Hardtack Games
ENWork in progress: Screenshots are from an in-development build and are not representative of the final product.
Summary
WESTWARD! is a historical survival sim set on the Oregon Trail in the year 1848. This year heralded the end of the Mexican-American War and the start of the Gold Rush. Control the wagonmaster and guide your wagon-train across 2000 miles of rugged wilderness to reach the Willamette Valley and stake your claim -- or risk trail conditions deteriorating as you’re beset by the wickedness of winter! Select and outfit/customize your company and prepare to ford rivers, fell trees, hunt game and live off the land; all while enduring hardships and making friends along the way!
Storyline
Peter's General Store is holding a grand opening for its new location in Oregon City, Oregon. A voucher has been issued awarding patrons that successfully make the trip (store-to-store) a cash sum based on placement (first 100 receive amounts, with the largest prizes being for 1st, 2nd and 3rd). Oregon's 1843 land law states that settlers were qualified to receive up to 640 acres upon arrival -- no questions asked. One catch: Improve the land by clearing and shaping it within the allotted timeframe or risk forfeiture.
It's an ambitious plan but as history teaches us: Fortune favors the bold.
Trail-life simulated: Immaculately
You'll brave torrents of rain sweltering heat before challenges like the infamous Snake River crossing leave their mark. Real-world settlements provide welcomed aid and respite from the harsh wilderness but you won't find peace until Oregon City.
- Marching on your Stomach - Diets on the trail contributes to member’s overall fitness level, altering individual member's effective attributes. Meals are composed using ingredients pulled directly from your inventory— flour and salt pork, freshly hunted game, the berries foraged. Provide a stable routine and sufficient diet and you may find your party with the highly coveted: Elated condition, granting bonuses. Conversely, morale suffers from the overly mundane so maintain low tension levels.
- The Weather System - Historically-sourced climate tables provide accurate humidity levels and wind patterns (both in high and low elevations) which in turn dictate cloud patterns, predicating rainfall in the localized region. As a result rivers will swell and trail conditions vary so be prepared! Intense storms accompanied by lightning may ignite fires on the plains in late summer and wind can kick up dust devils, spooking oxen and the superstitious. Or who knows maybe it will just be sunny skies and smooth travels :).
- Your Weight to Carry - Supplies and riders all have assigned weight which tax your wagon daily, causing wear to your equipment and oxen to tire. Overburdened wagons and weary animals are a quick way to catastrophe so maintaining your rig and balancing your party's morale/fitness require planning.
- Terrain - Elevation-shifts/roughness progressively increase and will test even the most enduring. Rain-soaked trails will leave mud caked, hindering progression.
- What doesn't Kill You - The grit system tracks and awards players for surviving hardships through an accumulation of resistances over time, giving greater meaning to the hardships endured on your journey.
- Sickness - Spreads if left unabated, and the soaked shirt on your back could be your undoing as illnesses compound and exacerbate the 30+ possible conditions. Be mindful of procuring water from alkai swamps and of the dust kicked up on from the trail and cover-up or risk infection!
- Gear - Comprised of a material crossed with form, providing greater complexity and realism to the environment. Materials have different qualities and both degrade unless mended. Mastery of these concepts will you navigate the trail unhindered by the elements.
Gameplay
Several hand-built visualizers depict your wagon train as you traverse prairies giving way to forests, the Rockies, and the treacherous alkali flats. A narration box also aids the player by logging and summarizing details within an accessible Journal. The User Interface is split up into several categories and is modifiable.
- Easy / Medium / Hard - Easy is a stroll in the park. Medium attempts to simulate the real 1848 as accurately as possible while Hard mode is unforgiving.
- Nine scenarios to choose from or create your own!
- Your Wagon, Your Choice - Six wagons to pick from ranging from a handcart all the way to the luxurious Conestoga, each unique with varying load capacities and attributes. On the road a carpenter can hang a side shelf or toolboxes, reinforce the box against the rocks, or strip it to the bones and keep things minimalist. Either way you'll encounter NPCs along the way that can assist you in modifying if carpentry isn't your thing.
- Six Storytellers - Six personas adjust the frequency of events and their severity, while tailoring the harshness of the road to better suit your desired playstyle. This in turn shapes each run's whole arc in dramatic fashion. Greenhorn's Guide will let you learn. The Undertaker will tax you for every step taken. Those in between add degrees of unpredictability and add other unique challenges to the road.
- Hardcore & Ironman modes -
- Growth - Every attribute rises with use, and each traveler carries a hidden aptitude that decides who they some day will become.
- Visualizer - Visual and auditory cues hint at opportunities and peril alike. Pay attention to the chatter within the visualizer as the devil is in the details and the details are all depicted truthfully.
- Soundtrack composed by Jonny Awin
- Closed captions available.
Societies
- Personalization - Each party member is assigned a profession and interest, each carrying perks relating to their real-world counterpart. Cartographer charts the short-cuts nobody signposted, a Naturalist reads the land, a Saddlemaker’s hands keep the oxen sound, Carpenters & Tailors help with repairs. Interests enhance players' knowledgebases and skill in related fields. Finally, each player is assigned a personality alongside 2 undiscovered traits which are revealed during your journey.
- Wagonmaster is responsible for leading the company. Without one, a wagon train is lost. The pacing, diet, camp and triage routine are all yours to set. Lead confidently but consider your actions wisely as your competition surely will.
