Howdy pardners, we bring you good tidings: the new Hard West 2 After Dark Update is now live! This update includes free additional new content and player-requested balance tweaks.

To celebrate the release of this new update and the spooky season, we’re also offering a special 20% discount from now until October 31st. So there’s never been a better time for curious undead outlaws to check out the game.

Let’s take a look at what’s coming our way in this update:

• A whole new level called “After Dark”: When Gin and company encounter a strange Saloon on the outskirts of the world, they quickly discover that a couple of drinks aren’t going to pay their way to safety in a room full of all their worst enemies. Join us for this wild ride beginning at Chapter 3 of Hard West 2.
  
• A special demonic reward weapon, the “Hellfire Rifle”: The powerful new weapon is a deadly combination of firepower and special buffs. It can only be acquired by completing the new After Dark level.
  
• Two New Difficulty Levels: “Normal” and “Nightmare+” difficulty levels are now available. Normal helps to bridge the gap between Easy and Hard levels to provide a good balance of enjoyable challenge. Nightmare+ includes turn limits for those looking for an additional level of difficulty when compared to the existing Nightmare level.

Can’t wait to try out the new content or prefer not to have to replay the game to access it? Here are the instructions for quickly accessing the new After Dark Level:

• Download special pre-made save here from here[drive.google.com]
  
• Unzip HW2_DLC_content_press_save.zip
  
• Add saves to %appdata%\..\LocalLow\Ice Code Games\HardWest2\Saves\UserSave directory
  
• Run Steam and the game
  
• Enjoy the new adventure!

We can’t wait to hear your feedback, and if you want to help our development team, don’t forget to review the game on Steam!

This is all, for now. Back in the saddles!

Howdy friends! You're all invited to our AMA live session!
During this event, Jacek Kwiecień - Lead Designer of Hard West 2, and Mateusz Pilski - CTO of ICG will be volunteering their time to answer any questions you may have about Hard West 2!

When: Wednesday, September 14th.
Check the picture below to find out the time of the event in your time zone.

Where: HERE

We are so excited about this event and looking forward to chatting with all of you. Let us know the questions that you'd like us to answer in the comments!

Greetin’s Community!

As promised, we are now releasing Patch 1 to the main game. Thanks for all the testing feedback and thoughts. Patch 1 includes all of the fixes/changes that we outline below. However, we're planning to continue to support the game in the long term, so we will have a lot more information to share about future patches and plans to continue to improve the game shortly. We realize there are some mixed feelings on the difficulty levels, so we're actively discussing ways to improve how those are conveyed and exploring new options for providing greater player choice when it comes to game difficulty. Please let us know your thoughts on Nightmare mode and the challenge it now provides with the patch implemented.

Hopefully the balance changes introduced by Patch 1 will help the game to feel even more fun to play and you all continue, or return, to explore the wild world of Hard West 2 with us.


Please note: You will see the testing branch removed and your existing save will be playable in the main game.

• Memory Leaks sealed / Loading times improved.
  
• Crashes and exceptions mitigated.

• Added an optional toggle called RNG+ which will generate new Chance to Hit results after each game load.
  
• Fixed game speed reset after battles.
  
• Skipping a turn no longer causes abilities to be deselected.
  
• Demo save loading disabled.
  
• 5 new Achievements added.

Enemies:

• Certain enemies will switch to shotguns after depleting dynamite: Revenant Demolishers, Mad Dogs, Blasting Brothers.
  
• Explosive attack charges are reduced from infinite to 2 - the same amount of consumables that each Posse can carry.
  
• Blackhearts - HP is lowered to 15. Can cast Transfusion only once and its range is reduced. Friendly fire enabled.
  
• Revenants - Now regenerate only 5 HP.
  
• Witches - Can now summon a lesser amount of Revenants and less frequently.
  
• Status Effects - Bleeding duration is reduced from 3 to 1.

Posse:

• Cla'lish - starting equipment is now improved.
  
• Lazarus - starting equipment is now improved.

Global:

• Economy - Mission rewards for main and side objectives are now higher.
  
• Economy - Unwanted Trinkets can now be sold at reasonable prices.

Levels:

• The Ritual - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Frostbitten in Calla Calla - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Frostbitten in Calla Calla - The number of enemies has been lowered.
  
• Riftwalkers - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Lady Shrike - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• A Bridge to Nowhere - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Shootout at San Argent - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• The Last Train to Utah - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• The Last Train to Utah - Objective "All posse must survive" has been removed.
  
