Tombwater Review
Mix together Red Dead with Bloodborne, classic Zelda, throw in some Eldritch horror, a little metroidvania and you have Tombwater. What began as a caterpillar in the form of a 2D love letter to Bloodborne named Yarntown, has blossomed into a fantastic western, thanks to an excellent story, addicting gameplay and plenty of original ideas.
Few games capture your attention as quickly as Tombwater, as you’re thrown into a train heist gone wrong with no resort but to jump from the speeding locomotive in a desperate attempt to save your life. Even fewer games can hold it for twenty hours, as the world you find yourself in is full of Eldritch horrors when you were only looking for a better life in the Wild West.
Tombwater effortlessly combines this cavalry of inspirations and genres together into a game that has carved out its own strong identity to become one of the greatest westerns ever.
95
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TOMBWATER REVIEW
Tombwater is a 2D action-adventure with metroidvania progression infused with action-RPG elements. The exploration feels heavily inspired by classic Legend of Zelda with dungeons and puzzles. Movement is extremely fluid, which is reminiscent of Hyper Light Drifter and the dash. There is a version of the charm system from Hollow Knight, which is implemented perfectly with unique charms. Finally, there is the Bloodborne influence with gunpowder in one hand and a sharp blade in the other, as well as many of the essential souls-like elements including character levelling, crafting, bonfires, stamina, and many others.
As the saying traditionally goes “Jack of all trades, master of none” but Tombwater is clearly an exception to the rule, as every single aspect feels original, highly polished, and extremely satisfying to play. For example, the combat that is heavily inspired by Bloodborne with a blade and gunpowder also blazes it’s on trail with the incorporation of occultism as any class can use Eldritch spells. With 7 classes, over 50 weapons, 40 spells, and 40 charms, how you choose to experience Tombwater will be up to you.
Staying true to the western, just like Clint Eastwood, you play as the man with no name, who nine years after a train robbery gone sideways heads to the remote town of Tombwater. Your former partner in crime, Flintwood went looking for a better life and said that if he ever found it, he would send for you. It turns out that Flintwood found a better life as the sheriff of Tombwater. Unfortunately, by the time you arrive, a better life no longer awaits as something catastrophic has taken place and you will need to rely on your skills as a gunslinger. You follow some soft leads and slowly you’ll discover blood echos that allow you to see a moment from the past. This breadcrumb way of filling the player in on the story keeps you intrigued throughout.
The journey starts as your train pulls into the Tombwater station and just like the games that inspired it, you begin by exploring what intrigues you. But first, you need to pick from one of the seven classes Tombwater offers you. These classes have different levels of profeincieny in gunslinging, melee and the occult. Being adept in the dark arts allows you to cast Eldritch spells, but the gamble is that they inflict madness if you over indulge. Too much madness will cause you to go mad, which increases the damage you take and stops you from being able to use these powers further. The only way to cure this is by resting at a campfire.
The world of Tombwater is punishing and captures the essence a souls-like in many aspects. There are campfires where you can rest, but they will also respawn enemies. These campfires are strategically placed around the world to always provide tension because the supply is just short enough and far apart. Every enemy from the very beginning will pose a challenge that will require patience and timing. Even towards the end of the game, all enemies still demand your full respect, as just one too many in a small space could spell doom. Then there are the bosses, mini bosses and optional bosses. All of these provided a unique visual feast, an even more unique challenge and always provided a massive sense of accomplishment the genre is known for.
A large part of what makes Tombwater satisfying is how the entire experience evolves in parallel. The story, gameplay, crafting, exploration, combat all start out small or simple, but greatly expands as the journey goes on. The world of Tombwater looks fairly small, when you look at the map, but as the your search for answers progresses, the map greatly radiates outwards farther than expected. The world is metroidvania in design, as you will constantly be teased with paths that you don’t clearly have the right tool for yet. There are lots of different biomes and they are highly distinct from one another thanks to unique color palettes, themes, enemies and score.
Although the experience is retro inspired, Tombwater is the rarity where the developer understands that there needs to be a modernity to it as well. Simple things like talking to NPC’s that will automatically update your journal with important quest info or how crafting allows you to dismantle gadgets and reclaim resource for other recipes. Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the soundtrack, which could have opted for something retro, but instead features a phenomenal score with plenty of Spanish guitar and at times sounded like The Last of Us. Each region also had its own unique score, which perfectly accentuated the atmosphere.
Tombwater Criticisms
Tombwater stays true to the Zelda and Souls inspiration because it offers little direction, which might rub some players the wrong way, but it’s made worse by missing areas that blended in to the environment and a map lacks detail. Trying to figure out exactly where you are at times or where you need to be can be a slight issue. With its metroidvania inspired connectivity, one of the ways to figure out where to go when you’re stuck is to look at the map and investigate areas that aren’t explored fully, which couldn’t be done in Tombwater.
One of the best things about picking a class in a souls like is that you aren’t really locked in as you can use your upgrade points on whatever traits you want and adjust as the experience goes. When you pick a class at the beginning of Tombwater, there are six traits that make up each class, but when you use a skill point to upgrade your character at a campfire, there are only three possibilities. Life, Lucidity and Stamina, with the latter not even being one of the skills including at class selection. In the very early builds of Tombwater, you were able to upgrade all traits, so it was unfortunate that it was removed.
The rest of the issues amount to nothing more than minor gripes. You need to be at the exact spot to interact with the world, whether that be pickups, bonfires or NPC’s. The puzzles were fun and definitely gave feelings of Zelda dungeons, but it was missing that dopamine sound to let you know when you solved it. Finally, shops don’t display comparison or even total damage of weapons, which makes it a roll of the dice when you spend your hard earned money, but the good news is that I wouldn’t recommend buying any weapons anyways, as you will find plenty of interesting devices of death through exploration.
Tombwater Final Thoughts and Score
Good Western games are few and far between and great ones are even more of a rarity. There have only been a few handfuls of truly great westerns like the Red Dead series, Oddworld: Strangers Wrath, Outlaws, Oregon Trail and a small selection of others, but now Tombwater needs to be placed in these hallowed halls alongside these icons.
Tombwater features gameplay inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Bloodborne that gets paired with a faithful western story revolving around an anti-hero trying to live an honest life, who becomes forced to pursue frontier justice in this Eldritch universe. The result is an experience that would make Clint Eastwood proud as Tombwater is one of the greatest Westerns games ever crafted.
