The one thing you need to know about WolfEye Studio’s upcoming debut title Weird West isn’t that it’s a weird take of a wild west story (which it is). But it’s unapologetically an immersive sim.
And in case you need to see what makes an immersive sim tick, this latest dev diary, as narrated by creative director Raphael Colantonio, has you covered.
Essentially, a lot of the game mechanics in Weird West is systems-based, and can interact with each other as a simulation. Water puts out fire. Big gusts of wind form a tornado that can suck items. Fire burns wood, and barrels can store water.
In the short snippet, we can see how these separate systems interact in weird ways, maybe not what the game designers would have intentionally designed it to be able to do that, but totally adheres to the video game logic these systems established.
Stack barrels to climb up a tree to get an egg in a nest. Shoot a barrel of water so you can douse yourself from being burned alive. Let an empty barrel stand upright in the rain to fill it up (and drink from it as health). Get sucked in a tornado with explodable barrels and shoot the tornado for some fireworks.
WolfEye Studios was founded by veterans from Arkane Studios, and despite Weird West being a top-down experience, that immersive sim “0451” lineage is very much apparent in this upcoming game.
Weird West releases on January 11 for the PS4, PC (Steam) and Xbox One.