When I set out to build the catalog for Kolossal Games, I wanted a game that not only lived up to our company’s name but one that showed me something I had yet to see, which – of course – is no easy feat in the ever-growing world of gaming. Nonetheless, it was my charge to find such a game. As luck would have it, a mutual friend was kind enough to show me just what I was seeking.
Enter Western Legends, a genuine labor of love from talented first-time designer Hervé Lemaître. From the very first moment I laid eyes on the prototype, I knew the game was not only special but exactly what I wanted to be making as a publisher.
Firstly, it was a sandbox design, a genre that is populated with very few games. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the term, in short this the tabletop equivalent of an open world game in the video game world. Next, there was an incredible amount of decisions in gameplay, the majority of which had nothing to do with the oft-used pickup-and-deliver mechanism found in its contemporaries. Players weren’t just occupants of the same world; they collided in this world, they eked out lives amidst hard times in a way that bled through the mechanisms into a very palpable theme. As some may know about my personal repertoire as a designer and developer, I absolutely love narrative in games. The potential to tell stories in this game was abundant and exciting. Further, Hervé was tackling another design obsession of mine in the game: the notion and meditation on morality…
