Curse of the Deadwood

The satisfying thockthockthock of bullets hitting wood! As of summer 2023, Deadwood runs solid on my Steam Deck, so the performance issues people had at launch have been improved for sure. Controls are great, gameplay is the good kind of hectic that becomes meditative when you get into the zen of it. I finished in about 10-12 hours, and I admit I had to turn the difficulty down because it does bring a challenge, especially tackling the bosses solo (the subtle auto-aim helps). It has absolutely gorgeous art, great storytelling, music you can jam to - I kept finding myself dashing or shooting in time to it. I also love the enemy sound effects, the crystal plinks and xylophone noises some enemies make when you hit them. It's all very musical and whimsical and pretty, as you cut a path of absolute carnage through a bajillion wooden baddies. My favorite weapon? The SawMauler. As opposed to twin-stick shooters with procedural levels or abstract art style, this game feels carefully crafted all over from its levels to the cutscenes. There's so much depth and attention to detail. It's a surprise, maybe even a tragedy that it isn't better known.

[b] Highlights for a potential buyer: [/b] - Tech/stability: Very spotty performance as other reviews have mentioned. My i9 / 64gb ram / 3090 / SSD rig still managed to chug occasionally which really shouldn't be possible. I also had more than one bug that blocked progress or made things unreasonably difficult. - Gameplay: Pretty basic overall which made the game's length feel incredibly drawn out. Exploring the huge levels dotted with secrets started out fun but became more of a chore than anything by the end as there was just so much to grind through. - Art: Really pleasant 3D art and nice enough 2D art cutscenes but the 3D art might've flown a bit too close to the sun based on the stability. - Story: Serviceable for sure but I'm not sure it really added much to the gameplay and it never motivated me to continue. - Accessibility: Difficulty settings are present and so is button remapping. Tons of autostarting cutscenes that can't be paused, only skipped. No subtitles during cutscenes either. If you have an incredible computer, really like twin sticks, and maybe want to play a game with a younger sibling or child this could be a decent pickup to fill some hours and chat. Otherwise I'd pass. [b] Feedback for the devs: [/b] - Having the first two weapons' colors match health/energy definitely confused me for an embarrassingly long time. I couldn't figure out why the crystals weren't giving me health until I realized those were for the ammo. This is probably on me but would've been avoided if two other random colors were chosen there for those weapons. - Respeccing skilltrees was a good touch. Definitely allowed me to play with each new gun as I got it to see if I liked it and adapt to certain situations on the fly. - There were several points in the game where dying and reloading the level reloaded it to the wrong state. When getting to the village early on all of the build assets were missing. One time ("Cross Pegetto Canyon") the bridge to cross was missing and would consistently despawn if I explored instead of going over it immediately after reloading. Many times if I died after lowering a barrier when I respawned I'd correctly load past that barrier but it'd be back in place (not a problem, just technically incorrect state). - On standard difficulty the end of the game really was a slog. With so many endlessly spawning enemies and so many that were bullet sponges at some point I started just trying to dash through the levels and even that took ages. - Small note but during one of my attempts at the final boss fight, the boss was fully invisible during the second stage. In an already difficult boss that was pretty frustrating.

So far after playing the first level its seems really fun and the performance it pretty good. It only slowed down just a little when i moved the rock. I will play some more this week and update. I was a KS backer and finally got the game. So far I am happy with it. Edit** played a little more, still recommend, i would say very worth it as a $15 game.

狗都不玩

This game is absolutely gorgeous! I'm not sure why it isn't getting more traction. There have been massive optimizations since the launch and plays great on my Steam Deck. The only thing I'd suggest is playing with a controller if possible. Check it out!

Really pretty game and overall I enjoyed it. It's a pretty hard game and I'm more of a casual gamer, but even playing on hard mode was a fun challenge rather than rage quit worthy.

This game is outright frustrating. I backed the Kickstarter and wanted it to be good, but at the end of the day there are far too many aggravating design decisions and unaddressed bugs. Uninstalling at the final boss fight because whoever designed it doesn't understand the rest of the game, or fun.

The game is very poorly made full of bugs and very bad balance. Not all settings are saved, achievements are broken and unlocked before you've even found any of them. The game has a bad and sometimes corrupt auto save. You can't go through the levels again if you miss something, you have to start the whole game over again, but only for achievements. The game often lags and I had to reduce the settings to a minimum, given that heavy games don't cause this problem. Also, starting a new level or territory does not restore your health and ammo and takes away some of the experience you need for upgrade points. The balance is very bad now with the bosses and weapons. You don't know where the invisible wall is in the game, but the enemy is not hindered by it, and it can even pass through walls, and you can be stopped by grass. The weapons are very inaccurate and even miss very easily, even the slow strike of the stone monster you ride. The game is too big and too empty. There's not even a map and only enemies, a few things with information that are completely useless except for the achievement, a hidden point for upgrades and ammo. But terribly little. The levels are almost the same. The upgrade system is also bad. You can only get certain skills, not all of them are just for weapons and they are very few, and the giant rarely gets some stupid and useless skill and nothing improves you. And the distance is terribly stupid, you pass half of the first territory and you already have almost all the weapons, you get to the third and then you get a new weapon in the last one, but in that time you only get one or two skills for the giant and one in the last territory and that's it. The story is interesting but with a stupid ending, but the individual conversations are either too big or useless or out of place. And that scarecrow with the orange head, if it's so great, why are we here. The game still has bugs and a lot of problems, it's boring and has no point in replaying it, I wouldn't recommend it even if they fix it. This is a lazily made game like most on Steam and otherwise from a long time ago everywhere.

Interesting idea, but optimization right now refouding, pretty hate to wait for 3-5 min on loadings and fps dropps

Don't