Have you ever had moments in your life where you feel as if you’ve been cursed? This week has been that week for me. Cursed to be addicted to the challenge and suffering in the jaws of defeat. Join me on this cursed journey through Blood West developed and published by, Hyperstrange.

Blood West is an immersive, stealth, first-person shooter, horror, set in a wicked Wild West. Brought back to life by strange native spirits, you will explore and scavenge, while building up your arsenal and gaining powerful perks. Hunt your enemies quietly or meet them with guns blazing. In order for your soul to find peace you must seek out the evil lurking in this world and overcome the many obstacles in your way. Being a non-linear story, the way it unfolds is really on the player. For me, I tried to reach each point as quickly as possible, and I ended up suffering immense pain as a result. Thankfully, with some super sneaking, careful planning, and execution, you’ll begin to uncover a story that is more than interesting enough to keep you coming back for more.

Achieving the relatively simple quest objectives is no easy task. You’ll need to scavenge for resources, sneak around, and plan your assault on the enemy before executing the plan flawlessly, or, end up being punished so hard it will make your head spin. Upon each rage-inducing death, the player will receive a soul flaw; debuffs that will further hinder your progress. When you’ve got yourself three soul flaws, these will turn into curses, such as a reduction of your stamina by 50%.

Curses can be removed by either visiting the totem and completing the objectives set or by using a potion, which I usually didn’t have enough money to buy from the vendor. At one point early on, I had so many curses that I could barely run 10 paces without running out of breath, and one hit from an enemy would leave me bleeding out and dying within seconds.

Suffering like this so early on is straight-up torment and feels seriously cursed. Once I started to adapt and utilise more of the stealth mechanics, I found myself starting to enjoy the challenge that lay in front of me.

Surviving the brutal enemy encounters and completing quest objectives will net you XP and award skill points upon the glorious level up. Investing hard-earned skill points into one of four categories: Melee, ranged, vitality, and ranger. These will grant you small buffs toward your character, like increasing stamina and reloading faster. Even with the small buffs, I never felt like I was just going to run in with guns blazing and melting faces.

Resources for survival are scarce and hard to come by, so scavenging the dead for useful materials that can be traded at the safe zone for essentials like ammo, health potions, and bandages is a must. Also on offer from the traders are often a few different weapons that can be purchased, provided you have enough money, and some of these weapons are unique which adds to the risk vs reward.

Unique weapons are not only more powerful than their other variants, but they also come with additional benefits like being more accurate and reloading faster. Using the unique variant also comes with its own risk in that they also carry a debuff that can cause physical damage to the player just for firing it. What are you prepared to risk?

General movement and overall combat are fairly satisfying, except for a few small caveats that let it down slightly. Standard guns feel unnecessarily slow to fire and reload, even with the reload trick perk purchased, I felt like it needed more of a reduction. Body shots in succession with the lever rifle often ended up not registering a hit or two. Sneaking up on an enemy and attacking when they are unaware of your presence not only does the most damage, but it’s also the most satisfying.

While there is support for a game controller to be used, there simply aren’t enough buttons on one to map all of the inputs in use. If you are willing to sacrifice a few inputs, it’s really quite good with a controller, though the best experience will be a mouse and keyboard.

The low-poly retro art style gives me old-school Doom meets Resident Evil-type vibes, and this fits in quite nicely with the Western horror theme. It’s modern enough to have a very smooth gameplay with no visual blemishes but retro enough to make you remember just how unforgiving games of that era could be.

Level design on each map is structured nicely with plenty of different pathways, caves, and buildings to explore, though this is let down by the heavy recycling of the same assets throughout. The enemy models that are utilised also quite heavily remind me of a cross between old-school Doom and Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare. I would have loved to have seen a bit more variety in the enemy throughout.

After a few hours of hearing the same looping ambient backing track, I was completely done with the game music. Whilst the accompanying music did fit well with the theme it just became annoying and needs further attention. Hearing the splatter of blood as you are tearing into an enemy’s flesh with the melee weapons is a very satisfying squelch. Guns sound fairly realistic for the time period, though the spent shotgun shells do sound a little off as they hit the ground, and with solid vocal performances throughout, my personal favourite has to be the talking Totem. I can’t put my finger on it but this thing just creeps me out.

Overall, Blood West is one of the most cursed, rage-inducing, and challenging games I’ve ever played. Blood West will challenge even the most seasoned of players, and the risk is most certainly worth the reward. With a little polish in some areas, this could easily become a cult classic.

Written by: Gary Nielsen