West of Dead

Upstream Arcade’s West of Dead is an impressive roguelike. With a solid twin-stick shooting system, West of Dead has a more than serviceable gameplay loop. However, the game is truly anchored by it’s incredible visuals and art design. Add on top of this an excellent voice performance and unique sense of worldbuilding, and you’ve got a roguelike formidable in any standoff.

Other games have explored the same themes and mechanics as West of Dead, but rarely has it all come together with such cohesion. The fight's always fair in West of Dead, however brutally difficult it may be, and it always feels like you're enduring it for a reason. The drip-feed of information's expertly judged, and the haunting Purgatory, Wyoming backdrop it plays out on has a way of getting under your skin.

The game's NPCs say the same exact lines at the start of every run. It becomes a drag to re-run facsimiles of the same levels again and again: They're similar enough that it feels like you have them memorized, even if the details change. When you spend too long in Purgatory, it starts to look a lot like hell.