace here, but that novelty doesnt really last and you're left with a really middling experience that needed a couple more months in development to really have something special.

No es el mejor rogue like que existe, eso está claro. Los textos son pesados saliendo siempre, la rejugabilidad no es la gran cosa y los enemigos acaban haciéndose repetitivos. Eso si, gráficamente tiene un estilo muy bonito, unos buenos efectos de iluminación, y muchas armas diferentes con las que probar. No diría que están super bien equilibradas, pero muchas veces te ves obligado a tirar con lo que tienes. Las zonas podrían ser mucho más diferentes de lo que son y los mapas más interconectados, eso si. No se, a bajo precio no es un mal rogue like, aunque en 8 h se puede finiquitar sin problema, yo mismo hice casi la mitad del contenido en mi primera run (sin contar tutorial).

La esquiva es bastante satisfactoria, aunque según avanzas hay enemigos que disparan tantas veces que aunque hagas una esquiva perfecta te vas a comer balazos. El control con ratón y teclado es un desastre, jugad con mando si o también

En general es satisfactorio, aunque tirando al final se hace repetitivo hacer las primeras zonas, pues tardas bastante en ellas.

Eu particularmente gostei muito.
É um roguelite com um estilo de gameplay mais lento e diferente, por ser a distância. Dá pra ver inspirações de Bastion no narrador, que é muito bem narrado, mas é um jogo que é sofre demais da falta de conteúdo, como linhas de diálogos e caminhos extras.
Tive alguns Bugs que mataram minhas Runs durante o jogo e dá pra ver que o final foi um extendido pra dar um tempo de jogo maior.
A história se encaixa conforme a progressão mas é bem decepcionante, ainda mais pelo mistério que é feito em volta.
Tinha tudo pra ser um jogão mas ficou no acima da média, independente do quanto eu gostei.

The game looks really good, but it has nothing going for it in gamplay.
The shooting itself is alright, altough aiming is clunky. A main mechanic is covering behind graves(?) or other objects, but you have to hug them really close, and the animation between standing and covering is very little, so you'll of course get damaged. Literally everything is clunky and feels slow, you have to wait like a second between rolls, not giving enough time to get to safety. When going into cover you again have to wait a second before you can roll or do anything.

Upgrades, weapons, perks are usually what makes rougelites(k) but this game lacks everything. Like 4 gun types, sometimes with debuff modifiers like making the enemies bleed. Upgrades and perks/abilities have nothing really. Everything is basic and boring.

Super fun and moodie, but quite broken and unpolished.

I love the gameplay core and aesthetics of West of Dead. I love the western setting and good lord I love the soundtrack. The mood of this game is great, and that, along with the shooting mechanics (the slowliness of the combat is an enormous win for me, had a blast with it) made me play this game for hours and hours.

But as I said, this game has problems. First, the story and the script are quite forgettable and just distracted me of the flow of the gameplay. Second, this game has bugs, tons of bugs; the ones that allow you to both exploit the game in your favor AND ruin your playthrough. I don't usually complain about bugs, but this is a really unpulished game, and it continually affects the gameplay; so, be warned. And last but maybe most important, it's gameplay loop and progression are incredibly slow. Don't get me wrong, I love the slow, methodical rhythm of the game, but you really have to grind in this game to unlock new stuff, and the stuff you play gets repetitive really soon. There is a lack of variety in the enemies, in the visual style and in the weapons and tools you have, and the fact that you need so much effort to unlock new things could easily make you drop the game if the core gameplay doesn't interest you enough.

But for me, all the problems it has doesn't obscure the fun I had with this game and how much I loved it's aesthetics and setting. I would recommend this game easily if you are into it; it's the kind of game that you won't forget even if it's not the most brilliant thing you'll play (personally, I really love that kind of games). Hell, I would even play this game again sometime, even with all the bugs and repetitiveness, but I would definitely not recommend this game to everyone. If the gameplay and aesthetics convince you, go for it. I personally had a blast, even with all of it's problems.

A year later and I remembered I didn't rate this one

West of Dead is unique and mostly well-made, but this is one of the most "Made by a 3-6 dev team on a shoestring budget" games I've ever played, that is not dogshit or extremely barren. It is barren by the genre standards, mind you - after 15 hours spent with this game, I've unlocked everything it has to offer and have beaten the game more than enough time to totally exhaust all of its enemy and tileset variety, plus getting all but 4 achievements. West of Dead's gameplay is not deep enough to be a forever game you keep perpetually installed on your SSD, and it's item and weapon lists are not long enough to keep you playing for dozens of hours. While it's better than 70% of roguelikes on the market, it struggles to stand out or, for lack of a better term, give you more bank for your buck than other games in the space. I have to stress, again, that this is a pretty swell game all things concidered, but it's a decidedly finite experience in a sea of infinite ones, and it's shorter runtime is not better than a similar length of time spent playing the competition.

