Howdy, partner! Holster that six-shooter and belly up to the bar for a spell, I've got some news for a cowpoke like you. If you love horse-drawn wagons, shootouts with bandits, and dusty little frontier towns, you might want to lasso this new game and drive it into your corral (that's Old West talk for "add it to your Steam wishlist.")
It's called Cattle Country, and the announcement from publisher Playtonic Friends describes the "cozy cowboy life sim" as "Red Dead Redemption meets Stardew Valley." I know what you're thinking: barely a day goes by without some new game billing itself as "Stardew Valley Meets [Something Else]" these days. But hold your horses, because it's kinda hard not to find this one immediately appealing.
Here's the reveal trailer—and yes, that is Roger Clark, the voice of Arthur Morgan from RDR2. Perfect.
The trailer gives us a glimpse of farming, chopping down trees (of course), building, mining for metals in a cave, and fishing, which goes beyond rod and reel and shows fishing traps set up along a river. There's also what looks like a pretty hefty menu of cookable meals and craftable beverages. And there's some frontier frolic possible: Cattle Country has 18 romanceable partners, plus events and activities like rodeos, livestock competitions, cattle drives, and two people either bare-knuckle boxing or wrasslin' in a ring. It's a pretty lively town!
It's not all one big prairie picnic, however. Bandits roam the plains and they've got their eye on your busy little town. The trailer doesn't show any combat, but a gif from the game's page on Steam shows a shootout where some bad guys are comically obliterated in a gunfight before they can so much as pull the trigger:
It all looks pretty darn good to me, and I can't wait to see more. Cattle Country is developed by Castle Pixel, maker of the Blossom Tales series. There's unfortunately no release date yet, but have a look at some more screenshots in the gallery below.
'It’s been a little sad to see Haunted Chocolatier getting dusty on the shelf, but this is the reality of my situation,' Eric Barone says: 'Stardew Valley is a big and popular game'
'Healing is messy, and it is bitter': The Stanley Parable's creator has used his newest game as an outlet to explore his own burnout
