How did we miss Wild Bastards?
As with Void Bastards, Wild Bastards has you plot a course through the stars to achieve your goals, stopping along the way to shoot and loot. Each planet is a map of its own (which reminds me a bit ofGriftlands?), with nodes offering fights, rewards, and objectives, plus a hustle to exfiltrate. Along the way, you’ll resurrect more members of the Wild Bastards, who have different weapons and abilities (and dang, they look cool). You’ll be able to pick three characters for each mission, though they’re not fighting alongside you, functioning more like loadouts you can switch between at will. Then there’s a management layer to buy power-ups and items, keep your gang healthy and happy, level up to score new perks, and so on. You can see all that by watching the video, yeah?
Wild Bastards is due to launchon Steamfor Windows later this year. It’s also headed to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Xeries XS. While Void was published by Humble Games, this one is coming through Maximum Entertainment.
Our Graham was lukewarm on the first one, describing it in ourVoid Bastards reviewas “a game with two halves: the wrapper of starmaps and crafting trees and character traits which excites and entices me with its possibilities, and its shooter core that ultimately fails to manifest those systems in interesting ways amid the ship-boarding and mutant-fighting.” I wonder if that will shake out different in Wild Bastards, where different missions might better suit particular characters who could be run down or feuding, creating problems and pulling you towards solutions while you root, toot, and shoot.
Disclosure: Cara Ellison, aformer RPS columnistand my former flatmate, worked on Void Bastards but I don’t believe she’s working on this? I also once met Blue Manchu creative director Ben Lee and enjoyed a conversation about Godzilla movies.
