Every so often a game launches in Early Access and immediately eclipses the expectations the genre has trained us to have. Far Far West, from eight-person studio Evil Raptor and published by Fireshine Games, is one of those games. In a crowded PvE co-op shooter landscape dominated by Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, Far Far West doesn’t just hold its own — it earns its place at the table within the first hour of play, and then keeps getting better.
The elevator pitch writes itself: wizard robot cowboys on horseback, blasting skeleton outlaws and ghost trains through a supernatural Wild West while switching seamlessly between six-shooters and fireballs. It sounds like a pitch meeting fever dream, and it plays like exactly the kind of joyful, chaotic co-op experience that genre fans have been quietly hoping someone would make. 500,000 players arrived in the first week. The Overwhelmingly Positive reviews tell the rest of the story.
Far Far West’s core loop owes obvious debts to both Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2, and it’s smart enough to know which parts of each to borrow. Like DRG, you drop into procedurally influenced maps with a clear objective, side quests, and collectibles scattered across haunted deserts and cursed mines. Like Helldivers 2, you load in, pursue targets, complete the mission, and extract — alive, ideally. What separates Far Far West from both is the absence of a hard time limit, letting squads explore every corner of the map, complete all side objectives, and engage with the world at their own pace before pulling the trigger on the boss.
The spell-and-gun combat system is the game’s most distinctive mechanical contribution. Switching between revolver fire and elemental spells is fluid and satisfying, and the ability to combine spells with teammates creates emergent synergies that make each encounter feel freshly improvised. One player rains lightning while another freezes enemies in place; a third ignites the frozen cluster while the fourth holds the flank. It’s the kind of seamless co-op design that turns competent players into great ones and great players into legends.
It bears repeating because it genuinely matters: Far Far West was made by eight people. The polish on display at Early Access launch — crisp visuals, buttery smooth performance, responsive netcode, no significant launch bugs — is the kind of quality that studios ten times the size frequently fail to achieve. The animations are sharp, the art direction is coherent and characterful, and the moment-to-moment gunfeel competes comfortably with titles that cost far more to make and buy.
The town hub and saloon between missions are packed with detail — fanart from the community displayed on the walls, interactive minigames for mission objectives, NPC characters with actual personality. These are the touches of a team that loves what they’re making, and players can feel the difference. Evil Raptor has also already committed to a player-first infrastructure policy: even if their servers shut down, online play with friends remains available — a meaningful goodwill gesture that larger studios rarely offer.
Character progression runs through a perk system that’s already more varied than most Early Access games manage at full release. Specialisations in spell damage, healing, headshots, and support builds each feel meaningfully different in play, and the ability to upgrade guns and spells at the town between missions gives you something meaningful to work toward without creating gatekeeping power gaps. The prestige system hints at serious endgame ambition, and the twelve-month Early Access roadmap points toward substantially more content on the way.
Enemy design is solid with real variety in approach and behaviour across the different map biomes. The jungle map in particular escalates difficulty well, though snake spawn rates and movement speed have been flagged by the community as slightly overtuned — an issue the team is already addressing in patches. The minigunner enemy’s sound design has similarly attracted feedback for being particularly grating in extended sessions. These are Early Access balance notes, not fundamental design problems, and Evil Raptor’s patch cadence suggests they’ll be resolved quickly.
Far Far West doesn’t reinvent the PvE co-op extraction shooter — it refines it, dresses it in the most charming aesthetic the genre has seen, and delivers it at a price and polish level that makes every comparable launch look sloppy by comparison. The wishing well that nuked a player. The cactus that conducts electricity. The request for dynamite self-destruction. The game has a personality that keeps revealing itself the longer you play, and that personality is doing meaningful work alongside the solid mechanical foundation.
For Deep Rock Galactic veterans looking for something with that same sense of joyful, teamwork-first chaos — this is the next one. For Helldivers 2 players who want less punishing difficulty and more supernatural weirdness — this is the next one. For anyone who has ever wanted to be a wizard robot cowboy riding a mechanical horse through a haunted desert — this is, definitively and specifically, the one.
| The Good | The Bad | The Ugly |
|---|---|---|
| Exceptional Co-op CombatSeamlessly blending gunplay with combinable spells creates emergent team moments that feel genuinely exciting rather than scripted. | Snake Spawn OvertuningSnake frequency and speed on the jungle map tips from challenging into frustrating — an acknowledged balance issue already being addressed in patches. | Minigunner AudioThe minigunner enemy’s sound cue is genuinely grating in extended sessions. The community has spoken. Loudly. |
| Staggering Polish for Eight PeopleThe visual quality, performance, netcode, and launch stability put studios ten times the size to shame. This is exceptional indie craft. | Early Access Content CeilingThe core loop is excellent but content breadth is naturally limited at EA launch — players burning through it fast may feel the edges sooner than expected. | |
| No Hard Time LimitThe freedom to fully explore, complete all side objectives, and find every secret before triggering extraction is a smart design choice that sets it apart from its genre peers. | Occasional Performance Tweaking NeededSome players have reported stuttering until settings are dialled in — not universal, but worth a few minutes of configuration on launch. | |
| Developer-Community RelationshipActive patching, community feedback implementation, fanart on the hub walls, and a future-proof server policy signal a team genuinely invested in their players. | ||
| Charm That Never StopsFrom exploding wishing wells to a ghost train that crashes through the map, Far Far West has an infectious personality that makes every session memorable. |
Far Far West is the real thing. It’s a genuinely outstanding Early Access launch from a tiny team that understood exactly what makes PvE co-op shooters work and built something new on top of that foundation. The supernatural Wild West setting is inspired, the spell-and-gun combat is satisfying and team-friendly, and the polish on display defies both the team size and the price point.
The Early Access balance notes are real but minor, and Evil Raptor’s responsiveness to feedback makes them feel like speed bumps rather than warning signs. At $17.99 during the introductory period for a game that has already delivered 10-hour sessions to tens of thousands of players, Far Far West is one of the best value propositions in gaming right now. Saddle up.