Well toot my lizards, Void Bastards is rustling up a space-western sequel
How did we miss Wild Bastards?
'The Wild Bastards' is about the best name I've heard for a gang of alien outlaws in a space-western, good enough that let's skip past the fact that the game was announced last year and we've only just noticed. Wild Bastards is the follow-up to Void Bastards, 2019's roguelikelike first-person shooter about a prisoner in a corporate nightmare forced to raid derelict spaceships on a wild goose chase. This time, it's leaning into crime, jaunting across the galaxy to resurrect a game of legendary outlaws, the Wild Bastards. Allow me to repeat that name: the Wild Bastards. Alright, now come watch the gameplay trailer.
As with Void Bastards, Wild Bastards has you plot a course through the stars to achieve your goals, stopping along the way to shoot and loot. Each planet is a map of its own (which reminds me a bit of Griftlands?), with nodes offering fights, rewards, and objectives, plus a hustle to exfiltrate. Along the way, you'll resurrect more members of the Wild Bastards, who have different weapons and abilities (and dang, they look cool). You'll be able to pick three characters for each mission, though they're not fighting alongside you, functioning more like loadouts you can switch between at will. Then there's a management layer to buy power-ups and items, keep your gang healthy and happy, level up to score new perks, and so on. You can see all that by watching the video, yeah?
Wild Bastards is due to launch on Steam for Windows later this year. It's also headed to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Xeries XS. While Void was published by Humble Games, this one is coming through Maximum Entertainment.
Our Graham was lukewarm on the first one, describing it in our Void Bastards review as "a game with two halves: the wrapper of starmaps and crafting trees and character traits which excites and entices me with its possibilities, and its shooter core that ultimately fails to manifest those systems in interesting ways amid the ship-boarding and mutant-fighting." I wonder if that will shake out different in Wild Bastards, where different missions might better suit particular characters who could be run down or feuding, creating problems and pulling you towards solutions while you root, toot, and shoot.
Disclosure: Cara Ellison, a former RPS columnist and my former flatmate, worked on Void Bastards but I don't believe she's working on this? I also once met Blue Manchu creative director Ben Lee and enjoyed a conversation about Godzilla movies.