- Traders - Five kinds of trading outfit work the main road, and a Medium run meets two or three: the general goods trader with supplies, medicine and books, who will take the plow and the stove off your hands; the fur trader with fur and buckskin; the sutler with bulk supplies and ammunition; the wainwright and drover with spare axles, wheels and fresh oxen, the one buyer on the road for an anvil; and the apothecary peddler, who treats the worst sickness aboard on the spot. Halting costs an hour. The company sells its dead weight and buys only what it is short of.
- Morale, hygiene, fitness, relationships and a myriad of other systems add greater meaning and depth to each decision you make. Christian Missionaries and Native American tribespeople are wary of those with notorious reputations and prefer honest folk. Don't let your temper flare up too often or you may find unwilling outposts/traders.
- The Historical Aspect - Storytelling is at the heart of WESTWARD! so events are often spoken in period-based tongue. Accuracy rests on authentic sources: the First Peoples' own traditions as recorded by those who lived among them, and documentation taken directly from the Historic Oregon City Museum.
- Self-reliance is good but strengthening bonds are better - Every pair of individuals have bonds that form over time, first to trailmates and workfellows and eventually progressing to fast friends and finally kin-close. Families may begin tightly-knit but bonds can fray under the duress if left unchecked. You'll have plenty of time to mend beneath the stars lit by the soft glow of the night's fire. Shared activities such as hunting parties, repairs, all tie into this system. Tempers set the pace of interactions which can evolve into grudges, potentially a brawl or desertion. Close pairs work better together, and a trusted voice is what reaches someone who is breaking.
- Minds can and will break - Exhaustion feeds duress which in turn if left unchecked can lead to mental breaks, and a breaking traveler behaves according to their temper. Grief scales with the bonds people form prior to and along the way. Fellow pioneers (even within your own wagon train) can be treacherous. Still waters run deep.
- The Burial - A death asks how the company buries its own: a carpenter's planed cross that takes hours and eases the grief the most, a plain plank cross, a cairn of stones, or leaving them where they fell, which costs no time and lets the grief land whole. Then the choice of a sermon: two hours off tomorrow's road for a eulogy built from the dead traveler's trade, age and what killed them, spoken by whoever was closest. It eases the strain and leaves the sorrow alone. There is no rite for the lost: it needs a body.
- The Church - Every run has one church, a meetinghouse on a hillside in the rolling hills, the last before the plains. Pass it on a Sunday and it may be in session, less often on the harder roads. Stop, and five dollars in the plate and two hours buy the preacher's text and a lift to everyone's morale. The prayerful in the company have their own words for it when it comes into sight.
- Progeny - Children in the company are real travelers: they eat, sicken, grow up and inherit. Courtships that form on the road are meant to resolve into unions at Oregon City, and a child's grit, aptitudes and temper lean toward their parents' rather than averaging them out, so a settled family carries what the trail taught it into the next run. The foundation is in the game now; the unions and the inheritance arrive in a later update.
Activities
This adventure will require you to balance living-off-the-land while making steady progress or risk being caught on the trail during winter.
- The Hunt - Arm yourself and head out to a site but have patience as animals are smarter now. They will respond to gunshots and flee in unpredictable fashion. Follow-up shots require 5-6 seconds so if you don't plan accordingly or your aim isn't true you may find yourself waiting a while before more game appears. In these cases it may be wisest to move to the next site. The amount of harvestable meat you can carry is limited only by your commitment to the task, but be ware of beasts that may be attracted to sites left unattended for periods.
- Forage - Foraging has never been easy but when times get tough sometimes its the best option. Shake the bush!!!
- Fell timber - Hold the swing to load it, be mindful not to tire yourself out and wary of the dangers associated with felling timber.
- Dig - Only where there is colour to find. Trace the stroke into the rock, work the cracks, and keep an eye on your footing and your posture — both of which are the body's, not the pick's.
- Fish - Cast, strike, and hold the line without snapping! Just like real life! Wow!
Then decide how to keep what you brought home: over a fire-frame tonight, in the sun over a standing halt, or on lines strung along the outside of the wagon as it rolls.
Statistics:
Arriving in Early Access in November!
In its current state WESTWARD! is fully playable start to finish. The endloop is under construction as well as several of the minigames and will remain so until EA completes.
What is still left to be done: Visual redraw and balancing tweaks as well as the settler aspect and the Native American Reading.
Coming in later updates
- Crafting - The bench as it stands lets a company mend, sew, forge and roll bandages by the lot, skill buying the hours. It is getting a big overhaul during Early Access: a full crafting system built over the same materials-and-form gear.
- Reputation - Honesty, charity and notoriety, and how missionaries, traders and outposts treat a company for them.
- The First Peoples - The nations whose country the road crossed.
- Progeny - Passing attributes and grit down to the next generation once you settle.
- Languages - The game is in English at launch; other languages follow.
Content note
This game depicts the death of characters from illness, injury, starvation and exposure, and portrays psychological breakdown under sustained hardship. It includes hunting animals with period firearms. No blood is depicted. It is fully offline and singleplayer, collects no data, and contains no real-money purchases of any kind beyond the game itself. It includes simulated card games (draw poker and twenty-one) played with in-game money only; no real money goes in or comes out. Period remedies and drink appear as items, laudanum and whiskey among them; nothing is glamorised.
Coming soon to
Steam
GOG
itch.io
Steam: A store page is in the works; wishlisting opens when it's live. Desktop builds for Windows, macOS and Linux are planned for the Steam release.
A browser-friendly version is also slated for release via itch.io in November/Early December. Here is the itch.io store link: hardtackgames.itch.io