West Of Loathing Is A Wild West-Themed RPG Full Of Stickman Cowboys

I love that they are playing up humor and going for something different!

I do not love that they are using ugly, ugly stick figures. You can create amazing simplified art without using stick figures. You can even make stick figures interesting and appealing, ala Order of the Stick style stick figures. Would have preferred a little more effort on the character designs. The other stuff looks stylish and nicely done.

I watched Markiplier play through this, I also did have this on my Steam wish list. Glad I waited on buying it.

I actually am pretty excited for this game. I saw gameplay of it awhile ago and I thought it was hilarious. Can't wait to get it on Switch!

Absolutely loved it, can't wait to have it on a portable.

Seems strange and funny but not beautiful. I know its a detail. Curious about the review.

I've heard nothing but great things.

This is a hard pass for me. The graphics are a total turnoff...black and white, AND stick figures? No thanks.

Love stickman adventures

The game us absolutely hilarious. I'll have to pick it up.

Loved Kingdom of Loathing and wanted to buy this game on PC, but was disappointed by the lack of controller support (they said they'd add it eventually, but haven't). So, this coming to Switch is great news - controller support AND portable!

Day one

Kingdom of Loathing is an absolute delight so I have no reservations bout getting excited for this release

@FinalFrog collectible hats existed far before Heist did it. Never heard of Team Fortress 2?

Maybe some day Switch fans will get a web browser, so they can play the first game

@JKRiki The main point of the game is humor. It's not meant to be some outsorced eye-candy treat, the illustrations are part of the joke. Plus, the creators took a lot of inspiration from Infocom games, and most of KoL was text.

Despite the art style looking crude, i think it looks somewhat appealing. The backgrounds look cool and there's enough depth and fun animation on screen to keep it from looking flat and boring, as I would have expected from such a limited style.

Wait and see for me. The fact that this trailer intrigued me on the same week im waiting to play the impossibly pretty Ni No Kuni 2 is cool! Mission accomplished devs.

Hard pass. Absolutely horrible art style.

Big fan of KoL growing up. It's one of those really niche things, and I wouldn't expect those acquainted with KoL to really get the art style or the (dated-ish) humor.

Held off on WoL with the unrealistic expectation of a Switch version. Pumped.

@Asaki No, I get it. I'm not asking for Farcry 4 visuals here. There's a significant difference between well-crafted simplistic art and unappealing basic stick figures. Again I point to Order of the Stick. Or "cyanide and happiness." Or even something like this: http://clipartmag.com/images/stick-man-figures-2.jpg

You can do a lot with a few lines. I would have preferred that more be done in this game on the characters themselves. You can do "basic" art and still have that be great art. As I said before, even the backgrounds and such are well enough done. The characters are just not up to even that standard. Or compare the humans to the cows/horses, which have depth and interest rather than single line bodies.

Anyway, doesn't really matter, it's their choice not mine. I'm merely sharing my opinion, and that opinion is that plain stick-figures are not worth the fleeting seconds it takes to create them. I prefer seeing better in any game. You spend a long time making a finished game, why not put more effort into the main character design, even if you want to keep it bare-bones and simple. Anyone is welcome to disagree. A little more work could make those assets stronger and, as a result, the overall game stronger. It takes very little extra effort to reach more appealing stick figures that have a ton more life, appeal, and dimension, not to mention potential for variety: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYxEySdV4AAn1bz.png:large

@JKRiki It's not supposed to be "great art" or "well done", the art is part of the joke. It's supposed to look like drunken napkin scribbles someone left at a bar. Everything in the game is a terrible drunken parody of something better, and that's what made KoL so great.

@Asaki I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding me or you're just trying to excuse the developer no matter what. If it's the latter, there's nothing I can say. If it's the former, I'm not sure what I can do to explain the concept of "You can make 'drunken scribble parody art' that is GOOD, and you can make 'drunken scribble parody art' that is BAD, and your goal should be to make the BEST drunken scribble parody art that you possibly can." The character sprites in this game are not the best drunken scribble parody sprites possible. There are levels of drunken scribble parody characters. It adds nothing to do bad drunken scribble parody art when you could do well-crafted drunken scribble parody art. It in fact takes away from what you've already worked so hard to create.

And that's as clear as I can make it. Perhaps it is a thing you need to be a professional artist to understand, I dunno.

This is a really great title. If you buy it, you will laugh. In a good way.

While some people applauded the game's unique art style, the devs are laughing because they spent $0 in the graphics department.

I like it

is this even a game?

This was my absolute favorite reveal in the Nindies info from earlier today. Watched Markiplier play through the whole game...and can't wait to play it for myself now on Switch. The game is absolutely hilarious. And to those complaining about the "graphics"...its a part of the games charm and humor. You either get it or you don't. I...for one...get it. Love the graphics in WoL...and cannot wait to get it day one for myself!

