The Indie Informer

Wild Bastards‘ Ryan Roth saddled up to me after I’d stealthy slipped into the game’s GDC on-floor demo. Standing tall in black frayed jacket and sunglasses, the audio director appeared more like a character in the rootin’-tootin’ space shootin’ title than its developer. His animated coolness is certainly shared with the spiritual successor to indie hit Void Bastards.

The game has three layers. My ship, the planet map, and combat. The ship is a place to upgrade and take stock of my ragtag team of outlaws. The planet map is a metaphorical chess board with roads to stores, lootable locations, and combat zones. It’s also filled with enemies.

I only have so much movement to spend during my turn on the map. Once it is gone, my enemies make their own moves. If I’m not prepared to take them on, I need to plan to stay as far away as possible. However, after a few rounds, McNeil enters the scene. Meeting him in a shootout is almost certain death, and when the antagonist appears, the game tells me to get the hell out of Dodge.

Combat takes place in a 3D and visually eye-catching space where the view switches from isometric to first-person. Roth compliments me on my cowardice – which he calls strategic stealth – as I wade into the action. The team, he says, wants players to stop, look around, and determine which character, weapon, or approach might be best for their goals. Each battlefield is populated with baddies, which I have to eliminate in order to triumph. Strategy, it seems, is the winning play rather than going in guns blazing.

I actually control multiple characters during these blood-pumping gun fights. I can switch between any of the crew I’ve steered here on the map before commencing the fight. That leaves me with a bevy of options. My favorite character (which quickly gets injured and pulled out of the rotation) is a woman with a gatling gun. It takes a minute to warm up, but once the bullets are flying, they cut through the crowd like butter.

My next team member is more agile, favoring a revolver, which I equip later with homing bullets (an upgrade I must have picked up sometime in the chaos of battle). Last but not least on my roster is a lizard-like hombre. I gave him the jet pack, and I feel like I should warn everyone to be careful not to go really high up in the air before running out of propulsion and plummeting to death. His weapon of choice was a kind of laser lasso which, when shot at enemies, has a chance to entangle them.

When McNeil showed his face on the planet, I was feeling good. I’d opened a path up to a spot where I could beam back up to the ship and a few looting opportunities. As he was clear across the map, I thought I’d take one turn to indulge in a smash-and-grab. That turned out to be a mistake.

Apparently, there were hostile critters buried under the sand nearby and they cut down the last of my characters. I failed the mission, but the game was generous enough to beam my injured characters back to the ship with the loot I’d acquired. So, maybe the mission failed successfully? Either way, Wild Bastards is going to be a hell of a game.