Wild Bastards combines first-person shooting with light RPG and strategy elements to tell the story of a gang of outlaws in a science-fiction setting inspired by the United States’ Mythic West. As the main campaign begins, the original gang of thirteen Wild Bastards has been whittled down to two survivors, Spider Rosa and Doc Casino. Just when the pair are cornered by a posse, they are transported aboard a silent, sentient ship called the Drifter. Rosa and Doc’s plan to use the Drifter to escape to a safe haven known as the Homestead is foiled when the ship ignores their commands and retraces their steps back to the graves of the deceased Bastards. Once their former comrades’ bodies are recovered and brought aboard the Drifter, its systems resurrect them and they rejoin the gang. The Wild Bastards don’t know what plan the mysterious ship has in mind for them but it’s clear they will need to reunite their entire crew to execute it. Only upon completion of the Drifter’s unknown mission will the outlaws get a chance to free themselves from the endless pursuit of the corrupt and xenophobic Jebediah Chaste, his murderous children, the Princes, and their armies of relentless Chasteners.

Wild Bastards’ first-person shooting and strategy/RPG elements are divided into different parts of the gang’s quest to resurrect their fallen comrades. Most of the strategy occurs on the map screens where I choose which planets in a sector the Drifter will travel to, and once the outlaws have made planetfall, which areas of the planet they visit in pursuit of their goals.

The topmost map depicts the current sector in space the Drifter travels through, representing roughly one system of planets. From this screen, I can use resources brought aboard the Drifter to affect the status of each gang member. Equippable mods augment their combat abilities. Tonics restore stamina and recover injuries suffered on missions. Sharing a can of beans can restore the peace between two feuding Bastards, who otherwise will refuse to participate in a mission together. Using these tools to ensure the gang is in the best possible condition gives them an edge at their next destination.

The other important decision made on the sector map is the route the Drifter follows to the planet where the next Bastard’s grave lies. Before locking in a destination, I can highlight every location adjacent to the Drifter and preview what may be found there. Rewards found on planets, including new mods, tonics, and beans, may incentivize the gang to take a zig-zagging path through the sector. A more tantalizing reward are aces, special cards that power up a Bastard’s RPG statistics when it is returned to the Drifter; without enough literal aces up their sleeves, the outlaws will eventually be outgunned by Chaste’s forces. Deterrents take the form of enemies which patrol the planets. Each Bastard’s weapons and abilities are highly specialized and putting them up against enemy types they are unsuited for can embroil them in battles that are extremely difficult, if not impossible to win. At each destination in a sector, I must evaluate the potential rewards against the difficulty the Bastards will have with the Chasteners who protect the area.

Wild Bastards has a well thought out and specific set of rules for how space travel works within its setting. One of the most severe is how destructive traveling the long distances between sectors is to small objects. When the Bastards have finished with their business and travel on to a new sector, everything they have found there—mods, tonics, beans, a currency called Cramm, and any other item they can pick up and carry around with them—is destroyed. This encourages free use of the items the Bastards discover, purchase, or liberate in each sector. Tonics may as well be used to heal injuries or beans used to improve relationships as soon as possible. The item will be lost after the next Bastard is revived anyway.

Another way Wild Bastards’ unique imagination of space travel impacts strategy is how the Drifter navigates each sector. It would be too easy to reunite the gang if the ship could fly directly to the planet where a Bastard’s grave is found. Each planet in a sector is equipped with a device called a Jump Lock which prevents a ship from leaving the planet’s orbit until it has been disabled or destroyed. These security systems force the Drifter to pick its way across each sector one planet at a time. Destroying the Jump Locks to open a path to the next planet leads to the next layer of Wild Bastards’ strategic gameplay. 

Where the sector map is mostly concerned with managing the Bastards’ status and moving the Drifter across an entire system of planets, the planetary map focuses on moving the Bastards which have been deployed to a specific planet in that sector. Bastards are deployed in groups of two to four to a planet’s surface; the larger the planet, the more Bastards may be deployed. The Drifter drops my chosen outlaws directly on the Jump Lock’s location, which they immediately blow up. The rest of the mission focuses on guiding the group, traveling in pairs or singularly, across the planet to the Stairway, another device that returns every deployed Bastard instantly to the Drifter when it is touched.

