Look, if you’ve followed this blog for a while now, you may know that I’m pretty darn fond of roguelikes. Starting out weak, managing your resources, waging risk and reward, and eventually becoming an unstoppable force is right up my alley, and Far Far West interestingly plays with that, mixing it with permanent upgrades without the increases feeling minuscule and tedious.
There’s a trend in roguelikes to include meta-progression as a means of “giving players something to work towards”, when in reality it just feels like a way for developers to stretch out the playtime. It’s become increasingly frustrating for me as it feels like I’m expected to grind out hours upon hours of runs so that I can eventually start out at the initial starting line of the game.
Far Far West, a new addition to the genre of Roguelike-Shooters, however, doesn’t do that. Instead, while you do have that feeling of “working towards something”, the upgrades feel meaningful, your time is respected, and even the runs themselves don’t overstay their welcome whatsoever, offering a good challenge for those looking for one while providing a ton of fun to more casual players.
In today’s review, I want to talk about why I dig Far Far West so much, on top of analysing how the game makes progression feel meaningful.
Developer: Evil Raptor
Publisher: Fireshine Games
Genre: Early Access, Western, Roguelike, FPS, PvE
Release Date: April 28th, 2026
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC
Copy was provided by JF Games Press Team.
At its core, Far Far West is a mission-based PvE roguelike-shooter that has you fly in on a train (yep!), complete objectives, defeat a boss, and then extract with all the loot acquired. As you complete missions, you level up your weapons and spells while collecting souls and gold. These resources can then be used to outfit your guns and robo cowboy (yep!) with bonus stats and even a starting loadout of a variety of jokers, so that you’re a bit stronger going into your next few runs.
I’m a big fan of this since there is an actual purpose to the upgrades. On top of helping you tackle higher-difficulty missions, they also allow you to customise your playstyle. More importantly, they feel impactful. My shotgun now shoots confetti when I headshot, spawns exploding pigs on-hit, and has a chance to apply a pickaxe-based bleed effect on-hit. I love it. There are better options, sure, but these are the funniest ones to me at this point in time.
Instead of getting trivial upgrades over time, you can give your fast-shooting gun more damage, make your boomerang linger in the air for a longer time, or even add lifesteal to your trusty revolver.
During missions, you’ll collect a bunch of different jokers that make you stronger in a variety of ways. These are lost when you complete (or fail) the mission. Jokers enable you to shoot very fast, hit very hard, or apply a range of cool effects on enemies.
Some jokers scale pretty well the longer you go, giving you increased fire rate as you kill those pesky skellies, whereas others offer interesting upgrades to your existing builds, like more damage to your spells based on specific elements, bonus damage to low or high health enemies, or the ability to regenerate ammunition at the cost of not being able to pick up ammo you find.
Having upgrades with tradeoffs like that is also pretty darn interesting, in my opinion, as it inherently changes how you approach runs. Rather than using only one weapon, you’re now incentivised to switch between your primary and secondary weapons more often so that you can stock up on ammo again, for instance.
Some jokers increase your damage while airborne, others may spawn anti-grav fields on-kill. Unexpected synergies like that make roguelikes so diverse and fun, in my opinion, and Far Far West manages to create a lot of satisfaction for me as someone who loves breaking games or playing titles in less conventional ways.
There’s a lot of build-crafting and theory-testing you can do here, but even if you’re merely around for the shooter gameplay, Far Far West has you covered with different primary and secondary weapons to unlock and play with.
All guns can be further levelled up and eventually “prestiged”, enabling you to theoretically grind out as much of the game as possible and work towards the biggest flex, I guess. Missions grant you a ton of experience, so the grind doesn’t feel too overwhelming, especially with a range of modifiers, objectives and areas to explore.
My personal highlight, though, wasn’t necessarily the guns themselves (although I did find the gunplay pretty darn satisfying personally…) but the spells you use alongside them.
Between fire, acid, electricity, voodoo and cactus spells, there’s a lot of ground to cover here, especially when you consider that the different elements have various synergies with each other. You can spread acid pools on the ground and electrify them afterwards, or create huge fire tornadoes if you use your spells efficiently.
It’s satisfying and, at times, pretty silly how much destruction you wield at the palms of your hand, although stronger spells tend to also feature longer cooldowns. Some electricity spells let you duplicate projectiles or dart around the place using extra jumps and portals. The voodoo spells let you drain health from hostiles or charm enemies, whereas cactus spells let you summon turrets, walls and mines that gain bonus effects when hit with certain elements. You can theoretically take on a support role in your squad, healing allies and blocking off enemies, or you’re more of a battle mage who just eradicates all those undead in the blink of an eye.