Funniest game I‘ve played in years. Gotta equip 'Weird Walking‘.

This makes me VERY happy. After spending countless hundreds of hours on Kingdom of Loathing, I made a Steam account just to play West of Loathing and I liked what I saw, but over the past year or so I just haven't been able to find time to sit in front of my computer to play games (especially when there are games on consoles begging for my attention (also a family or whatever)), so both Loathings have been sadly neglected. I will definitely give it another chance on Switch, though, and maybe that will get me back into KoL. Thanks, Asymetric!!!

@JKRiki The thing is the entire style for Loathing is intentionally bad. It's not supposed to look very appealing, it's supposed to look like awful scribbles. Though it was less in your face in the browser version, as that one had a very limited GUI and most of the game was plain text.

@SmaggTheSmug There is well-crafted intentionally bad, and then there is poor-quality intentionally bad. Just as there is well-crafted intentionally good, and poor-quality intentionally good. The key to proper art is to know your goal (in this case, intentionally bad) and then do the best job to achieve that goal (which in this case would be to create well-crafted intentionally bad art).

You gain nothing (and in fact lose something) by creating poor-quality intentionally bad rather than well-crafted intentionally bad. This is a foundation of art, and what separates the "child like scribbles" you might see in a museum from the "child like scribbles" someone who has no idea what they're doing would create. If your goal is child-like scribbles in this paragraph's example, you want the best child-like scribbles possible, not the worst child-like scribbles possible. You are trying to create the best-essence of child-like scribbles. To do less is worse art, not on purpose, but as a failure to achieve your goal.

I understand, it's complicated. It's one of those art principals that you learn in decades of practice. When finally some of the garbage art hanging in museums starts to make some actual sense and you finally get why that is in there and other stuff is not. (Of course, sometimes even curators get it wrong, but that's a different topic.)

@JKRiki It's not complicated at all. Art can be appealing or not and in many cases that can be extremely subjective. Making well-crafted garbage can be more difficult than it seems and Loathing art style is definitely on the "actual garbage" end of the spectrum. But in something like a video game artstyle is only a part of the whole; in KoL (and WoL) those hideous stick men compliment the absurd humour and mechanics greatly. Compare with Nidhogg where the original minimalist, 8-bit computer style worked great with animation quality, making it very reminiscent of Karateka, and where it worked great to stress the mechanical depth. And then contrast with the sequel where the hideous artstyle does nothing but distract and animation was sacrificed for character customization, making the characters look very stiff.

As for garbage art hanging in museums I personally find going through the most modern art parts of them tiring. I'll stop on early 20th century geometric art or art-deco if you don't mind

@SmaggTheSmug Right, so you get it. And what I'm saying is if they made it less like distracting-hideous you'd have not only a superior experience for the people who play, but also a larger audience as they would not be instantly turned off by the not-appealing art. You apparently understand appeal, so it's easier to discuss. (Most people have no idea what appeal even is.) You're absolutely right, making well-crafted garbage is MUCH more difficult than it seems. I stand by the old motto that just because something is difficult doesn't mean that isn't what we should do. In fact, something being difficult is in many cases (though not all) a good indicator that it's what we should attempt over what is merely easy.

@JKRiki Yes, I do understand it, as it is not a very difficult concept (though putting it to practice takes, well, practice), if a little ill-defined and very subjective.
However I strongly disagree that making West of Loathing look "better" would broaden its audience. At the end of the day a stickman is a stickman and making a nice looking stickman doesn't change that. If anything making it look worse makes it more interesting. Right of the bat it catches your attention with lack of colours and pixel art. Then you notice stuff like "SHERF" or "Horsery" or using meat as currency and you realize this is a joke, but it's not just a rehash of stale memes like Superola.

A game has to stand out, especially as this one was also on Steam where competition is greater and there's tons of "intentionally bad" videogames every single day. This one – it looks bad, but not low-effort, especially in the gameplay department. And thus the art serves the game, not detracts from it.

One fundamental thing about art is that it's essentially false and rather useless, so there's no real point in sticking your nose up at something just because you don't like it. Well, unless they're mucking up the colours, as colour theory is pretty essential and even people who don't know it should be able to tell an eyesore.

(yes, I do know my stuff, got a degree and everything)

I have to agree with JKRiki on this one. I'm all for creative art styles, but this art just looks stupid and barebones, not to mention the complete lack of color. Just because it was done intentionally doesn't mean it's actually appealing in any way. There are "so bad it's good" joke styles, but this crosses the line into "just plain garbage."

Something like "Gunman Clive" is how you do this kind of graphical style right, except those games would also be better with more color. Any kind of grayscale or monochrome art is almost always inferior to the same art with color. People only put up with such things as black and white or monochrome movies, TV shows, computer screens, and video game handhelds when there were no better options (including overall game quality when comparing the GameBoy to its early rivals) either at all or at reasonable prices.