To reach the Stairway, the deployed Bastards cross dense road networks that zigzag the surface of the planet. The intersections of these networks are scattered with useful items Bastards can pick up as they pass by. Some, like health packs, armor pickups, and personal teleporters, are only useful on that planet. Other pickups include the mods, tonics, beans, and aces which are carried back to the Drifter and used on the sector map following the mission. 

Buildings and anonymous non-player characters also appear on the road networks that provide useful services. With a few exceptions, they may be used for free and often multiple times during a mission. Doctors and blacksmiths can restore any health or armor an outlaw loses in combat. If the randomly generated maps are being especially stingy on certain needed items, the Bastards can buy exactly what they need at a shop—provided they have enough Cramm. Curiously, despite the gang’s outlaw reputation, these shops cannot be robbed. Especially useful are the teleporters that instantly transport an outlaw pair to any other unlocked teleporter on the map. Even if a resource is on the other side of the planet, a nearby teleporter potentially makes it a few steps away.

Movement on the planetary map is performed in turns. Each pair of outlaws can move a certain number of spaces along the road on each turn, with each turn representing a single day. It’s tempting to send outlaws in all directions, gathering as many collectables as possible before heading to the Stairway, but this is made risky by Jebediah Chaste’s bloodthirsty children, the Princes. 

The Princes are alerted to the Bastards’ presence on a planet upon the destruction of its Jump Lock and will arrive in a few days to intercept them. The Princes are tough and powerful and are accompanied by a warning when they appear: “It’s time to grab what loot you can and skedaddle to the Stairway.” Fights against them are winnable, especially by a Bastard outfitted with powerful mods, but I still must weigh the risk of challenging them with any valuables still lingering on the map. It’s often more prudent to leave the planet as soon as possible than risk scarce recovery resources by challenging the powerful foe.

The Princes are not the only way the Bastards can get into shootouts on the planetary map. Planets are divided up into small road clusters connected by chokepoints. Chasteners set up roadblocks at these chokepoints which must be defeated before the Bastards may travel to the roads they block or use any of the resources found there. Roving Chastener bands also patrol the roads. Once an outlaw pairing makes contact with a roadblock or patrol, Wild Bastards jumps into the familiar first-person shooting perspective as I take direct control of the outlaws and help them kill their enemies.

It is during these first-person shootouts that Wild Bastards is least complicated. Bastards are dropped into an arena to fight the Chasteners they have encountered. I can switch between paired outlaws with the press of a button. Everything else is a familiar first-person shooting battle: Point to aim the Bastard’s weapon and press the trigger to fire. When every enemy is dead, the Bastards win and are transported back to the planetary map.

These shootouts occur in randomly generated arenas that evoke Mythic West tropes. Some arenas resemble desert towns straight out of High Noon, complete with a multi-level saloon. Other battles are fought in abandoned military bases like the many that dotted the Mythic West’s frontier. The less-iconic snowy and swampy settings are remembered here as well. The mountain levels feature broad cliffs overlooking narrow valleys. Bogs are filled with high grass where both Bastard and Chastener may wait in ambush just feet away from poisonous water that eats away at their health like acid. All these familiar settings are given sci-fi twists like holographic furniture, high definition wanted posters, low gravity atmospheres, and energy domes protecting buildings from meteor strikes.

One of Wild Bastards’ stranger quirks is how its ladders function. Almost every map features them, allowing the Bastard player characters and Chastener non-player characters to reach the top of guard towers, cliffs, and buildings. There is no climbing animation. When a character touches a ladder, they are teleported to its top or bottom in an instant regardless of its height. This is disorienting, often leaving the player character a sitting duck to any Chastener waiting in ambush on the other side. If this function is meant to be a futuristic imagining of ladders which behave more like teleporters, it fails. The ladders appear to be ladders, not teleporters, so they feel lazy and incomplete instead.

