Far Far West: 97% Positive, $20, and a Reminder That Games Should Be Fun

You're a robot cowboy riding a mechanical horse through a haunted desert, shooting skeletons with a revolver in one hand and slinging fireballs with the other while a giant ghost train barrels across the horizon and your three friends are screaming over voice chat because the boss just spawned and nobody has ammo.

That's Far Far West. That's the whole pitch. And it's one of the best times I've seen a co-op game deliver in 2026.

Far Far West launched into Early Access today from developer Evil Raptor and publisher Fireshine Games. $19.99 with a 10% launch discount. 97% Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam from over 1,100 reviews. And this isn't a game that came out of nowhere. The demo during Steam Next Fest pulled in over 400,000 players and earned a 99% positive rating from more than 4,000 reviews.

99%. From 4,000 reviews. On a demo.

That's WILD.

Is It Fun? Is It Cool?

I talk about these two questions a lot. "Is it fun?" and "Is it cool?" The two things that the best games never forget to ask and the worst games never bother to. Far Far West asks both of them in the first 30 seconds and doesn't stop answering for the entire session.

The premise is beautifully stupid. You're a bounty-hunting robot cowboy in a Wild West that's been completely broken by the collision of technology, magic, and the supernatural. Dusty saloons still exist. So do reanimated skeletons, cursed mines, ghost towns that are literally haunted, and environmental hazards that want you dead almost as much as the enemies do.

You take contracts from the Town Sheriff. You ride out into the frontier. You complete objectives, explore the map, fight through hordes of enemies, find the boss, kill the boss, collect the bounty, and get out. The loop is simple. The chaos is not.

Combat is fast. Really fast. Boomer-shooter fast. Serious Sam and DOOM fast. Enemies come at you in waves that fill the screen. You're hip-firing a revolver into a crowd of undead while dodge-rolling away from a charging monster while your teammate throws a spell that combines with yours for an area-of-effect explosion that wipes half the field. Modifier cards drop from enemies and exploration that augment your build mid-run. Weapons can be upgraded in town between missions. Spells can be combined for chain damage.

And the whole time, the game is winking at you. It knows how ridiculous this is. The comedy isn't forced. It's baked into the DNA of the world. Robot cowboys riding robot horses through a supernatural apocalypse. That's not a game that takes itself seriously. And that's exactly why it works.

The Art Style Sells Everything

I need to talk about how this game looks because it's doing something that a lot of games forget. It has a visual identity.

Far Far West uses a stylized aesthetic that sits somewhere between a Pixar western and a comic book fever dream. The character designs are exaggerated and expressive. The environments are colorful and detailed without chasing photorealism. The enemy designs are creative and readable, which matters when there are 30 of them on screen at once.

In a market drowning in UE5 games that all look the same, that visual distinction matters more than people realize. You see a screenshot of Far Far West and you know exactly what game it is. That's not something you can say about most shooters releasing right now. The art style isn't just aesthetic. It's branding. And Evil Raptor nailed it.

The game is also well-optimized. No stutters. No frame drops during horde encounters. For an Early Access title running chaotic combat with four players and dozens of enemies on screen, that's not a given. It's earned.

Co-op Is the Way

Let me be clear about something. You can play Far Far West solo. It's technically supported. But this game was built for co-op the same way a pizza was built to be shared. You can eat the whole thing alone. But that's not the move.

One to four players. Online co-op. Public matchmaking if your friends aren't around. The missions scale, but the game clearly comes alive with a full squad. Spell combinations between players create emergent combat moments that you can't replicate solo. The chaos multiplies with every person added. The screaming over voice chat when things go sideways is half the experience.

Five areas with multiple levels per zone. Desert, Canyon, Far West, Woodlands, and a hard-mode exclusive Area 41. Side objectives, environmental puzzles, NPC quests, collectibles, and exploration rewards scattered across large maps with no hard time limit. You can beeline to the main objective or you can wander and discover. The game rewards both.

$19.99 for all of that in Early Access. And unlike a lot of games at this price point, it actually runs well.

The Extraction Angle Without the Grief

Here's something subtle that Far Far West does really well. It takes the best parts of the extraction shooter formula and throws away the worst part.

You drop into a map. You explore. You loot. You fight. You extract with your bounty. That loop is extraction shooter DNA. But there's no PvP. Nobody is camping your extract. Nobody is stealing your loot at the last second. Nobody is ruining your 45-minute run because they've been server-hopping with endgame gear looking for easy kills.

It's PvE extraction. All the tension of pushing deeper into dangerous territory. All the satisfaction of making it out with a big haul. None of the grief.

For a lot of players, that's the dream. The extraction loop is genuinely compelling as a game design framework. The problem has always been that other players turn it into a frustration engine. Far Far West keeps the structure and removes the frustration. You're fighting the game, not each other. And the game fights back hard enough that you don't miss the PvP.

Where This Fits

The co-op shooter space is stacked right now. Deep Rock Galactic is still the gold standard. Helldivers 2 dominated 2024. Lethal Company and R.E.P.O. own the co-op horror lane. And now Far Far West slides in with a weird western aesthetic that nothing else on the market offers.

That's the key. It's not competing with those games head-to-head. It's offering something tonally and aesthetically different while scratching the same cooperative itch. If you and your squad have burned through Deep Rock's seasonal content and need something fresh, Far Far West is the answer. If you're looking for something lighter and goofier than Helldivers, this is it. If you want the extraction loop without the PvP anxiety, here it is.

And at $19.99 with a launch discount, your entire four-person squad can get in for less than one person's AAA purchase. We keep saying this about indie games and the math keeps getting more absurd.

The Early Access Question

It's Early Access. There are going to be rough edges. Content will need to expand. Balance will need tuning. New enemies, new maps, new spells, new modifiers. The game needs a long runway of updates to build the kind of library that keeps co-op groups coming back month after month.

But the foundation is rock solid. The combat is fun. The art is distinct. The performance is clean. The co-op works. The price is right. The community reception is as positive as it gets on Steam. 97% from over 1,100 reviews on launch day. 99% from the demo. Evil Raptor has built something that people genuinely love playing, and that's the hardest part.

If the updates keep coming, Far Far West has a real shot at planting itself alongside Deep Rock Galactic, Lethal Company, and R.E.P.O. in the co-op conversation. That's rarefied air. But everything I'm seeing today says this game belongs in the discussion.

Just Go Play It

I spend a lot of time on this site breaking down industry failures. Corporate mismanagement. Layoffs. Broken launches. Games designed for boardrooms instead of players. It's important work and I'm going to keep doing it.

But every once in a while, a game comes along that reminds you why you fell in love with gaming in the first place. A game that isn't trying to extract every dollar from your wallet. A game that isn't chasing a trend. A game that looked at the question "Is it fun?" and made that the entire development philosophy.

Far Far West is that game. $20. Four friends. Robot cowboys. Fireballs. Ghost trains. Screaming.

That's it. Go play it.