I’ve got to hand it to Sandlot. They know how to make a damn fun game. Westward is their latest foray into what I’ll call “casual real time strategy” and it’s a surefire winner. We’ll likely be seeing a whole slew of similar games coming out in the next year, and that’s a very good thing.

The gameplay goes like this: You’re given settlers who are tasked with developing a town on a barren chunk of the American West. You gather supplies and materials from the surrounding land, and start to build your town. As your town grows, it attracts more settlers, so you have to build them places to live and then put them to work too. You can give them a variety of tasks at the start, like farming or mining, and eventually give them much more advanced tasks like working the saloon or the general store. A large part of the gameplay comes from balancing your resources and keeping your settlers alive, employed, and happy, all while growing your town. It’s fairly complex even if you’ve played other casual strategy games before, but fortunately there’s a good tutorial in place to help alleviate the learning curve. You’ll probably pick it up pretty quickly and be on your way to building your very own boom town in no time.

Trouble is, towns attract bandits. Vicious, mean, rootin-tootin varmints who want to destroy your buildings and steal your food. So another large part of the game is keeping an active group of sheriffs and deputies to deal with these bad guys (as well as the local drunks and what-not). You’ll lead them around in small groups and have gunfights with the bad guys, which is quite fun. Often you’ll also have level objectives, such as flushing the bandits out of their hideouts, which you’ll have to complete. The pathfinding on these units could have been a bit better, as you’ll often want to move them across large distances and they tend to get stuck easily, but it just means a bit more micromanagement (and if you didn’t like to micromanage, you wouldn’t be playing this game).

The sound and graphics were done perfectly. The game is a comical representation of the stereotypical old west, and it’s done very well. You’ll see and hear wagon creaks, gun-shots, horses, and plenty of western style grumbling from the settlers. There’s a lot of voice-over and the dialogue is hilarious. The only complaint I have on the technical front is that the right click function was wasted. I found moving units to often be a bit tedious, and most RTS games use the right click function for moving and attacking. In casual games you often want to reduce complexity, so I understand their choice not to do that, but it would have been nice to have it as a toggled option for those of us who are used to the more standard scheme.

In any case, this game is a really fun time no matter how you spin it, and you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t at least give it a try. Before you know it, you’ll be hunting bandits and prospectin’ with the best of them! Highly recommended.

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(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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