Wild West RPG Boot Hill Heroes on Steam

Hi all! I wanted to drop in and share my game with other indie devs. The game is called Boot Hill Heroes and it is a retro RPG set in the wild west featuring local co-op and an energetic real-time combat system. The store page will tell you all about it.

Learn more at the Boot Hill Heroes Steam Store Page



Boot Hill Heroes fuses elements of spaghetti western film - gunslinging outlaws, brave lawmen, and the untamed wilderness - with classic RPG storyline and gameplay. 90s console RPGs like Final Fantasy, Earthbound and Chrono Trigger created lasting memories and impacted us as gamers. Now, Boot Hill Heroes brings back those experiences while revitalizing the genre with a Wild West spin and innovative new gameplay elements.
It's an experimental combination of old and new ideas intended to bring a new and unique experience to modern gamers and old-school fans alike. It's an epic Wild West adventure packed with excitement, intrigue and a dose of humor.

Key Features
Ordinary, turn-based combat is replaced with a fresh and frenetic real-time system where all players remain engaged in battle and no one is waiting for a turn!
Full soundtrack by Jake ‘virt’ Kaufman (“Shovel Knight”, “Shantae”, “DuckTales Remastered”)!
Play single player or up to four player local co-op. Friends can seamlessly drop-in and take control of a character!
No random battles! See them on the map before engaging!
Charming, detailed sprites with hundreds of unique NPCs!
Sprawling towns and locales to explore, including forests, caves, deserts and a traveling circus!
Fight outlaws and animals! Can you stop a barroom brawl? Can you defeat a gang of raccoons hording precious garbage?
Find job hats and learn new skills to customize your own character classes.
Customize your weaponry with status inflicting effects! Create a gun that fires multiple times, or a lasso that sets enemies on fire!
9-12 hours of RPG goodness with a post-game bonus dungeon and free DLC on the way!
A whopping 52 Achievements! Can you collect every card in the deck?
Kicks off the first game in an epic three-game saga!

I want to share this game with others as well as get some great feedback. This is the first game in a trilogy, so feedback from players is extremely valuable to me. For these reasons, I'm dropping a few free codes here. (Riddles are to prevent bots from stealing codes)

I only ask is that if you use a code, please play the game in its entirety and leave a review.

72ZJ4-2XKZY-KDL7? - First letter of my username here
RRERC-XKJ95-3QNB? - Last letter of the alphabet
YDTPQ-MGQW8-T5Q2? - First letter of ice planet in Star Wars


Enjoy! Please leave me feedback on the game's discussion board on Steam! Now who wants to brofist?

 

took that one, will give it a spin once i have some time.

 

Idiots just cashing in all the codes without writing anything. Bah.

 

Yeah there ought to be a private forum for that.

 

played a little: very mother/earthboundish, which is good. the low res is kinda annoying, combat is sorta hectic, especially with the shitty res. i like that you learn skills from hats. don't like the fact that you cannot turn of music and instead have to mute the entire game.

hm, i think this thread might have a better home in jrpgd, considering how very mother inspired this game is.

 

The option to turn off music and sound effects separately could be added with a patch if players feel strongly about it.

 

would be nice if you added option for combat speed. i just got rosy and combat turned from hectic to annoying. it's kinda weird that combat against a single enemy becomes more difficult when your side gets one more character...

 

It might also have helped if the other two people who snagged codes had bothered to come back and contribute.

 

if it's Earthbound-like, I'm interested. But the whole theme made me want to play Sunset Riders again

 

This game... I read about it some time ago somewhere. Good thing it wasn't dropped and forgotten like many others. I would love to give it a try, but unfortunately the codes have been already been used

 

there was a ice planet in star wars?

 

it's p much earthbound in the wild west, only somewhat worse, because:
- combat is real time, which is really shitty from a singleplayer perspective, as it's also somewhat fast. it does have combat coop, though, just like some of the old action jrpgs on the snes... which i still don't see the point of, as people will just get bored watching you play outside of combat.
- because combat is real time, you only get to slot 4 different commands/skills aka vantages, so options per character are more limited.
- it has the same encounter mechanics/frequency as earthbound, but there seems to be no one-hit autoresolve once you get powerful enough, which helped a great deal making eb combat and running back and forth less annoying.
- hp are a bar instead of number, which i always unnerves me in games where numbers might be somewhat important.
i kinda like it so far, despite the rt derp.

hoth

 

but that was empire strikes back

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

 

First impressions are nice, but the OP did ask for a complete playthrough and review, not first impressions, so we may just have to be patient.

