West of Dead drops William Mason into Purgatory, Wyoming, in 1888 — a dead man with one memory and a gun. Upstream Arcade’s twin-stick shooter, published by Raw Fury, is out now on PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.
The premise does the heavy lifting. Purgatory is a shifting world that takes its form from the memories, culture or beliefs of the souls who pass through it. Mason wakes with only the memory of a figure in black, and that single thread sets off a chain of events the game frames as mythic. Wendigos and witches share the ground with gun smoke and damnation.
Trailer, via Raw Fury.
William Mason and the Figure in Black
West of Dead is a fast-paced twin-stick shooter played from an isometric, bird’s-eye view. You dodge behind cover, outgun what’s in front of you, and move through procedurally generated hunting grounds. The cover system is the spine of the combat — this is a game about positioning as much as aim.
Step into the boots of the dead man William Mason and descend into the grim and gritty world of Purgatory in this fast-paced twin-stick shooter that’ll put your skills to test.
The procedural generation is the sticking point. It keeps the hunting grounds unknown, which suits a world that reshapes itself around whoever passes through. It also means the levels carry less authored weight than the setting deserves.
A Dark West That Only Goes So Far
The genres stacked here — shooter, tactical, adventure, indie, arcade — describe a game reaching for more than it holds. The tactical layer is real. The adventure layer is thinner. West of Dead is single player only, and that’s the right call for a game built on isolation and damnation.
What lands is the mood. Purgatory in 1888 is a place of sin and damnation, and Upstream Arcade commits to it. The Wild West has rarely been this dark, and the game knows it.
What doesn’t land is variety. Once you’ve learned to dodge behind cover and punish the reload, the loop settles. The shifting world is a strong idea that mostly shows up as rearranged rooms.
Still, the shooting is tight and the setting is doing genuine work. West of Dead is a lean, mean twin-stick shooter with a better premise than most games in the genre manage.
KEY FACTS
– Score: 7.4/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 5 outlets)
– Released: 2020
– Developer: Upstream Arcade
– Publisher: Raw Fury
– Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
– Modes: Single player
– Setting: Purgatory, Wyoming, 1888
The score is the story here. A 7.4 from five outlets is a good game with a real ceiling — the kind of number that says the atmosphere and the cover shooting are worth your time, and the procedural structure is what keeps it from being more. West of Dead is worth playing. It is not the mythic descent its own premise promises.
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