The Chasteners that populate these maps come in only a few varieties. Most are human, or at least human-presenting, contrasting with the obviously robotic or extraterrestrial Bastards. Gunhands are the most basic variety, wandering the battlefield looking to plug any outlaw with their six shooters. There are also Hunters, who shoot from across the arena and run when a Bastard comes close; Bushwhackers, the Hunters’ counterpart who camp around corners and behind cover hoping to ambush outlaws with their shotguns; and Ironclads, heavily armored soldiers with rapid fire cannons who trudge determinedly towards their foes as soon as a shootout begins. Chasteners are often accompanied by trained animals as well. Kyotes are the most numerous, tiny blue devildogs who make up for their fragility with speed and swarming numbers.

At first I am tempted to play Wild Bastards’ shooting parts as though it is DOOM, charging into the center of the map planning to blast anything that moves before it can blast me. I am quickly taught that this is a bad strategy. The Chasteners are effective at trapping players who employ such reckless tactics in a fatal duck shoot. Bastards are remarkably fragile, especially at the start of a campaign before they’ve discovered their ace cards, and quickly fall to enemy gunfire. It is far more effective to win combat encounters slowly and deliberately, circling the arena’s perimeter to catch Chasteners by surprise and shooting them before they can react. Wild Bastards may resemble a DOOM-style “boomer shooter.” In practice, success is found through playing it like a tactical one. 

Where Wild Bastards’ first-person shooting finds its depth is in its array of player characters. Every playable Bastard is distinct, possessing a personalized weapon with unique attacking style, powerful active skills that dramatically impact the state of the battlefield, and innate skills that subtly differentiate them in combat.

Spider Rosa and Doc Casino, the two Bastards I may play as from the start of the campaign, are good examples of the player characters’ uniqueness. Rosa is equipped with two five-chamber revolvers called Calavera Uno and Calavera Dos. They don’t deal much damage but are accurate up to a medium distance and fire quickly. Doc uses a shotgun called The Kicker. It’s a typical videogame shotgun, powerful when it connects, but with wide spread that makes its aim terrible beyond the point-blank. 

The applications of these firearms in combat are obvious. It’s the characters’ other attributes which make them more interesting. Rosa has four arms and the dexterity to multitask with them; she can reload one of her revolvers while firing the other, letting her keep up a near-endless barrage of gunfire. Casino’s gambler nature is reflected in The Kicker, which randomly acquires new attributes. In one battle, it might have increased ammo capacity. In the next, it will have a narrower spread. Sometimes it gains no boost at all. Counting on Doc’s performance in an upcoming battle is literally a gamble.

Rosa and Doc are further differentiated by an ultimate ability called a Stunt. Enabled by canteen pickups called Juice found scattered throughout arenas, Stunts are purposefully limited because they are deliberately powerful. Rosa can drop a hologram that attracts the attention of the Chasteners. This allows her to easily fire on distracted enemies and take advantage of the bonus damage she deals when shooting Chasteners in the back. Doc’s Stunt is less situational and perhaps even more powerful. Roulette randomly kills any enemy on the battlefield, instantly. Even the Princes are vulnerable. It’s a viable tactic to sneak through levels with Doc in search of Juice pickups, wiping out the Chastener forces one by one using Roulette without ever confronting them directly.

The remaining eleven Bastards’ kits and abilities are just as varied. Sarge, a towering figure resembling a bipedal horse, makes up for the low damage of his repeating rifle, the Retirer 10mm, with incredible accuracy even from long distances. This advantage is further enhanced by his cybernetic eye that highlights Chasteners’ locations with a VR information box inspired by the Terminator. Smoky, a perpetually immolating skeleton, creates bursts of fire with his Skimming Sauce by pointing at where he wants it to happen and causes nearby enemies to burst into flames with a snap of his fingers. The snake-like Hopalong is equipped with a laser lasso that can make him seem useless in a gunfight. I still deploy him to almost every planet when I discover he has doubled movement range on the planetary map, letting him maneuver around patrolling Chasteners to scoop up nearly every collectable while other Bastards with more versatile weapons do the fighting.