Hope Web of Wyrd is better!

West of Dead is an isometric roguelite twin-stick shooter and was released on June 18th, 2020. It was developed by Upstream Arcade and published by Raw Fury Games.

I’m reviewing this game as a part of my journey to complete all the games in my backlog. I’m honestly not sure where West of Dead came from or how it ended up in my library, but it was there, the art style looked cool and it had a roguelite tag, so I was instantly intrigued. The following, are my thoughts on why I ultimately, don’t recommend it.

Gameplay
There are 3 major sins this game makes, but credit where credit is due, let’s get some positives in the open first:

The Metroidvania elements had my curiosity peaked to search every nook and cranny, the areas seemed to randomly generate randomly enough to make every run-through feel fresh and unique. I did enjoy experimenting with the new items and ability cards, though I quickly did not enjoy using other weapons. I found really early on every damage type beyond critical damage was a total joke and a waste of my time. But finding new weapons that dealt critical damage was fun, and getting “bad” rolls of weapons aided unique gameplay and scenarios with the level-up system that I enjoyed.

There were enough enemy designs to keep me on my toes, though there were a couple that I thought should have been different for sure. I was genuinely surprised at times to find the enemies strategically flanking me out of cover which led to some pretty cool western showdowns out in the open, as I dodged bullets and creatures with guns blazing through slow-motion accents across the room to the next cover. I do wish it felt better to play, the dodging is kind of a mixed bag, and again, the loss of my engagement from the auto-aim system does take its toll on the enjoyment after a while. Maybe it’s different on a mouse and keyboard, but that’s how it was on a controller (via SteamDeck).

I think the most important thing to understand about West of Dead is that it has all of the pieces of success. There are so many mechanics that independently work well, or seem like they should work on paper, but for me as a player who has played countless roguelites, it’s clear that West of Dead doesn’t have the polish it needs for all of its ideas to come together into a satisfying whole. So, keep that in mind as I continue on.

To start really talking about my gripes, West of Dead plays similarly to other isometric shooters. You have two weapon slots, two item slots, and one passive item slot, all of which culminate together into a playstyle that you’ll use and adapt as you traverse through the randomly generated maze of Hell consisting of 4 or 5 areas before reaching a final boss of sorts. As you traverse you will find upgrades that make you more proficient with your tools, or guns, or will flat-out increase your health. You’ll have to master a few different weapon types like close-range shotguns, quick-fire revolvers, and long-range long-reload rifles, among other western-inspired lead shooters (and more), and you’ll have to do the usual roguelite dance of memorizing enemy attack patterns while utilizing cover, dodging, and unique area hazards as you fight to reach the end of the game.

The first sin West of Dead makes is that it gives the player auto-aim. The way the devs try to balance this is that your character only locks on to enemies in lit areas of the room you’re trapped in, so there are lanterns you can ignite to get your auto-aim back. There is technically twin-stick shooting you can do here, but it’s often quite frustrating to use, perhaps on purpose. I understand how maybe the isometric perspective could be the culprit here, and that’s probably why this particular system is in place, but losing that player engagement from not needing to aim made some of the game a bit easier, but also equally a bit more boring as it is less engaging. This is compounded by the waiting required to reload your weapons… as there’s no active reload, no manual button press, it’s just on a countdown timer (after you run out of shots, or after you stop shooting for a second), which furthers the lack of engagement you have with the game.

The second sin is it is counterproductive to expand the item pool. West of Dead takes the Dead Cells approach with its item pool and allows you to unlock more items to play with using a resource (Sin) you gain from killing enemies. The problem is that it doesn’t take long to find that there are two weapons that don’t need unlocking… one, a revolver with 5 shots, the fifth shot doing critical (double) damage, and the other, a shotgun that does critical damage so long as you’re behind cover. Those are the only guns you’ll need to beat the game. You’re always behind some cover, so the shotgun always deals double damage. The revolvers shoot and reload quickly and the critical damage on the final shot is too much to ignore. They’re such good weapons, given to you right in the beginning that nothing else matters. Expanding the item pool with more weapons just reduces your chances of getting those guns.

