Bounty Star Mixes Mechs With Farming In a Setup That Totally Works
At Summer Game Fest, Restart went hands-on with Bounty Star’s unique combination of genres.
Posted 5 months ago
During Summer Game Fest, Restart checked out three upcoming titles from publisher Annapurna Interactive: Flock, Lushfoil Photography Sim, and Bounty Star. While Flock and Lushfoil offer relaxed experiences for players, Bounty Star is far more action focused, allowing players to customize their own battle mech and take it into combat.
Bounty Star, or more formally, Bounty Star: The Morose Tale of Graveyard Clem, takes place in a post-post-apocalyptic version of the American southwest. Players will follow Clem, a former soldier turned bounty hunter who is haunted by a mistake she feels she made that apparently cost multiple people their lives.
Clem will balance her time between completing bounty missions and making a new life for herself at a former gas station and mechanic’s shop in the desert. Players will be able to grow crops and cook meals that give Clem certain combat bonuses, upgrade Clem’s new home, and construct a variety of offensive and defensive accessories for Clem’s mech.
At Summer Game Fest, Restart played through a mission set near the beginning of the game, but past the point where players would have been introduced to the game’s major combat and movement features, including ranged and melee attack options, the ability to dash, and more. We were challenged to destroy a series of crates at an enemy outpost populated by multiple enemy types, including humans and drones.
©Dinogod / Annapurna Interactive
The demo allowed players to tackle their objective in the way they’d like – they could charge into the middle of the camp, guns blazing, or take a more methodical approach by picking off enemies one-by-one from a distance. As is my personal playstyle, I took the latter approach, slowly drawing one or two enemies to my location at a time until I eventually cleared the camp.
According to Ben Ruiz, creator and director of Bounty Star, the demo rewarded this kind of patient progress, as I learned I was among the few who completed the entire demo without dying. I don’t say this to brag, more to emphasize that fast, run-and-gun action isn’t always the best way to go in the world of Bounty Star.
Ruiz also confirmed that Bounty Star will allow players to experience the tragic event that has left Clem with so much grief, but of course, those spoilers weren’t shared during the demo.
While we only experienced a portion of what Bounty Star will have to offer, we enjoyed what we saw and are looking forward to the game’s full launch sometime in 2025.
Bounty Star: The Morose Tale of Graveyard Clem is coming to Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation, and PC.