Wild Bastards Is An “Acid Trippy” Roguelite Western, And A Likely 2024 Award-Winner
I tend to have an indie or two each year that I don’t shut up about. Five years ago, Blue Manchu’s roguelite strategy-shooter, Void Bastards, was that game for me. Now, studio Blue Manchu is back with Wild Bastards, a spiritual successor that retains the sci-fi of the first one but adds a western element to it while expanding and deepening the game’s systems. On top of that, the replacement-level characters, who served Void Bastards satirical story well, are swapped out for a Dirty (baker’s) Dozen of voiced characters, each of whom has their own personalities and relationships with others in the gang.
Put it all together, and you have a game that seems, in my admittedly limited sample, to be even better than its excellent predecessor. With the full game due to launch later this year, I caught up with Blue Manchu’s creative director Ben Lee to talk about how the team landed on another game in the loose “Bastards” series, what lessons it learned from that first game that made Wild Bastards better off, and where the studio may go from here as it continues to create visually captivating and mechanically complex games.
GameSpot: Wild Bastards has a lot of the same DNA as Void Bastards, but it’s not a sequel. Can you talk about how this game found its shape in the years since Void Bastards? When did the team decide to develop another game in the same genre?