Like many videogames built on equal parts cunning design and emergent randomness, Wild Bastards’ difficulty can sometimes be incoherent. Most of the time, cautious play in shootouts will find success, especially when I’ve practiced enough to know which Bastards to utilize against which enemies. Sometimes the videogame decides to throw more random factors at me than I’m able to overcome. In one instance, too many Bastards may begin feuding with each other, forcing me to leave one or more with skillsets I really need on the next planet behind on the Drifter. I hope to find beans on the planet to rectify this issue, but find none. These problems cascade until the entire gang is wiped out and I get a game over.

Game overs have a penalty, but not a severe one. If the entire gang is wiped out, they are knocked back to the beginning of the sector and must try to cross it again. Sectors can take several hours to cross, depending on how thorough I am being, but it’s a lot better than having to start the entire campaign over. Any aces gathered during the failed attempt remain with their owners, so they will even be powered up for their next attempt. The exception is if I toggle on the Iron Man mode. When this is activated, any time the gang is wiped out sends the entire party back to the beginning of the story. It is intended for those looking for the greatest penalties for failure.

As often as randomness makes Wild Bastards harder, it can also make it easier. Much, much easier. I feel this especially on the planetary maps. One NPC, the Sneak Thief, lets the Bastards claim any valuable collectable on the map—any valuable collectable, including the planet’s mission objective. An item that may be used during the outlaws’ turn, the Beacon, immediately ends the mission and recalls the deployed outlaws to the Drifter as though they had reached the Stairway. It’s entirely possible to wrap up a sector by using a Sneak Thief to collect a Bastard’s body and then use a Beacon to return to the Drifter without participating in a single gunfight. Even the campaign’s final mission may be completed this way. All it takes is a favorable planet configuration.

Some difficulty I experience is rooted in how some Bastards are plainly better in combat than others. The first few additions to the gang like Smoky and Hopalong are situational at best in shootouts, forcing me to rely on Rosa and Doc in almost every encounter. With no decent counter to long-range or swarming attackers, early skirmishes with Hunters and Kyotes can feel insurmountable. These rough and dirty early hours level out almost immediately when Preach is revived. Modeled after a wandering evangelist and wielding a gatling gun that spews bullets, Preach introduces much-needed healing passives during and after combat that make taking a few shots much less punishing. She proves to be a crutch for the remainder of the campaign.

I go into Wild Bastards knowing that it is built on randomly constructed scenarios and levels, so I am surprised to learn that it starts with a stable narrative. No matter who plays this videogame, they always begin with the Spider Rosa and Doc Casino being carried by the Drifter to resurrect their deceased gang members, who are always resurrected in the same order and have the same conversations and conflicts at the same points in the story.

I am not sure this rigid structure is to Wild Bastards’ benefit. It’s reassuring for a prospective player to know they may struggle in the early sectors, but the difficulty evens out once Preach is added to the party. They know for certain she will rejoin the gang at the same point in their campaign as she did in mine. Every other element of their campaign will otherwise be randomly generated. It feels like the order the Bastards are revived should be random as well, but for some hasty and ill-considered reason a set narrative is imposed on every player’s initial experience.

What’s strange is, after I finish this narrative campaign, a new campaign is unlocked in which the order the Bastards join the party, including the initial pair, is randomized. This creates nightmarish possibilities like beginning with overly-specialized player characters like Spike and Kaboom on board the Drifter and not recruiting broadly useful ones like Preach, Sarge, or Billy until near the end of the story. This is also much more interesting to play and creates a more unique experience for every player. This feels like Wild Bastards’ true and natural form. By the time I unlock the randomized campaign, I am tired enough from the narrative campaign that I have little interest in playing further.

