El Paso

Haha! I was right on playing El Paso on a free day. My GOD, it was awesome and quite entertaining!

(Note: This is just my second proper review in general around here, so please bare with me. If it comes off as the ramblings of a deadbeat, drunken gambler who's about to lose his money on a stupid bet, on the saloons of El Paso, then just skip it and get on with playing the game in Easy Mode first)

The game description provided is more than enough to understand what the story's all about. It's set in the lawless county of El Paso, where your life's (and your pocket's) safety is never guaranteed, so the bowie knife, revolver and shotgun, are a man's best friends. Either as a lawmen or as a lawless, your work is cut out for you, as you need not only to ensure that you stay alive in the usual situation "kill or be killed", but also when hunting: if you encounter a wild coyote or some other feline predator, remember this: "There is a fine line between bravery and stupidity".

I played through the lawful route, being a man of the law, instead of the lawless (haven't tried it yet), in hard mode, but, due to frustration, restarted mid-way to experience the game in easy mode, and boy was it worth it. So anyway...

As you just read, there are three difficulty levels from where the starting amount of money is set. Easy Mode had a starting amount of 20$. You start at the Welcome Inn (kind of a hotel which also offers brother services) in El Paso, equipped with a Bowie Knife, a piece of map for the lost treasure, and the detailed game guide for beginners.

There are main and side missions badges in your inventory, which count as items to be applied at specific locations, in order to trigger the events/missions + you'll need to "use" the map pieces at the locations, to get the full map and eventually the treasure. My personal favorite was the final Sally side mission (avoiding spoilers for this one), but the treasure hunt was REALLY anticlimactic in my opinion.

As you can read in another review, the money system has a balance issue in Easy Mode specifically. Having easy ways to earn money is all well and good, but it becomes quite the problem when you just need to go north-south, back and forth (working as a shopkeeper where you buy the shotgun and a miner) to earn more than enough money to buy over 6 bullets for the revolver and 6 shells for a shotgun. Hunting can also get quite annoying... I only got to hunt safely a dog(╥‸╥), while, after only 3 times, "gather plants" link disappears (I don't know if it was intentional or not).

As for the characters, there quite a few memorable ones, but none was more than poor Sally of the Welcome Inn, in this route. Just like that professor guide you encounter in a Pokemon game starting tutorial, she is the first guide and friend of our player. Though some wierdos with love in their brain might think of her as a potential romantic route (turning a whore into a housewife)... Just for that, I'll avoid spoiling anything about her. It'll be fun reading the comments in the future.

Final score: 17 with 9 gunfights and 6 kills (much better than my fellow dead lawmen and lawless(thank you for dying, because I got dollars out of it)). Rating 8/8. Superb story and game concept which with a few adjustments in the game mechanics, could be the best in its genre.

I have a great deal of respect for the work that went into this game, and I give it a 7/8 because I think there is some brilliant potential here. As someone who has created similar games I can understand how much effort went into deciding all these things, and the fact that I couldn't find any real bugs is even more impressive. That said, as this is a "prototype", I believe I have some advice to offer if the author attempts a similar style of game in the future.

1. Add a bit more description to the links. So rather than saying "Go South", I think it would be better to say "Go South towards the River". I know the text already describes this, but it is more immersive if you have a very short description of what you're looking at as you click it.

2. The money system. I think it's too easy to get money in this game; simply walking towards a rancher and clikcing on link to get free money is fine if you're starting out (actually I think there should be more of these easy-money quests in games when you are low level), but I really think that you should only really be able to do this once before it runs out, rather than spamming it.

3. Exploration. A really easy way I think you could improve the exploration feeling in your games is, if you start a quest out as having a really boring and simple premise, but then when you actually start it and follow the trail it becomes gradually more and more surprising. Skyrim did an excellent job at this with some of the Daedric Quests; you think you're just getting involved in a drinking quest, and it turns out to be the insane plot of a Daedric Prince, or you think you're just humouring an old beggar and it turns out that Sheogorath is leading you into the mind of a dead Emperor. Even Red Dead Redemption 1 did something like this; you think that you're just talking to a normal, formally dressed man, but as you do his quests you start to realise he is...something else.

So in this story, when you go to the silver mine, you could at first make it look like there's nothing there, but then suddenly you spot a tunnel or a passageway that leads you on an adventure that you never really saw coming.

The reason I am giving so much criticism here is not because I didn't like the game (I liked it a lot), but because I think this author and type of story game has great potential.

Decent storyline and inventory system; I agree with the other commentors on how the characters and places can be fleshed out some more but all in all, a solid storygame with its own atmosphere.

A true storygame! I love the missions, the variety of locations and activities and the conflicts. The mechanics are very well thought out and I like how missions are items that are context sensitive. The gunfights are cool, and the variety of weapons and how useful they are add to the gameplay.

Side Mission C1 involving the Welcome Inn in the Lawman playthrough doesn’t seem to work for some reason. Aside from that, the rest of the missions work well. Some characters are fleshed out, like Sally, but there’s still some room for improvement with the other characters. However, that doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of the game. The economy of the game should be improved though since the player can just do side jobs as many times as they want without consequence. It makes spending money inconsequential.

In summary, though it has some small flaws, I really enjoyed this wonderful storygame. This is a great fan game in the world of Red Dead!

It was an interesting concept; wish there was more differences between the two paths.

This is a very well thought out game, and it has plenty of story in it too. There's a developing relationship with several characters and a progression from simple jobs to full-blooded feuds where the protag is heavily involved. Great job. I might pop back one day and play the lawman.