Red Dead Redemption Vibes Are Strong in New Free Steam RPG

This new free Steam game is already proving to be pretty popular on the platform, but the Red Dead Redemption inspiration might not be enough to keep players around for the long term.

Red Dead Redemption doesn’t have a monopoly on the Wild West setting, but there has definitely been an uptick in cowboy-related video games since the first game dropped back in 2010.

Case in point, today’s free game example on Steam does seem to be taking some inspiration from Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption… but, uh, maybe they took the wrong kind of lesson from the popularity of Red Dead Online.

Westland Survival is a free-to-play tactical RPG on Steam from developer and publisher Helio Games, and, admittedly, it’s certainly not the prettiest title on the market.

There’s a simple explanation for that however, as the Steam version of Westland Survival is actually a port of the mobile version of the game– and you can probably see where I’m about to go with this.

Yeah, even though, by all accounts, the core gameplay loop of the game is pretty fun, Westland Survival has still managed to earn itself a “Mixed” rating on Steam.

Why exactly are reviewers turning on the game, even though it’s supposedly fun to play? Yeah, you guessed it: microtransactions.

“The game has a unique fun element to it that scratches an old school itch, however the micro transactions ruins the atmosphere for me”, writes Steam reviewer Maelstrum.

“I know you do not have to buy the transactions, but they are everywhere and honestly cost quite a lot for what you get. Overall the story is engaging, keeps you busy. The building system is decent. I would like to see the developers be not so greedy and lower the prices a lot.”

“After playing 4 hours of the beta test and 1 hour of the current release, I can say that this game does not want you to play it. What I mean by this is that this is a mobile port to PC. You know those mobile games where you have energy to do stuff, well in this game you need energy to travel to settlements and camps”, commented Steam user Danny Winny.

“This is my first negative review I have ever left for a game and it sucks because if I had unlimited energy without having to wait for a recharge, I would play this game non stop. If you are going to have micro-transactions, at least have one for unlimited playtime.”

I suppose this kind of stuff is to be expected for a port of a mobile game, but I still can’t help but feel that the developers are screwing themselves over here by not altering things for the PC release.

The simple fact of the matter is that mobile gamers are a lot more accepting of predatory microtransactions, so a game like this was always going to get roasted for implementing the same kind of tactics on PC.

Hopefully, the devs eventually decide to tone this down in a future update, but I won’t hold my breath.