• Grand Bank Robbery - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Grand Bank Robbery - The number of enemies has been lowered.
  
• Grand Bank Robbery - Objective "All posse must survive" removed.
  
• Hellsgate Station - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Served Cold - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Served Cold - Mission was tweaked to be less punishable, number of enemies has been lowered.
  
• Served Cold - Turned off objective "Do not use any of the Posse's skills."
  
• Served Cold - Objective "All posse must survive" has been removed (after entering Ghost Train)
  
• Served Cold - Obstacles tweaks.
  
• Hellgate Station - Objective "All posse must survive" removed.

Additional bug fixes:

• Mission objectives clarified.
  
• Blockers removed for certain missions.
  
• Localization updates.
  
• Characters no longer drop through the floor.
  
• Localization fixed and descriptions updated overall including for Chinese.
  
• Tickets Please - Colt's Voiceovers overlap with one another when triggered in quick succession.

Known Issues:

• HDD drive loading times are still long but are not increasing with gameplay time.
  
• Revenant Demolisher shotgun VFX is misaligned.

Thank you all for the support and feedback!

Howdy all,

We’ve heard a lot of feedback the past week and have worked hard on a balance and bug-fix patch. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on difficulty, enemy strength, and loading times.

In order to take advantage of these fixes, please jump into the Patch Beta branch below. Please keep in mind that this is a test build meant to address your feedback as quickly as possible and has not been tested as thoroughly as we would an official full patch release.

1) Launch Steam and open your Library. If you have Steam open, please restart it.

2) Right-click on Hard West 2 and go to properties

3) Go to the betas tab and choose Test Branch for Patch 1 Beta Build. There is no password.

• More Leaks sealed / Loading times were further improved.
  
• Crashes and exceptions mitigated.

• Added an optional toggle called RNG+ which will generate new chance to hit results after each game load.
  
• Fixed game speed reset after battles.
  
• Skipping a turn no longer causes abilities to be deselected.
  
• Demo save loading disabled.

Enemies:

• Certain enemies will switch to shotguns after depleting dynamite: Revenant Demolishers, Mad Dogs, Blasting Brothers.
  
• Explosives attack charges are reduced from infinite to 2 - the same amount of consumables that each Posse can carry.
  
• Blackhearts:
  
• HP is lowered to 15.
  
• Can cast Transfusion only once and it’s range is reduced. Friendly fire enabled.
  
• Revenants - Now regenerate only 5 HP.
  
• Witches - Can now summon a lesser amount of Revenants and less frequently.
  
• Status Effects - Bleeding duration is reduced from 3 to 1.

Posse:

• Cla'lish - starting equipment is now improved.
  
• Lazarus - starting equipment is now improved.

Global:

• Economy - Mission rewards for main and side objectives are now higher.
  
• Economy - Unwanted Trinkets can now be sold at reasonable prices.

Levels:

• The Ritual - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Frostbitten in Calla Calla - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Frostbitten in Calla Calla - The number of enemies has been lowered.
  
• Riftwalkers - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Lady Shrike - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• A Bridge to Nowhere - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Shootout at San Argent - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• The Last Train to Utah - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• The Last Train to Utah - Objective "All posse must survive" has been removed.
  
• Grand Bank Robbery - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Grand Bank Robbery - The number of enemies has been lowered.
  
• Grand Bank Robbery - Objective "All posse must survive" removed.
  
• Hellsgate Station - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Served Cold - all time limit objectives removed on Easy and Hard difficulties.
  
• Served Cold - Mission was tweaked to be less punishable, number of enemies has been lowered.
  
• Served Cold - Turned off objective "Do not use any of the Posse's skills."
  
• Served Cold - Objective "All posse must survive" has been removed (after entering Ghost Train)
  
• Served Cold - Obstacles tweaks.
  
• Hellgate Station - Objective "All posse must survive"removed.

Additional bug fixes

• Mission objectives clarified.
  
• Blockers removed for certain missions.
  
• Localization updates.
  
• Characters dropping through the floor.

Known Issues:

• HDD drive loading times are still long but are not increasing with gameplay time.
  
• Revenant Demolisher shotgun VFX is misaligned.
  
• Some Chinese Localization is fixed and other reported items are being addressed.
  
• Detail Panels over Mammon and Hellspawn do not trigger in multiple languages.

