Last month, I love playing Card Cowboy, a little Wild West adventure that uses cards to tell silly stories. As you traverse the land in search of revenge, you build a hand of cards representing resources and events, which you use to tackle situations — often with strange results and surprising. What if you tried to take down a villain with a mezcal worm? That free version was a lot of fun, and now the developers have expanded it to a £2 paid version with new cards, conundrums and voiceovers. It is also fun!
As I explained last time, the destination is less important than the journey:
“You just go, cross the map by hitting the buttons, it’s all eventful. Maybe you’re in a game of poker that goes sour. Maybe you stumble across a hangman. Yes Maybe you hit a farm and try to attract his son Maybe you find buried treasure Your options in these events are decided by your card.
“In Card Cowboy, you have a single digit hit point then everything else is a card. Horses, items, money, and your allies are cards, which are used by dragging them into card slots on the cards. Some cards even represent happenings like weddings or rodeos.Most cards are consumed when used but you’ll get more for replacing them, rolling with hits. This is strangely powerful. Any card can be used in any situation, and they often have their own results for strange situations.
“What if you tried to evade accusations of cheating in poker using a child? What if you gave a wedding card to a farmer looking for help? And I What can this circus card be used for? At one time, I tried to hit my enemy by offering him money for his head.”
Half the fun of every 20-minute run is discovering weird results. Not every situation has a solution that is unique to every card, but there are a lot of strange things happening. I accidentally robbed people, accidentally contracted dysentery, unwittingly declared my love for my horse, unwittingly formed a large army consisting of an oil baron and a herd of infants, and more. Even if I don’t win, I still enjoy living the weird final days of my cowboy era. And yes, I think it’s funny that the new narrative explicitly inserts separate recordings for the tag noun into the sentence.
I have seen a lot of new cards and events in the new version and look forward to exploring more then combining them. Helpfully, it adds a ‘cardpedia’ that keeps track of what cards you’ve found. Steam’s new achievements also present strange challenges and suggestions.
An expanded version of Card Cowboy is available from Steam for Windows and Mac. With a 10% discount during launch week, it’s only £1.88 / €2.15 / $2.69. The original game jam version is still available pay what you want (no minimum amount) on Itch.iowhich I suppose you can take as a demo.
