Bloodroots

Developer/publisher Paper Cult

Format PC (tested), PS4, Switch

Release Out now

Revenge is a dish best served cold, which makes ultra-violent Weird West action game Bloodroots positively frosty. The first minutes see you, as the hulking Mr Wolf, running through a village strewn with corpses, before the perpetrator – the terrifying Black Wolf – brings down a hatchet upon your head. By some miracle, you survive, and set out on a quest to avenge Tarrytown. And, for a game from an indie studio we’ve never heard of before, there’s an unexpected richness to almost everything – animation, sound and level design in particular – that inspires an insatiable bloodlust.

That might all sound rather sanguinary,’ sense of style and slapstick humour affords it a wonderful lightness. Its cartoonish setting looks like papercraft; fully-destructible towns are decorated with die-cut trees and houses, and lit with a textural warmth. And nearly everything within them, from the buckets to the fenceposts, can be picked up and used as a weapon. Guards stand motionless, flesh-skittles waiting to be bowled over by our vicious choreography – until we come within range, and they charge.