What if you tried to make a serious game - with puzzles, challenging combat, narrative choices - but also tried to make every part of it worthy of a smile, if not an outright laugh? What if your character looked like he'd seen the Monty Python funny walk skit too many times? What if every item description, combat move, and enemy to fight felt like it was a pun, or a pop culture reference, or just silly? What if you really had to work at balancing your ridiculous resources and managing your fights to keep your character alive? West of Loathing is what you'd come up with - at least, it's what these guys came up with, and it does all of that really well. It's more than an lame excuse to throw puns around - it's a fun and challenging game framework for throwing puns around. Take your time while you play to read everything - and yes, there's a lot of reading. For some people, that may be the only drawback. And if you're like me you'll probably will miss half the jokes, just because there are so many targeting radically different groups of interests. But the gameplay is entertaining enough to be a decent game even without the humor, so if something happens and you think you just missed a good joke, just keep playing - you'll find something else to make you smile around the next corner.
