A Western tactics game

Pine Box Ridge

Everybody ends up on the ridge eventually.

Coming to Steam for Windows, Linux and Steam deck. I'm aiming for a free demo this winter.

How a gunfight works

Both sides plan the next five seconds in secret. You lay out blocks on a timeline: draw, fire, move, get down, reload, or just wait. A shot can be snapped off or aimed, and aiming takes time you might not have. Neither of you can see the other's plan. Then both plans run at once, a tenth of a second at a time, and you find out whose was better.

One turn. His first shot goes off at about a second, and he's behind the water trough before your second one lands.

The dice are out in the open. When you plan a shot the game tells you its chance, and after the turn it shows you what it rolled. Cover blocks the parts of you it covers, so kneeling behind a water trough changes where you can be hit as well as how often. Lie flat and you're hard to hit, but you'll be a long time reloading. Same if you take a bad wound to your off arm.

So far there's a duel on Main Street, a four-a-side fight in a corral, a bank job fought between buidlings, and Broken Country, which lays out new ground and new fighters every time.

The saloon

Some fights start at a bar. In the Saloon you can talk to people, lean on them, stand them a drink or pay them off, and each of them is after something you can't see. There are no numbers here. You only get what people let slip, like a hand that won't keep still, or somebody who keeps looking at the door.

What you're carrying matters. Walk in with a rifle and your threats land, but nobody believes you came to talk. If it goes wrong, it turns into a gunfight, played the same way as any other. The fight report also notes whether you shot anybody who had their hands up.

From the devlog

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Mailing list

I'll send an email when there's a demo to play, and not much else.