This leads to the third and final major sin, the other playstyles (damage types) are not effective. There are weapons and items that deal bleed damage. There are weapons and items that deal poison damage. There are weapons and items that deal fire damage. These sound cool conceptually, but they are all the same — they deal damage over time. What’s worse, is that they never deal more damage than guns that deal critical damage. These damage types that do damage over time simply don’t deal enough damage fast enough. You can even see in their descriptions that the DPS of these weapons and items is always second to any other type of gun because of their status effects. For some strange reason, the status effects never deal more damage than any other counterpart. For example, if I can deal 60 damage with the 5-shot critical revolver in a sub-two second burst (10 damage 4 shots, 20 damage one shot), what you find is that any other gun that deals damage over time via status effects will deal 55 damage total. Over 5 seconds or something. The effects also never stack. It just doesn’t make sense. Of course, I’m going to take the near-instant 60 damage over waiting 5 seconds to get similar (but still worse) damage. It might make sense if damage types had an advantage over an enemy type or even all enemies in an area, but it’s, unfortunately, a shallow system that frustratingly doesn’t pay off.

It could be argued that these damage types would pair well with other damage types, say, you have a weapon that deals damage over time, and a weapon that deals critical hits. Maybe even you have a tool/gadget that applies a status effect. The issue I found is that often the damage from the effects was so minor, that even combining damage types wasn’t making a difference. Everything died just as fast when I just used the crit damage revolver and shotgun on their own. And just to make mention, I found myself surviving more frequently when I used guns with shorter reload times and larger magazines, paired with any short-range weapon (which was frequently just a revolver and a shotgun). There’s balancing that could be done, because as it stands, choosing those weapons gives you a very clear advantage no matter how you slice it. Even if you try and combine either with other damage types.

Phew. A bit scathing, but it is representative of how I feel about West of Dead. It is very important at this point for me to note and to get us back into a land of some neutrality: before the previously mentioned sins were discovered, I had a fun time playing the game. Had fun all the way up through my first run completion even. I learned a few hard lessons about damage types and the item pool and eventually got fed up with waiting through reload timers, but I made my way to the end of the game and gave it the fairest chance to let it win me over. I found that West of Dead has all the pieces to succeed (and that is perhaps why I’m so wordy in this review, I can see its potential) - It just needs some tweaking to make it worth playing, at least for players like me.

Narrative and Worldbuilding
I found myself pleasantly intrigued by the plot of this game. As the protagonist, your character wakes up with amnesia in a realm of sorts in-between Heaven and Hell. As you play the game you kill creatures and lost souls, sending them west (to Hell), and along the way, you’ll help other lost souls gain resolution and they’ll go east (Heaven). As you kill stronger demons and help stronger pure souls find peace, you’ll gain memory fragments, and you’ll learn more about your character’s past, why they ended up in this in-between purgatory, and what they must do so that they can eventually move east. Along the way, some of the memory fragments won’t be the main characters, but rather some other souls that are connected to the protagonist and antagonist, to further give insights into the bigger overall narrative.

I really thought this was well done, it’s probably the best part of the entire game. It’s mysterious, and it doesn’t give you enough answers to ever make you satisfied. Even after I had beaten the game, I kept playing for a bit and I was still getting new threads to the story that continued to build on this overarching narrative. It was very well-paced and very satisfying to put together. I do wish I learned a bit more about the demons and the locations within this purgatory location, but still, excellent system, especially for a roguelite.

The voice acting is okay? I think it would have landed even better if they chose a different person voicing the protagonist. We have this ultra metal ghost rider flaming skull cowboy… and the voice actor, bless his soul, is the most deadpan inflectionless dude they could have ever picked. His performance fell really flat for me — everyone else was fine.

Visuals and Performance
I played this on my SteamDeck, and I had a solid experience for the entirety of my playtime with no lag or other hiccups.

Visually, I really love the aesthetic of this game with the cell-shaded look, and the environments are pretty interesting to look at, and that’s all complimented by really clean animations throughout, not to mention the interactions with light and darkness with the lanterns and all. After a while, generated rooms can feel quite similar, especially if you’re familiar with other roguelite titans that hide their generations a bit better, but it’s serviceable enough, and the darkness from the lantern mechanic definitely covers some of that up. But, the art style is just really quite good, and everything is pretty cohesive as well, through the items, weapons, enemies, lore, etc.

My only gripe, petty as it may be, is the font used in all the UI… looks so basic to me. I can’t say that I’ve ever complained about the font in a game, but here, there’s something about it that feels… so wrong and “alpha game” to me for some reason.

