Steamed on Friday and esteemed (by me) since yesterday, Pistols at Dawn is an inexpensive (£4) and ingenious turn-based pistol duelling game. By thoughtfully placing numbered tokens and special coins on a clockface-style board, you attempt to move your crosshairs onto your opponent’s silhouette and edge their reticle away from your outline.
The story mode is relatively short (I romped through it in about three hours) and somewhat silly, but by injecting light relief and a dash of the picaresque into what would otherwise have been an inexplicable sequence of showdowns, it serves its purpose.
It also allows developer If True Then Run to introduce their thought-provoking if poorly theme-spliced ‘special powers’ coins piecemeal.
Different backgrounds, body shapes, and coin selections help make each duel feel unique. Do certain enemies fight smarter than others? It’s difficult to tell. Foes do make weird moves from time to time, but usually their choices guarantee nailbiting contests.
Although randomly drawn movement tokens mean Lady Luck is fairly influential, tactically there’s always plenty to ponder. Blindingly obvious moves are rare.
While attempting to perforate the likes of Poot Wimplebottom and Guff Dumpley I began picturing a Great War dogfighting game with similar mechanics. Aircraft silhouettes rather than human ones… special manoeuvres, wingmen, and cloud tokens in place of PaD’s clumsily contextualised coins… the theme switch is so natural, so tempting, it’s sad to think it will probably never happen.
If there isn’t a dastardly upgrade option of French rifling then I’m not interested.
https://youtu.be/p1fYUafNpUg?si=XHsTo60-gq3Rfu2P&t=307