Bounty Star, from DINOGOD, is a bit of an odd duck. It tells the tale of “Graveyard Clem”, a mech pilot in a post-apocalyptic Western-themed world, whose life has been utterly gutted by tragedy. Having retired to a rundown farm, she’s approached by the local sheriff and offered a chance at redemption: become a bounty hunter, clean up the frontier, build up the farm, and earn herself the titular “bounty star”, the badge that makes it official – all while hunting down the bandit leader who destroyed her past life.
This leads to a game that splits its time cleanly between planting crops and powering up the various gizmos at the farm, grinding materials to craft ammo, batteries, and the tools you need, and full-on mech versus mech combat. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but there’s a delightful earnestness to it all that just makes it tick. It reminds me, somewhat, of Wanderstop, with a similar motivation for the main character, and similar themes explored in a different way.
Clem is a cool protagonist, too. She’s eternally pissed off and deeply self-loathing, sure, but she’s also recklessly brave and brutally honest. She’s a legendary mech pilot, too, which helps when you spend so much time chasing bounties, who are often protected by gang members, automated drones, or other mechs.
The farming element is fairly straightforward. You can plant crops and harvest ingredients to cook with, while you’ll slowly fill Clem’s workshop with new workstations and other items with which to furnish your mech. There’s a convenient auto-vendor on the wall where you can spend bounty money on crafting materials, and a bench where you can toss together anything from batteries to ballistics. A jukebox lets you cycle through some incredibly chill Western music that creates an immediate cosy atmosphere when at home.
Of course, this juxtaposes perfectly with the much more frantic combat scenarios. Bounty missions are either there to push the story forward or give you side concerns to earn money and materials. Each one is relatively short and punchy, with little travel to and from objectives. While the farm sections are relaxed and contemplative, the mech sections are meant to feel the total opposite as you strafe, boost, shoot, and hack your way through the enemy.
Between each foray you’ll build new gear and outfit your mech, developing new weapons and gizmos like shields or boosters. Again, it’s all just so earnest and well-intended that you forgive some of its shortcomings where complexity is concerned to enjoy the simple and heartfelt story Bounty Star is trying to tell. Even embarking on bounty hunts is as easy as picking one from a Quest board.
Graphically it’s nothing special, with simple textures and animations, but it does what it needs to to convey atmosphere and stakes. The righting is solid, with the relationship between Clem and the Sheriff rife with subtext and shared history. It’s a small game with a lot of heart, and you don’t see that combination very often nowadays. There’s something oddly endearing, for example, in the way Clem perches on her Mech’s open cockpit to chronicle her activities in a therapy journal. It’s just… warm, and I’m not even sure why.
Bounty Star is a fun time-killer if you want something straightforward and entertaining with an emotional core that doesn’t ask all that much of you in terms of strategy or time. It might not be brimming with ambition, but it’s nice little adventure all the same.
