Bang! Howdy
If you’re like me and a sucker for the old American Wild West, then you’ll likely love Bang! Howdy. Brought to you by Three Rings Design, this is a very slick Java-based game that features a roleplay style of gaming with semi-turn based missions.
There is multiplayer as well as AI play, and an extensive tutorial that I’d recommend playing before getting into the game proper.
This here's Frontier Town, your main base of operations
Gameplay
The game is, strangely enough, set in the Wild West. You have a chance to do everything from rustle steers to gather gold to fight over land. Once in a mission the aim is fairly simple. Use the units you’ve got to defeat your opponent at whatever the mission is, thus scoring more points than them. To do this involves a combination of killing your opponent’s units to accumulating more of whatever the mission objective is. If it’s a goldrush mission, for example, you’ll need to collect as many gold nuggets as you can, deposit them in your base and guard them from your opponent, while taking as many from him (either from his base or his units) as possible within the allotted time.
Units range from a Tactician to a Dirigible to a Sharpshooter, each with specific strengths and weaknesses. Missions are played in semi-realtime. Once you give a unit an order it will move or attack, but then a few seconds need to pass before the unit can move again. You can give it an order in advance though, which is good.
Death to a unit is only temporary, but it takes some time for them to respawn, so losing a powerful unit early in the mission can be a real setback.
Lookee, the General Store. Upgrade your duds and buy weapons and cards and what-not too
In town, you can visit the Barber’s to set up what your avatar will look like, then you can wander over to the General Store to buy equipment and goodies, if you’ve got enough scrip. After that you might want to head to the Corral to practice with various units, and from there to the Saloon to engage in multiplayer action and improve your ranking. At the Sheriff’s Office you can play against computer players and earn some scrip so you can upgrade your weapons and clothes.
A neat feature of the game is the card system. You find, and can buy, cards that offer improvements to units within a mission. For example, if you equip yourself with a Repair card and use it on your Tactician when his health gets low this’ll put him back to full strength. Other temporary improvements appear on the mission map too. Perhaps a horseshoe appears. Pick it up and the unit that does so will find his range increased until he dies.
There are two towns currently available in the game — Frontier Town and Indian Trading Post — and a third — Boom Town — on the way. These towns offer vastly different missions, units and equipment.
It’s very easy to lose yourself in this game. In fact, each time I’ve played it I’ve become so engrossed that I’ve forgotten to take screenshots. Fortunately the website has a very impressive array, of which I’ve pilfered a couple for this here review.
Technical
Technically the game is very sound. The graphics are excellent, the music and sound effects are good (you can actually purchase specific soundtracks from the General Store too) and there’s no discernable lag or bumps when playing.
Of tiny concern: Google Chrome isn’t fully supported as a browser. It’s possible to play, but not possible to log-in, as your password won’t be recognized. I’m not sure if this is a fault with the game or the browser, but I have noticed it elsewhere with Chrome as well.
Also, to get going you’ll need to download some stuff. This took about ten minutes on my connection, which is middle of the road as far as speed goes. If you’re on a slow connection it may cause problems.
But overall, the game is technically very impressive.
It's all on, pardners!
Multiplayer
This is the most important aspect of the game. To go up in rank, thus unlocking better equipment and personalization features, you’ll need to play against other human opponents. Not to worry, the game is popular so finding matchups in the Saloon shouldn’t be a problem.
You can play up to 4 opponents at a time across a variety of missions, which makes for interesting tactics, as the maps aren’t huge.
Like the rest of the game, there’s not much to fault here either.
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Yeehaw! Steal gold from other prospectors, protect your cattle from rustlers, fight varmints just because they’re there. Good times! | ||||||
Game: Bang! Howdy | Developer: Three Rings Design