[We’re trying to introduce the indie games that are on our watch list in our waiting Indie column and are looking forward to them in five interesting articles.]
Raphaël Colantonio’s Weird West, an action RYO with an isometric perspective being developed by wolfeye studios studio, or “immersive sim,” as its producers call it; Game. Here’s what we know about this dark fantasy game:
> Weird West is the new baby of Raphael Colantonio, who founded Arkane Studios and left the studio after Prey. Dishonored and Prey’s director is in a much smaller production, but maybe it’s not even a job to come up with much freer ideas. Colantonio, who says the reason he left Arkane Studios was a “creative anxiety,” is one of the most capable. And he’s with Julien Roby, one of the designers at Dishonored.
> As you can see from the game name, it is set in a Wild West where supernatural events are normal. Colantonio’s arrival in Dishonored, behind dunwall, a dark Victorian fantasy city, with another genre-scented universe suggests it’s not detached from its roots. It’s going to be a game that’s going to be pretty familiar to the arkane fans.
> You may have thought of Desperados when you saw that the game had a real-time, isometric camera, and then it was set in the Wild West. It also has 5 playable characters with different characteristics as if it were not enough. But Desperados is a game that focuses on stealth rather than action, while Weird West is very clearly divergence from it with its slow-motion features and gameplay that allows you to use environmental factors wisely, such as in Divinity: Original Sin.
> Just like the old Fallouts and Wasteland, the game has a map on which you travel in real time and will probably use it to bring you all sorts of things. We also understand from the published images that it will take a thorough search of the perks and the items in the inventory to get to some places on the maps.
> I know you think of interesting skills in the first place when you think of Dishonored, Prey, and so on. Weird West looks like colantonio’s previous work here. Dishonored’s runes, like Prey’s Neuromods, are scattered around here by objects called Nimp Relics. By collecting them, we will be able to open up various skills to our characters, on the other hand, we will be able to develop stadiums with the Perk system. It’s like he’s not going to spend hours thinking, “What skill should I get, what kind of character should I build?”