Of course, Vrolijk wouldn’t let us leave without sharing one essential piece of advice: “The other thing that you might not know is that Evil Dead is an amazing movie. It’s really exciting to see players’ reactions.” But there are so many systems and playable characters that you don’t see here. What we’re showing here is a very small taste of it. “Of course, we still have some RNG in the game, because it’s still a strategy game, but it’s a lot more manageable, and it gives the player power to fight against it.”īefore our time was up, Vrolijk let us know exactly what to expect from Hard West 2. “I think it’s a bigger game than people realize. We found it to be a really nice way to counter RNG,” says Vrolijk. So it makes it an active gameplay element. “So the game constantly tracks this, and it gives you the ability to use your Luck Points to increase your chances of making a shot. Get shot, or miss when you fire? You’ll be “rewarded” with Luck Points as a form of compensation. He explains the Luck System in-depth – essentially, you’ll get Luck Points to spend in exchange for some unfortunate plays. That was well received by players, but we always felt like it was lacking interactions,” Vrolijk tells us. You will be aware of it, but you can’t really influence it. But it was passive, so it worked in the background. “When we did the first Hard West we had the Luck System. The final big change introduced in Hard West 2 is the Luck System, which was present in the original game, but takes on a life of its own here. The system fit the fantasy, but it also allowed us to innovate the genre.” But it completely changes the feel of combat because it rewards you for taking risks, and rewards you for being aggressive, whereas a game like XCOM doesn’t really do that. “If you kill an enemy during your turn you get all of your action points back, very easy to explain. The first way that I’m the most excited about is Bravado State,” Vrolijk explains. “What we decided was that we wanted to have a more aggressive turn-based strategy game, so we’ve innovated in a few key ways. The goal was to enhance the gameplay, as you’d expect, and the Bravado State does a great job of incentivizing risky plays in the heat of battle.
“So now we have a deeper narrative that follows the same characters in one story from beginning to end.” A lot of players complained that it was really difficult to track the story,” Vrolijk laments. “The first Hard West had a very fractured story, it would jump through periods, characters, and so on from chapter to chapter. One of those lessons focused on improving storytelling. It’s easier for us to do this than work on a brand new genre.” “Thankfully, we’ve also worked on quite a few strategy games at this point. Lessons came mostly from the player base, like what worked and what didn’t work, and then we spent more time designing how we wanted to address that,” Vrolijk tells us. “We spent a lot of time just listening to what players have to say. Of course, the most valuable place to glean insight when making a sequel is the feedback to the first game. In a desperate attempt to save yourself, you suggest playing a gamer of Poker with the devil, and lose, of course.” “You do the foolish thing, you fight them, and you lose. Suddenly we have magic and witchcraft, and we meet the baddie of the game, who may or may not be the devil himself.” Vrolijk explains. Near the end of the mission demons show up. “You actually get to play the whole train heist while moving. It’s turn-based, but that hasn’t stopped the team from creating a sense of motion and urgency. Cowboys shoot at one another from behind cover and between train cars, while more on horses ride alongside the train to assist. But not all stages are static, as the first stage from the demo we played has you fighting with your gang aboard a moving train.
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