Audio Design
I thought the audio design was serviceable enough, I think in a game like this, the worst thing it could have would be guns that don’t sound brutal enough, but I think a lot of these hit the nail on the head. The slow-mo effect was also really well done, as well as the explosions, enemy noises, enemy telegraphs, etc.

The soundtrack on display is serviceable and forgettable. Not something that annoyed me, but not something I’ll be listening to outside of the game either.

Conclusion
Ultimately, West of Dead is an Off-Brand product, and I can’t say that I recommend it. The three gameplay sins I have mentioned above: lack of player engagement, counterproductive item pool expansion, and ineffective alternate playstyles (or damage types) make it a hard recommendation for someone looking for their next roguelite fix. The most concise I can be with this review, is that I had most of my fun up through one full run of the game, and I’m a bit saddened that as a roguelite, it offered more, but the game’s systems are not optimized enough to give me the drive to experience it.

If West of Dead had a bit more playtesting, a little more time in the oven, and a few good tweaks to iron out those 3 major sins with perhaps a little extra flare on top, this would be a hidden gem of a game. But, I don’t think it will get that as it’s had one DLC already. It’s a bit sad to see it get so close. On another note, I’m really interested in what this developer cooks up next, there’s definitely a possibility for greatness in a sequel or spiritual successor using what the developers learned here, and I am keen on following their progress, and wishing them the best in their future endeavors.

I arrived at this conclusion after 11.2 hours of gameplay, and while I thought I might play more to continue to expand the item pool just to see what else was in there, I believe this review will mark the end of my journey with West of Dead, and I will mark it off my backlog. There are just better roguelite options available for me to play. While there is DLC available, I’m not interested in returning for it.

Thanks for reading.

Okay, thanks and, goodbye.

The guns can be pretty satisfying and the game has many great little ideas in it, but it fell short for me overall.

The core gameplay is lacking a bit of depth. You shoot things from behind cover, weapons and lights you can activate deal stun damage... and that's kind of it.
It's fine to have few mechanics, but none of these were enough to carry the game for me.

Aiming feels bad no matter the control scheme because the reticle is offset from the actual barrel and it's next to your character, which forces you to look away from the enemies, meaning you can't appreciate the impact your attacks have.

Weapon types are distinguished in pretty cool ways (the trigger acts differently for each type), but the aiming makes them less fun and the different guns you find in runs just aren't exciting - they don't provide huge twists or big bumps in power.

The cover mechanics are functional and pretty smooth (though I'd prefer no hard sticking to cover and a dynamic ducking system instead), but there's not much to them either - you don't need to time the moments when you pop out to shoot, and other than flanking particularly passive enemies, there's no reason to leave.
One good thing is that the cover breaks over time (and respawns after a period of time), which introduces some dynamism into fights without making longer shootouts annoying.

The stun mechanic is also very basic. Attacks typically have stun damage, and lighting lamps that hang around in some arenas can stun all enemies around them. Stuns are useful, but they don't make you play differently - weapons aren't divided into strong damage vs strong stun archetypes, most enemies will die before they get stunned by your attacks, and stuns don't allow you to deal that much more damage compared to just shooting an active enemy.

So that leaves the pressure of making the game interesting to the enemy and level design.
Level design is obviously not going to work because this is a roguelite. Rooms are basic, very repetitive, and arena layouts never introduce anything that would affect the gameplay much.
More over, there's plenty of backtracking, and it's slow. Your dash isn't faster than just running, there are plenty of rooms where you have to use a teleporter with a drawn out animation just to get to the other side of a gap/drop and pick up an item, and even with teleports being placed around the map, you'll still end up running through empty rooms and watching slow teleport animations a lot.

Enemy design is alright though. It's nothing crazy, but they all have a different way of forcing you out of cover and different ways they're best tackled, so I'd say the roster of opponents is a positive overall. The only problem I can think of is that Outlaw fights (reoccuring minibosses) end up taking way longer than they should because of how few openings you get to attack.

Overall, it's a perfectly middle of the road game.
If you happen to really gel with something about it, I can see how you could enjoy it, because it doesn't have any massive flaws.
If you end up disliking anything about it, there's probably nothing here to keep you coming back.
However, most people would likely think "it's alright, but a little underwhelming".

Hellboy meets the wild west!! I really liked the look of this game and the flow of gameplay.