Also unlocked upon conclusion of the narrative campaign are challenges. These scenarios pit an ultra-specialized group of Bastards against a single, punishing sector. There are fourteen in total and each one completed unlocks new modifiers for the campaign. These add on top of the randomized and Iron Man modifiers to create dozens of possible combinations for playing through Wild Bastards. If the narrative campaign, which is essentially a 15-hour long tutorial, convinces you, there’s potentially hundreds of hours of enjoyment to be found here.

I was drawn to Wild Bastards based on a previous game made by its developer, Void Bastards. They share more in common than a developer and their titles. Both take place in science fiction settings made tangible by comic book-inspired graphics and utilize heavily randomized campaigns to keep me coming back. Wild Bastards isn’t Void Bastard’s sequel, yet it carries the same spirit. So when I directly compare the two, I am unhappy to be disappointed.

Wild and Void Bastards feel most markedly different in their sense of humor. Void Bastards evokes quintessentially English comedies like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Brazil. The protagonists of these stories are trapped in sci-fi dystopias ruled by bureaucracies so vast, inscrutable, and cruel that they can only be conveyed and understood through dark humor. 

Wild Bastards feels more American in its sensibilities. Being drawn from the United States’ Mythic West traditions, this is inevitable. It never hits the same comedic notes, perhaps because violent outlaws on the run from a murderous authority figure is much less absurd than Void Bastards’ protagonists being reanimated from powder stored in potato chip bags then pressured into performing menial and deadly paperwork. Maybe Wild Bastards isn’t supposed to be funny at all. It tries for jokes, such as Smoky the cook’s obsession with beans and the other outlaws’ exasperation at their limited menu options. They don’t land with Void Bastards’ deadpan delivery and vicious satire. I don’t fault Wild Bastards for trying something new. I do fault it for trying something new and being less successful than what its predecessor did before.

The comic book visuals feel like a step backwards too. This aesthetic is accomplished with flat, simple colors for the neon environments. Character models are what really sell the illusion. They are created with flat polygons, as though they have been drawn on paper, cut out with scissors, then erected upright in an 3D environment. Each are animated with a minimal number of frames, causing them to appear to slide when they move. The Mythic West setting adds an additional layer to this effect. Enemies sliding out from behind cover sometimes gives the appearance of an old arcade lightgun shooting videogame, which themselves are extensions of the shooting galleries that were popular in 1900s theme parks.

Void Bastards utilizes these comic book visuals in interesting ways. Cutscenes are created from small animated panels, as though a comic book is coming to life on my screen. Many sound effects are accompanied by an onomatopoeic word on screen, like a comic book artist embellishing action with stylized word art that represents a sound effect. I can take advantage of this effect by crouching near doors and using the visualized sounds to deduce which enemies are on the other side. Wild Bastards has none of these flourishes. Its cutscenes consist of plain character portraits beside text boxes. When Chasteners call out to each other, there is a visual effect that lets me see where they are in the arena, but it’s the same effect for every enemy type.

I hoped that Wild Bastards would be a continuation of Void Bastards’ wicked humor and excellent visual design. Those elements are echoed here, but like an echo they feel reduced, not enhanced.

Wild Bastards is greater than the sum of its parts, though not by much. All of its elements feel light. Its strategy and management elements on the sector and planetary maps have good fundamentals. Once I understand these fundamentals, they’re easy to abuse, until only a fateful roll of the die can put the Bastards in an inescapable situation. Its first-person shooting is functional; shootouts feel stacked against the Bastards to start, but as more of the gang is reunited—especially the broken ones—the difficulty levels out. With the right strategy and crew, the shooting becomes routine, even boring. Unlockable modifiers do much to inject variety and challenge back into events, though slogging through the narrative campaign that seems to purposefully present Wild Bastards’ elements in the least interesting way possible makes getting to them a chore. As a spiritual followup to Void Bastards, Wild Bastards disappoints. As a randomized space western shoot ’em up on its own merits, it gets the job done, though fans of both strategy and first-person shooters will be better satisfied by other videogames.