Thank you Ratalaika Games for sending us the review code!

Virtuous Western is a two-dimensional puzzle game that has you find different and creative ways to kill a certain amount of bandits that come your way and try to prevent you from getting your horse back (which they stole from you). Each of the 30 levels this game has to offer is completely different, getting progressively harder as you go on.

There is a story to Virtuous Western, which I briefly mentioned before, where your horse gets stolen from you and you have to fight to get it back. This is shown through comic strip-style cutscenes, which have very good art and emotion in the characters portrayed.

As I stated earlier, the goal of each level is to kill all of the bandits presented to you. The number of enemies in a level can range from only one to five or more. You have to find different ways the fend off these thieves, as you only get a few shots out of your revolver. Speaking of the revolver, you start off every level with no ammo in your gun. Bullets are found scattered around most levels, and you can only hold three shots. Most levels don’t exceed that amount anyways, but it’s better than there being no limit. The bandits all have guns as well, except they are unable to move. They can also reload, because if they couldn’t, the game would be way too easy (easier than it already is). Now, if using bullets was the only way to kill someone, there would be no motivation to progress through the game, because everything would lack difficulty. As you play, you will be introduced to more methods of elimination, such as shooting a chain that’s hanging a box over one of the horse robber’s heads. Or, almost the complete opposite, throwing dynamite (which you unlock around level 20) onto a stack of more dynamite, which will result in a chain reaction of explosions, death, and revenge.

There is one boss fight in the whole game, on level 30 (the last one). You are placed in an arena with three long platforms directly vertical to each other, connected by ladders. In this battle, you are challenged by a bandit who is taller than the rest, and wields two pistols which he uses to attempt to end your life, jumping from platform to platform. He fires his guns in waves, occasionally pausing to reload. Once he does this, you have to shoot him, reducing his health by one health point (he has five). Your weapon has limited range, though, so you have to get pretty close to him in order to hit him. What I recommend doing is going to the top, and when he stops firing, jump down to whatever floor he was on and shoot his back. In this boss fight, though, I discovered how bad the ladder system is when playing with the joystick. You have to move it basically straight down, which is very hard to do when frantically trying to get away from the boss’s bullets. In normal levels, this isn’t too bad because you have time to get yourself situated, but this guy’s projectiles cannot be jumped over (unlike most enemies). Also, sometimes the ladders will refuse to let you move downwards, forcing you to move up and then down again. I hope I’m not the only person who experienced this pain, but I guess the only solution is to just use the D-pad. Also, there is a second way to play the game called speedrun mode, which literally just adds a timer at the top of your screen and has no other differences to the original levels.

The music played is fitting, but there is only one track that plays throughout all gameplay, and it is very simple. That means no boss music, no menu theme, nothing. On the contrary, I really like the art in the comic cutscenes. The graphics aren’t very good in the actual gameplay, but that’s intended, and pixel art is nice sometimes. The controls are fine, but I think there should be a way to aim the dynamite throwing (it just throws it in a set arc every time).

Morally, there are some minor issues, which are pretty much just one swear word (d*mn) in the opening cutscene, as well as a bit of violence. Although the ESRB rating says that there is blood, that is false and there isn’t any sort of graphic content.

Virtuous Western was pretty fun, although I think the name has a missed opportunity to have it be a cool alliteration, as well as the fact that it might be better with a few more enemy types (there are only two, which are barely different). It is fairly family friendly, if you ignore the first cutscene, and I’d say it’s worth the money.