Not every game worth playing is a huge cinematic AAA experience or an RPG game you will spend dozens (and maybe hundreds) of hours completing. Sometimes something much smaller and much more experimental falls in your lap and just begs to be looked into. And when you see one that takes it's inspiration from Oregon Trail and promises to go absolutely insane, you take a second look.
During the years of 1830-1870 (at least according to this game), many attempted to make the journey to the wild west. Some managed the perilous journey while others died horrific deaths along the way. Now, you get to try your hand. You will try to get a party of three across this trail in this action-based telling of such an adventure, and action is definitely the way to describe it.
You will begin your adventure by selecting your three party members and the wagon you will be traveling in. The first of these choices will let you either select a team at random or name, choose the gender and faces of each character as you see fit. To be honest, this could lead to a little extra fun as you and some buds can easily place themselves in the party for some couch-based entertainment, and I would immediately recommend the game for a session or two like this. However, it is also very superficial and has no effect on how the game you are about to play will play out.
The second choice is a bit more important, as each wagon has it's own traits, including how much health everyone starts with, speed, size of the wagon itself, and even the weapon you start with. This will become more important as you play, however, as you will only start with the "standard" wagon and unlock the others through various events in the game itself.
Once the game starts, you will begin your travel, most often starting with a hunt to stock up food for the long journey, only to be interrupted by bandits. This part of the game will see you playing with very basic controls, moving your wagon around the screen to shoot more animals and bandits and dodging bullets and other harmful obstacles in a form that honestly reminds me of an old-school Atari 2600 game between the chunky pixelated graphic style and one stick and one button control of these parts. Anytime you are in the wagon, this is how you will play, whatever the game throws at you.
But large portions of the game are not in the wagon, but controlling one of your party members on foot as they leave to do something on their own for one reason or another. A very common early example is when a one of the group goes out to collect berries, only for a bear to show up and attack for them. In these portions, the game switches to a twin-stick style gameplay where you will independently control the direction you shoot and move.
Although the scenarios you will see in this game are often not half as mundane as that. As the game goes on, it becomes clear the developers either were either high or throwing darts at a board with ideas written on it and your guess as to which is true is as good as mine. One moment you are dealing with bandits and the next you ate shrooms and are literally fighting your inner demons... and then you manage to jump into low orbit around Earth blasting your way through an asteroid field. This game will throw everything at you, and I mean everything!
But at the same time, the game still manages to be limited due to it's simplicity. Yes it can throw just about anything you can imagine at you, but it gives you almost no input on it. You just deal with the situations the game throws. If you are lucky you will be given two or three actual choices in the game, starting with if you want to try to cross your first of two rivers by "Fording" (floating the wagon along with the ox pulling) or getting a running start and jumping across... and sometimes the game will just throw you the finger and pretend you made the other choice anyway. As such, it does get old pretty quick in a single sitting, making it much better suited to play in small doses.
Bugs: This game ran pretty spectacularly. No bugs of any kind came up.
Overall: While entertaining, this is not a game you are going to be able to enjoy marathoning... or even in more then small bursts. Even if you win, the game will not last longer then 30-40 minutes, and your chances of doing so remains slim, so expect to start over many many many times. Not that this is a huge issue as the game is designed to have any given session run in a single sitting, win or lose. But this also means you will repeat the early game many many many times, and you will likely have to put it down and come back to it just as often if you plan on finishing.
But even if you don't manage to finish it, you will likely have a good time coming back to this game for a short break once in a while. Just do not expect much more then that.
Score:
6/10
System Requirements:
- 2.0 Ghz processor
- 1 GB RAM
- anything that supports Shader Model 2.0
- Windows XP
- 65 MB hard drive space
- Ryzen 3 2200G running at 3.5 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 10
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
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