Hard West - The weird West and XCOM walk into a saloon

That makes a lot of sense. It still feels like it’s missing, but I certainly understand their rationale.

I still don’t agree with it. It severely limits the usefulness of cover when an enemy can just rush you and shoot you in the side.

There isn’t really anything you can do about this except kill them faster on your turn.

Patch 1.2 live on Steam.

Best note: ​Fixed: Florence no longer trolls players by joining the search party looking for her.

Hard West 1.2 Patch Notes

  • UI should now work correctly in all resolutions above Full HD.
    We’re looking into the possibility of fully supporting nonstandard screen ratios and will keep you posted.
  • Fixed: an enemy brought down to 0 HP with the Barrage ability sometimes remains alive.
  • Fixed: having Old Man Murray join the fight in the optional rescue mission would sometimes lock the game.
  • Fixed: desynchronized animation of using dynamic cover objects while the character is already ‘sticking’ to it.
  • Fixed: missing localization on one of the buttons.
  • Fixed: an erratic notification of a wound turning into a scar on a character from a different Scenario.
  • Stability tweaks.
  • Further difficulty adjustments based on your feedback.
  • Movement path helper now changes color depending on the number of Action Points needed to reach a given location.
  • The available ammo counter has been changed to be more clear and easy to read.
  • Fixed: Florence no longer trolls players by joining the search party looking for her.
  • Mac: jury-rigged fix: disabled a plugin causing the game to crash to black screen for some players upon starting missions. It should solve issues for now but we’ll refine the solution further in 1.3.

-Todd

Gave it a try today. I’m not sure if there’s something wrong with my system or if it’s the game, after it runs for couple minutes Hard West starts freezing every few seconds making it pretty much unplayable.

I find I have issues with it freezing periodically when I enter/leave UI elements (eg, from map->inventory, or inventory->cards, or leaving any of those). Typically the ‘pause’ goes away after chewing on my processor for 10-15s.

I have no problems with freezing, but I lost patience with the game. Enemies are both too easy and too difficult to locate.

Too easy in that you can see their zone of control even if no one in your party can see the enemy. Kind of ruins his hiding.

Too hard in that, even if you “see” the character, it is often totally unclear which side of a wall he is on. Rotate the screen, and the enemy switches his apparent location.

Finally I came to a battle where I never did find the last two enemies. They ran around with their zones of control, I stood out in the open, they continued to run around. Maybe they were in the basement and their zones of control were showing through the floor? But in that case, I couldn’t find any basement entrance and given that it was my own homestead, that’s just lame.

Anyway, I fought the interface, and the interface won.

Admittedly, it might just be that this is not my kind of game. Other than Massive Chalice, I really don’t play squad tacticals much.

Anyone played this lately? It’s $10 on Steam right now. I see there’s an expansion out too.

Yeah was thinking the same thing…

— Alan

Just wanted to pop in and say that the most recent patch added in the ability to save games during missions! I know the devs put in a lot of time to make this happen and I really appreciate it.

Might actually play it now! Or might not. I have way too many games to promise anything for sure. ;P

So at $4.99 with a save system finally, I will make this my first Steam sale buy. Every time I almost pulled the trigger on this I’d read about how you have to finish each scenario or restart each one from the beginning, and I just will not do that anymore.

I tried it but didn’t like it very much. The missions seemed puzzly in a way that required retries to figure out what needs to be done and when exactly it can be done.

That was largely my take. I went into it a few years ago hoping for a turn-based western with RPG elements and instead I found a puzzle western with a fixed story. :/

Got a promo thing from these guys today. Looks like they are working on a Cold War Spy version:

I keep forgetting to get HW since it’s always so cheap and has positive reviews.

Huh, how did I miss there’s a sequel to Hard West that currently has a beta on Steam. This time it’s developed by Ice Code Games, taking over from CreativeForge Games, and is scheduled to release later this year. I thought the original was pretty great.

Apparently the first chapter of the sequel will be available to play for a few days, starting tomorrow. On second read, I think the demo will be available again starting tomorrow and maybe the first game will be free to play for a few days?

IIRC the original was promising but deeply flawed. I love the concept though.

The original, in my opinion, lacked character and meaningful gameplay development. You largely had the same weapons at the end as the beginning, and you were constantly shifting between different groups of characters. It felt very much like a tech demo than a completed game.

The concept was great, and I had hoped it was going to turn into so much more than it did.

I really enjoyed the demo/beta of 2, looking forward to it.