Also, since there was no statement that the code had to go to a Codex member, it may have gone to a non-member user of the site, who will then post the review on Steam instead.





* Yes I'm being (rainbow) optimistic.

 

Do you know how to pause the combat clock?

 

yes, found out about it after i posted and did the horse deliveries, but i'd rather just have a slower speed. the less button presses needed, the better...
combat also seems a bit too easy so far, mostly because block dmg doesn't seem to count as damage for double xp... you can fight chickens or in the barn until you learn block from the starter hat, then use block to get double xp from everything as long as you're solo. it takes only a few minutes to get to lvl 6/7 on chickens and turtles this way, then you can kill a few bullies for one or two levels and start hunting garbage barrel raccoons for loads of double xp and loot, just as long as you alternate between smash and block. i'm lvl 14 now (from all those 2x xp) and just met up with moon dancer, and alternating between block and smash is the only thing i have been doing so far... maybe it gets more difficult later, once enemies start dishing out more status effects.

here are the bugs i found so far: easternmost corner of the barn roof in your home has some layering issues with characters walking beneath it.
when you have multiple party members, the ones following your lead can get stuck and separated. once separated, you can switch to them, then the previous lead will follow them at the current distance, but mirror their movements ignoring obstacles. you can use this to get through any walls, provided there is a feature on the map that allows for the followers to get stuck (like the pond that you can get across on logs in the first wood). positions don't get reset after combat, only after mounting/dismounting.

 

I don't understand what's going on here. Why are the vulture and scorpions together? Are they pals? That doesn't make sense. A vulture is a vertebrate and a scorpion is an arthropod. I don't understand. Help me. I don't understan

 

Level 14 is very high for where you are at. You've convinced me that blocking to gain double xp is an exploit that should be removed.
There's a common criticism that there is a difficulty spike. You'll know when you hit it.

Regarding the battle speed are you aware that if all your characters have selected actions and are charging them then the clock speeds up until swine can take an action?

 

you could just make it similar to dodge and give it some chance to fail, when you'd be hit for double guard damage, which would count normally as damaged, just like a failed dodge.

yes. for me it feels like
single character:
normal too slow, fast a wee bit too slow to just right.
two characters:
normal just right, fast too fast to react/cancel and feels just chaotic, especially when you have different action costs.
and i can only imagine that it will be worse with 3 or 4

the pause is good but pausing becomes very annoying when you are repeating a very fast action over and over again, like trying to trip antelopes when they want to flee, and i get the very strong feeling that i can get in more trips when pausing and selecting action as soon as the previous one executes, than when charging in normal and selecting action shortly before it is charged, though that might be because more actions on my part are involved for a single trip. might test it tomorrow, but for now it's time to sleep.

btw, is there a way to remove weapon enchantments, or can you only fill the empty slots?

 

Not sure I follow, but the battle clock only stops power regeneration. If you already have enough power to do one or more actions, you will be able to do them even if the clock is on.

Anyway, it sounds like the option to adjust the battle speed would significantly improve your experience. It's not a complaint I hear often, but adding an option to adjust the speed would be very easy to add. I recently added an option to adjust the text display speed after a lot of people asked for it.

 

Oh cool, I bought this game for the Vita. Not bad at all, DapperDave.

I'm guessing you never played a JRPG before, huh?

 

Lizard is missing to complete the gang

 

screw you

 

This should be good, indeed.

This, and the fact that:

• "The store page does not do a very good job of clarifying that only the first third of the game is actually complete (except for a single line at the very end of the description), and as such, there really isn't that much of a game here yet."
  - Review on Steam

Doesn't help the game much. But who knows. Since the game is the first game in a trilogy, I guess I will wait until the 3 games are released and buy them in a bundle or whatever if this ever happens. But Earthbound in the west seems like a good thing, yeah.

 

I updated the game today to include an option to adjust the speed of combat. Also, the speed will scale depending on how many members are in your party.