Hard West Gamescom Preview

Hard West is a turn-based tactical game that takes place in the wild west with supernatural powers, satanic cults, arcane rituals, spirits and demons. The game had a successful Kickstarter campaign and I got the game explained to me by Kacper Szymczak, Lead Designer at Creative Forge Games.

A video was shown in which we were informed that the Grand Inquisitor destroyed the secret order. He hunted down and killed every last member. All to proof his allegiance. There was only one loose end, a witch named Cassandra who is now running for her life. She was captured and about to be hanged, but as she could see the future, she knew that this day was not her last one.

A part of one of the eight scenarios was played, where we had to rescue her from the gallows. Each tactical encounter in Hard West starts with a set-up stage in which you get to control your 1 to 4 characters. It allows you to canvas the area, spot the enemies and do some up-front activities to make the combat easier. For each character in the game you can check out its strength beforehand.
You can also threaten characters. For this they have a heat system. The higher your heat, the more effective the threat. In this scenario a character was threatened and the heat was high enough for the threat to work. Once threatened, you need to keep eye contact with the threatened character, as when you lose eye contact, the character will no longer feel the threat and maintaining eye contact will work through windows. A counter will show the threat level, which counts down, so you need to remind the character from time to time that you are still there to reset the counter. If you lose eye contact the counter goes down faster.
You can threaten multiple characters at the time, but it gets more complicated to keep them threatened all the time and watch the individual threat levels.

Weapons in Hard West can have different ways of firing. In the game an example was given of a cone shot, which allowed to shoot everyone who is in a cone shaped area in front of you. (Click on the below image to see an animated gif of the cone shot in action).

Another way of firing your weapon is to use the environment. A character you want to shoot, but is not in your line of sight, can be shot by means of a ricochet shot. You can use metal objects in the environment to deflect your shot. You can determine the position of the opponent based on the shadow he casts on the ground, or because you see a part of that character. You then use the ricochet skill, which draws a line from your weapon to the metal object and a second line that deflects from that object. By positioning yourself correctly you can aim in this way indirectly at the position the opponent should be in. (Click on the below image to see an animated gif of the ricochet shot in action).

You can shoot through thin obstacles like a cloth or glass, but you can also use obstacles to block a shot. Like a wagon or a pile of wood, you can also open a cellar hatch door or turn a table on its side, to hide behind it.

The next part they showed was a bank robbery. The manager of this specific bank has a deal with the demons to guard the bank in case of a robbery. To prevent them from calling the demons, you need to disable the telegraph. A second option they have is to sound the church bell, but it takes time for the demons to respond to that. There are several ways to rob the bank. One of them is to get help from a child eater, who is imprisoned, and who can aid you in combat. That is, if your own moral compass allows you to set him free. If not, you have to do with what you have. Check the video below that plays out the bank robbery.

You can notice from the video that once the demons arrive, the scene changes and you will find various body parts strewn around in this changed scene to make it more demonic.
Although difficult, this scenario can be played, without killing anyone and with nobody warning the demons.

There are about 40 combat encounters divided over the eight scenarios. And they are each manually designed. There is no automation, grinding or randomization and they all fit in the overall story.

The overview map is very empty at the start, but by walking around and exploring, you will open up new locations that will become visible on the map. The NPCs you encounter in the game will react to your actions and your actions will have consequences in the future and thus also on the story.

There are about 40 type of guns in the game. About 15 of them are regular guns and 25 of them are special guns, like a nine-barrel shotgun.
There is a chance you miss when shooting a gun, but at point-blank (or at least close by) you will always hit. There is however no friendly fire, so you can't hit your own party members.

The game features cards, which are like skills that you can assign to each of the members in your group at the start of a scenario. In here you find the ricochet card, the cone shot card, cards that provide a buff and many more. You also have Joker cards.
You get cards for activities you do in the game, like winning combat, treasure hunting, bartering and exploration.

Hard West can be set to a more difficult game by enabling combat injuries. When enabled and a character gets a lot of damage that character is physically hampered by that injury. So, when shot in the leg, the character will limp and become slower. However if the character survives the combat injuries the character is hardened by that experience and will receive bonuses because of that. In case of the character with the shot in the leg, once the injury is healed, he is still slower, but he is also more stable because of it (when standing still) and his aim is increased.

Hard West is scheduled to be released this fall for PC, Mac and Linux.