So, I asked for impressions on the
Westerado demo, and was kindly gifted it by
hardcastlemccormick to take it for a whirl. (Thanks, again!) The demo is short. Really short. So, it's hard to tell a whole lot about the game apart from core mechanics. I haven't played the one on the Adult Swim site, yet.
The Story: You're on a movie set here, and begin in a hubworld similar to most jRPGs of the golden SNES days. The dialog is mildly funny, with the added bonus that you can draw your gun on the NPC in the middle of their discussion. They usually react in some way. If you want, you can drop them; they land in satisfying thuds.
The Gunplay: It's wonky at first. There's a perspective to the camera angle of the game, so when I would fire, I would take this into consideration, like, say, Smash TV. But what happens is the bullet follows a path directly level to the height of the gun. Once you get this down, it starts to make sense. You can shoot off people's hats, 3 of which make up your health bar, if you git gud. The victim will then quiver with his/her hand in the air. I suppose you could spare them; I never did.
It has native controller support, and I highly suggest using it. Wielding a six-shooter, you have to manual reload each bullet. The pulls on the trigger feel right. The pace turns frenetic when there are multiple enemies, so the shoot/reload mechanic has a rhythm to it. There's also a slight delay when shooting the gun, which, I believe, is intentional, as it gives a feeling of weight to the gunshot.
The Fringe Stuff
Being a demo, most of this is just not fleshed out or available. It ends when you get to a fairly ominous part. It looked like a boss battle was about to begin, but I can't be sure. There's a shop and money involved, but none of that is available, so there's no telling what depth that would add. It certainly needs some depth. If there's a difference in hats that you can wear that isn't just cosmetic, I wouldn't know about it.
The pixel art isn't as stylized as something like Gods Will Be Watching or as enthralling as Risk of Rain. The desert setting means a lot of yellow. It's broken up where it can be with pops of color, a cactus here and a set piece there, which is welcome. I wouldn't call the game pretty, unfortunately. And I actually really like the current pixel art craze. If you don't, this ain't the one to change your mind.
TL;DR: Super unfinished, as demos are. Fun but shallow gunplay, currently. Mild humor. Mediocre pixel art.