Really cool variety of weapons that I never used and fighting styles. The game would be like "hey you can use this frozen pistol in combination with this neat rifle, or you can use the different kind of pistols while melee range and-" and I would just straight up take 2 shotguns at the same time and continue my run. I would lie if I'd say that I didn't had an absolute blast, the perfect combination of something nostalgic and adrenaline inducing.

But I would also lie if I'd say that the game doesn't have its problems. Sure, it has the anticipated vibe of an indie game from the start but I still have a hate/love relationship with the cover systems - It's frustrating at times. I would've loved to see more attention to this game regarding the voice acting (the Plain walker is the only character that talks) and maybe more lore since it had amazing potential and after finishing it has great chance of being extremely forgettable.

In many ways, West of Dead is simultaneously the antithesis of AND the perfect model of the roguelike dungeon crawler. You got your consumables, different realms, rapid game reloads, short sessions meant to be replayable, and procedurally generated levels. I think what most sets it apart from your Hades or Enter the Gungeon is its particular emphasis on slower combat.

You learn this very quickly.

Instead of being "encouraged" to use cover generously, you’re all but forced to even in the first underworld area. When cover is destroyed our outside arm’s reach, you also have access to your main proactive defensive maneuver, the dodge. Your savior and condemner. This floaty dash is very inconsistent in its ability to actually dodge incoming shots. Try to use it only when necessary. While you can and sometimes have to spam it in swarm scenarios, I find it’s even less consistent in its pathing and distance you gain from using it when spamming the move.

So long as you can adjust your expectations for a slower, more methodical experience, you can enjoy yourself plenty with the combat, jank and all. In fact, the game is quite easy. I didn’t die once before I was already at the end in a minuscule four and a half hours. The only difficult sections - excluding getting used to the cover movement - was the final boss and the preacher, and the latter only because of his gargantuan health pool and seemingly neo-like ability to dodge your shots. Since it’s a roguelike you can obviously keep playing for more secrets and upgrades, but honestly? I had my fill by the end of my first session. In a pure dollars to hours exchange, West of Dead probably isn’t that great of a deal, but I didn’t regret my time with it at all. Luckily, I got it on sale, and so should you if you have any intention of playing it.

Also, as a side note: It’s odd how frequently I incidentally play games that are roguelikes or Metroidvanias, with this one being one of the former. I don’t know if that speaks more to my not looking into prospective games deep enough or just the prevalence of those genres, or both. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just funny how many titles from those genres I’ve played without knowing ahead of time. But I digress.

The procedurally generated maps here are much smaller, refreshingly small in fact, and are well designed in the sense that it makes you feel like you’re outside while still in actuality being in dank, claustrophobic rooms better suited for close-quarters gunplay. There’s little to no backtracking, and realms take less than an hour to clear.

And while the game is blink and you’ll miss it quick, it will at least be a visually stunning time for the night it takes you to beat it. The comic book art style is undeniably the biggest beacon of awesome West of Dead possesses, and what I’d wager is the largest draw the game has. One that I’m afraid has caused a lot of unfortunate expectations, like the assumption that the depth is as good as the art direction. And I admit that as someone who is in the 90th percentile of people who played and actually enjoyed the title. Even I can agree this is missing some much-needed variety in the gun and tactics department. That said, I certainly had a better time than Ron Perlman did, who appeared to have been threatened at knifepoint to provide the VO for the main character for the game. Which is a shame, because he really is a great choice for the role.

To anyone considering buying West of Dead the two roadblock questions I’d ask would be: are you ok with a shorter, easier adventure than most roguelikes, and are you content with this being a cover shooter focused on methodical gunplay? If both of your answers are yes, then the game isn’t such a hard sell when it’s discounted. Otherwise, I’d steer clear.

Rating: 7.2/10 - Good

Pretty basic roguelike with a rough start.

This game tries to do the Dead Cells thing of having you get points that allow you to choose the next weapon you're going to unlock, but it worked with DC because they had plenty of gear from the start.

The gameplay is good, unresponsive but good, everything feels slow but that works in your advantage since it gives you plenty of time to react and think of what you want to do next. This makes the game incredibly easy but at the same time, also provides a breather from the slew of roguelikes that market themselves as "hard as souls-likes". So if you want something a bit easier that won't punish you much, this game is here.

The story is ok, Ron Pelrman is in it and he does a decent job with the work he is given, but the story and the dialog are too cut and dry for him to properly shine. The plot is a simple revenge narrative that is mostly there as set dressing. they do stablish the protag as someone who lived in hardship, but they never do anything with it, so it lacks impact.