If anything, I’m a sucker for media concerning giant robots. I don’t care if it’s Gundam, Battletech, or even Patlabor, a shortcut to getting me interested in anything is telling me about their big, stompy mechs. So, naturally, when I saw the pitch for Bounty Star, a disgraced ex soldier tries to build herself back up by hunting down criminals, piloting her mech, and doing some homesteading in a post-post-apocalyptic take on the American Southwest, I had to know more.
In all honesty, Bounty Star is exactly what it says on the tin. Players take on the role of Clementine, a no-nonsense war veteran who has been with a particularly nasty bout of depression following the loss of a town she was meant to protect. Clem manages to find herself a spit of land, a new robot to pilot, and a few meagre, small-time bounties to get a little cash in her pocket. When not out on a contract, Clem can mind her homestead through farming, reading about the world, or crafting new and exciting ways to take down bounty contracts.
Everything Clem does on the farm feeds back into bounty contracts and missions. Farming leads to cooking, which provides different benefits when out in the field. Crafting isn’t just for exciting new implements of death, but also electrolyzers to create fuel or ammo benches to save you money when you’re out on a job.
“Bounty Star, itself, is drenched with it’s own wild west trappings. The music twangs, the maps are dusty, and everyone has some approximation of an intense American Southwestern accent circa the 1800’s.”
The actual bounty hunting in Bounty Star is about what you would expect from the genre. Start a mission and your big robot is transported to a location with a goal and a set of small, optional goals. Do the big goal and it’s mission success, you’ll get a bunch of cash, and everyone’s happy. Sub goals, such as destroy certain objects on the stage or avoid damage, will net you some smaller additional payouts. Sub goals can even effect the way players pursue a specific contract by asking them to complete it at a certain time of day or with a specific loadout. Furthermore, many bounties will have a different payout if the target is dead or alive.
The controls are fairly simple, Bounty Star is an action game, not a mech simulation, but there is more going on than one might expect. Enemy mechs can have a whole litany of different resistances, making outfitting for a mission something to really consider, and the player’s mech can run into some debilitating heat issues, especially during the hotter parts of the day. It’s an interesting puzzle that can often be solved by just hitting everything with a big hammer repeatedly.
Bounty Star, itself, is drenched with it’s own wild west trappings. The music twangs, the maps are dusty, and everyone has some approximation of an intense American Southwestern accent circa the 1800’s. Clem, herself, seems to be an archetypical warrior poet, finishing every story mission with lengthy, introspective journal entries that always seem to be a page too long. Now, I like Clementine, I like the world, I generally like the story and tone of the game as a whole, but sometimes the music feels like the same song and the people feel like the same people.
Any other criticisms I have around Bounty Star are from a lack of polish. The art is usually great, I would probably buy a pair of Clem’s boots, but most of the objects are repeated enough that it stands out. The combat is fun but can get repetitive to a point that brute force is more appealing than engaging deeper with the systems. Whenever two characters are talking, they have a tendency to just stare expressionlessly straight ahead.
I genuinely like the game, but I suspect it would have done well with a few more months in the cooker. Also, I had to convince my anti-virus software that it wasn’t a trojan horse virus, and I’m still a little worried about that.
