On October 30 Gambitious announced that the release would be delayed by two weeks and the game was ultimately released on Steam on November 18, 2015. On July 30, 2015, the developers announced that Gambitious Digital Entertainment would publish the game and soon-after announced a release set for November 4. It had a goal of $70,000 CAD and reached $94,183 CAD pledged by 4,398 backers.

Player characters are not protected from enemies by a reaction shot.ĭevelopment on Hard West began before the release of CreativeForge Games' previous game, the sci-fi RTS game Ancient Space, and was first publicly announced in the context of its crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in August 2014 which quickly found support from well-known game developers such as John Romero and Brian Fargo. Approaching an enemy up to point-blank range makes him automatically fire at the approaching player character if he could already see the player character before executing the move. Reaction shots replace the overwatch mechanic of XCOM. Arranging cards in poker hands yields additional bonuses. After every tactical encounter or performing pre-defined actions on the strategic map the player is rewarded with unique poker cards which can be assigned to characters, each of them providing a different bonus. Instead of relying on experience points and skill trees Hard West uses a custom system based on poker cards. Over the course of the game characters can be improved and given special abilities, some of which are active and can be used instead of moving or firing while others are passive. At point-blank range every shot automatically hits. Luck is reduced by the hit chance of a shot and a character is hit if a shot depletes his luck. Rather than relying on random number generation to determine hits, characters are given a luck attribute. Low barriers constitute 'half cover' and barriers taller than a character constitute 'full cover', the latter providing more protection.Ī major difference from most other turn-based tactical games is the absence of randomness in Hard West's core gameplay. The game also uses a cover system based on two cover types which lower the chance to get hit and damage received. During combat every character starts each turn with two action points which can be spent on either a move or shot each, although most weapons instantly end a character's turn upon being fired. Hard West's tactical gameplay largely follows the standards set by XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This way players can interact with characters, perform a variety of custom actions, hire new characters into the player character's posse or initiate trade or combat. Location visits on the strategic map are presented via simple text panels accompanied by static illustrations and allow the player to perform actions by picking entries from a list.

The game is divided into two strictly separate modes, turn-based tactical encounters and a strategic exploration map where the player can travel a map and visit locations. Creatures such as demons, ghosts and undead gunslingers are present in the game's vision of the old west. Themes typical of the Western genre, such as bank robberies, lynching and the gold rush are commonplace in the game's world but also metaphysical beings such as Death and the Devil directly influence the lives of the local population. Hard West takes place in a heavily fictionalized version of the American Old West following standards of the Western genre but with the addition of supernatural elements, taking inspirations from XCOM: Enemy Unknown. A sequel, Hard West 2, was released in August 2022. It was released digitally on November 18, 2015, for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux, and was released for the Nintendo Switch on March 7, 2019. Hard West is a turn-based tactical game developed by CreativeForge Games and published by Gambitious Digital Entertainment.

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