Giddy up and take on bosses after protecting drills, launching nukes or firing huge lasers, make your way to extraction, and fight an onslaught of hostiles. Beyond that, I’ve aided in reuniting cactus families, solved ancient otherworldly puzzles, got my driver’s license for horse riding, beat one of my friends in darts, nuked bandit camps, wished for meteor showers at wishing wells, and done so, so, so much more… all while I was accompanied by a blood-pumping and intense soundtrack that just goes SO HARD. Genuinely. Far Far West is very over-the-top. I mean, it’s a Wild West-themed game with a touch of fantasy, but you’re also playing as robots, which is just plain stupid fun… and I’m here for it!
Where the game does not shine as much, though, is the vastness of the maps. The maps frequently feel like large stretches of empty space separating otherwise interesting points of interest, which can work out for the setting but the world doesn’t feel as alive as it could feel. The odd NPC or two don’t aid the game too much in feeling more alive and vivid.
I’d love to see more wildlife and forces of nature, honestly. While some maps do feature cows, pigs and other creatures, the world doesn’t feel quite as lived in as I’d like it to feel. It harms the immersion a bit when you realise that, but surely the developers can work something out. Simply adding mice or other critters into the world would make it much more immersive.
The other thing that bothered me is the lack of transparency for jokers. If I pick multiple jokers up of the same kind, how do they stack? The game never adequately communicates this information.
The game feels similar to Risk of Rain 2 and Gunfire Reborn in a way, but in contrast to those games, it is often unclear whether effects stack additively, multiplicatively, at all, or whether there are diminishing returns to pursuing specific joker combinations. Information like that is hard to access and, frankly, should be visible in the game in some way. If it’s in there already, it’s too obtuse as it has managed to elude me all this time.
Furthermore, I dislike how some jokers just don’t work with certain weapons, and some jokers work with spells you don’t have equipped in the first place… and yet they can still drop from chests and enemies. You may pick them up thinking that it’s an awesome addition to your loadout, and then realise they effectively do nothing. You should not be able to find them in your runs if you can’t make use of them in any way, shape or form, especially when you play solo or in a closed lobby with friends.
I’d also love to see some settings for Joker-sharing or other quality of life changes like that. There are folks in the community who might join your lobby and then just hoard all the jokers themselves.
I don’t mind some levels of exclusivity for the jokers, but it just feels bad when you get something that enhances your fire spells, except you don’t have any fire spells equipped at the moment… or you get a joker that turns projectiles into wide-range bombs, except it doesn’t work with your shotgun or minigun.
That being the case, the game is still in Early Access, and I’m confident the developers have their thumb on the pulse with their upcoming updates. A lot may change over time, and I hope that the folks at EvilRaptor can improve some of these aspects soon!
That said, I do think the criticisms I have of the game still stand. The game is pretty darn polished in its current state already, despite only releasing into Early Access a little while ago. Some of these may feel a bit nitpicky but that’s perhaps also just because everything else is already so good in the game.
Beyond that, though, the game has a ton of great things going for it. The references add a ton of charm to the game. A lot of the humour lands perfectly fine (although some of the side quests overstay their welcome a bit and may need more polish). The guns and spells are satisfying to use.
Far Far West is perfectly playable in solo, with friends and in an open lobby, even, allowing you to engage in quick bouts of PvE action without taking up too much of your time. I did enjoy Helldivers 2 and Deep Rock Galactic a lot, but always disliked how long certain missions can take, which made it hard for me to plan around that in my schedule without sacrificing some sleep if missions lasted too long. This is something I really appreciate about Far Far West.
This one’s one of the most enjoyable PvE shooters I’ve played in a good while, not just because it’s a genuinely cool and entertaining title, but also because it respects your time and lets you decide for yourself how you want to approach things. Instead of embarking on 40+ minute runs that you all of a sudden don’t have time for, you can rush objectives altogether or engage in a little tomfoolery mid-mission to play some music with your pals. You can grind out low-difficulty missions or strive for a challenge and uproot Wild West society with your little cactus buddies. Yee-haw.
And more than anything, it doesn’t take itself too seriously either, which really aids it in giving players a certain power fantasy of a spell-slinging robot cowboy that you just don’t get with other games. I highly recommend checking this one out if you haven’t yet.
Verdict: Whether you're hunting for broken synergies, chasing unlocks, or just looking for a fun co-op shooter to sink a lot of hours into, Far Far West has you covered. It isn't perfect by any means, but its excellent progression systems, entertaining missions, and willingness to let players experiment make it a game that's incredibly easy to recommend.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
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