Cowboys vs Vampires
Defend Dungwater Reach from the Vampire Threat
- Create teams of three from a roster of nine cowboys
- Each with unique abilities and weapon bonuses
- Survive three waves across three locations to save your town
- Balance your resources, using your cunning and wit to come out on top in tense, strategic battles of life or death
We Need Your Help!
- Let us know if you want to see this game developed further!
- Leave us a rating and/or comment!
- Give us all your feature ideas! Your ultimate wishlist!
- Let's work together to make this all it can be!
This Is A Prototype Build!
- This was ,made in 2 weeks thanks to the generous support of Free Lives
- Expect bugs, jank, tomfoolery and nonsense!
- Report any issues to us and let's polish this baby up!
Credits:
- Music by Zeatine!
- Most sounds via Pixabay
- Some weapon sounds from Snake
- Some card sounds from here
- Art and design by Boiled Goose Games
- Once again, funded by Free Lives
Development log
- Cowboys vs Vampires - V.1 is Out!29 days ago
Comments
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A really fun game that can get me playing and trying new strategies for a good while. The art really creates a sinister vibe and I'm here for it.
I'd love to see some minor roguelite elements. I'm a sucker for the whole "coming back stronger after a lose" gameplay. Maybe leveling each character individually as you play with them and then being able to unlock new/stronger abilities?
Proper good work so far and can't wait to see what you guys do next! :D
Thank you so much for playing! Really glad you enjoyed it!
We can definitely see some minor roguelite elements working well in a future version and love the idea of slowly upgrading your various cowboys!
Thanks again and glad to have ya onboard!
I love the abilites. I wish I had a smaller starting goal that I could 'win' and to get me hooked on achieving.
Llevel one: survive 2 waves. Level two survive three waves etc. You could use character unlocks as a reward.
I like that there is a clear goal: Survive three waves in three locations, but it's a lot for my small brain to process.
Hey! Thank you for playing!
You make a great point! Future builds would definitely focus on more bespoke enemy encounters and gradually building that over time, rather than leaving it up to RNG and throwing it all at you at once.
Appreciate the feedback!
Sick game, love the art and overall vibes. It was really fun to play around with all the different characters and special abilities, they all felt pretty unique and made each battle feel quite different. Would be cool to see more interactions between different status effects, it was fun to mark a vampire for extra damage with the bow and let someone else finish them off. Also pls add a shuffle button to the start screen that randomly assigns the cowboys, would be a fun difficulty mode.
Otherwise would love to see progression of the battles, if there was a more clear pattern or growth of difficulty with the vampire waves it would really up the tension and make each choice feel more impactful. My easiest round was the last one, so in the future would be great to see that ramping up. But really excited to see how this could develop, got some really cool stuff to work with
Thanks, Jack! Appreciate you playing and giving us some great feedback.
Definitely agreed on all points.
Other than the bonus damage mark, the other status affects are very isolated; something to work on for sure. In future versions I'd definitely more steadily ramp up the challenge, making waves harder as you go and introducing new vampires on subsequent days.
Love the shuffle idea btw!
It's already pretty fun, and I'm eager to see it expanded.
Probably obvious, but you could look at Inscryption, Darkest Dungeon, and Slay the Spire for mechanics and general game progression. My biggest hope right now is some bespoke mechanics to differentiate enemies/locations. Maybe different forms of attack markers, like a Closed eye only attacks if they get hit, or a Blind Eye only attacks if you swapped positions.
When assigning cowboys, moving someone between locations and then right clicking gets them stuck and will softlock you.
Hey! Thanks so much playing and giving your feedback and ideas! Appreciate you.
Darkest Dungeon in particular has definitely been a huge inspiration for the basics we've established so far. Love your ideas and looking at ways of building on the mechanics is my main interest now for sure (other than fixing big issues, of course). Definitely feel like the vampires need a little more edge to them, in the way that cowboys have abilities and their weapon position bonuses.
Your idea of different eye markers could be a great way to that!
Was also thinking of some version of bleed that applies to humans, which sends vampires into a frenzy and allows that cowboy to be attacked even if they're not in front. May be a bit much though, we'll see.
And thanks for pointing out the softlock issue!