We appreciate all your thoughts, support, and suggestions and hope this patch addresses your most common concerns. We’re on track to deliver the official Patch 1 release by the end of the month, so players who do not wish to play a BETA version of it don’t have too much longer to wait. Please let us know how you’re feeling in the Steam Discussion area and thanks for being a part of our community and the process. We are continuing to add balance items and bug fixes in further patch releases.

Howdy Community!

It has been an amazing and busy week over here in the Wild West of development land. First, we apologize it took so long to get you the Deadman’s Gun reward to you all. Thank you again for playing the Betas and Demo. Your feedback was invaluable. Please check your email and thanks for signing up on our form[docs.google.com] so we could reach you with this reward.

Next, we are aware that some of you are unfortunately experiencing abnormally long loading times when playing the game. As we have previously announced, this loading issue will be addressed with the release of the game’s first official patch which is scheduled to go live before the end of August. Of course, we understand that not everyone affected by this issue would want to wait that long, so we have released a BETA version of this patch on a special BETA branch on Steam. See the instructions below for more information on switching to this Special BETA branch. Please note that this is a testing branch so you might encounter some new issues. For example, there is currently a known issue that will occur if a user redeems the Deadman’s Gun on the normal branch and then switches to the special BETA branch. Doing this will cause the gun to replicate, giving an affected player an infinite supply of Deadman’s Guns.

Steps to join:

1. Launch Steam and open your Library. If you have Steam open, please restart it.
   
2. Right-click on Hard West 2 and go to properties.
   
3. Go to the betas tab and choose Test Branch for Patch 1 Beta Build. There is no password.

Lastly, there is some feedback about enemies and certain levels feeling harder than other parts of the game and about difficulty options overall. We are in the process of rebalancing the game and changes should be coming to your way shortly in the next patch. Please see the image below for all that will be included. As you can see, we take your feedback very seriously and have been noting all of it. We want Hard West 2 to be one of your favorite games of the year, and we’re striving to implement your thoughts into the game as fast as we can. Thanks for the patience and all the support you’ve shown us so far with sharing the game with friends, talking to us in Forums and generally being an amazing community.

If you enjoy what you’ve seen so far, drop us a review in Steam won’t you? We will continue working hard to answer your questions, cheer your victories and modify the game based on what we’re hearing.

Howdy again all,

Hopefully, you enjoyed our last update; THANK YOU AGAIN! We wanted to follow up as some players reported issues of longer loading times. For some, this simply caused extended loading times; for others crashes or incrementally increasing load times as you play longer in Hard West 2. We know this is impacting your gameplay experience and we want to address it as soon as humanly possible.

For this reason, we're opening a Beta Branch in Steam for those affected. This branch does not contain ALL the content incoming for Patch 1 that addresses a rebalance and some quality of life issues + localization. Please keep in mind that this is a test build that’s meant to solve the issue as quickly as possible and has not been tested as thoroughly as we would an official full patch release. If you encounter any issues, please do let us know in the Steam thread here. However, this should solve the memory leak issue and get you playing happily again.

Here is what is coming in the FULL patch later in August. For those who would like to jump into the Beta branch rather than waiting until then, instructions are below:

1) Launch Steam and open your Library. If you have Steam open, please restart it.

2) Right-click on Hard West 2 and go to properties

3) Go to the betas tab and choose Test Branch for Patch 1 Beta Build. There is no password.

Huge thanks again for all your support of the game and we sincerely apologize for this issue that might have made it less than ideal. We hear you, and are continuing to make Hard West 2 even better with your help and feedback.

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are truly overwhelmed by your positive reception and support of Hard West 2!

Thank you for all the support, feedback, reviews and most importantly the trust that you’ve shown us as a team. We're blown away to have managed to reach the #1 Global Best Selling Game spot on Steam and also to have the #1 most watched stream yesterday. None of this would have been possible without the support of every one of you, so we just wanted to take the time to properly thank you!

We are thrilled to hear you’re enjoying the game and the experience that it offers. Of course, this is just the start though, as we’re committed to continuing to improve the game and making it a better experience for everyone. We aim to do this by addressing all of the feedback that we receive on Steam, social and Discord which highlight issues that detract people from enjoying their time with Hard West 2. We believe that the best way to do this is to be transparent and clearly communicate with players on how we’re planning to improve the game moving forward. So consider this the first step on this journey and us opening up the direct dialogue with all of you.

We hear you loud-and-clear on the need to lower the overall loading times. The upcoming Patch Number 1 should address issues on PCs using 8GB or less RAM and mitigate issues in longer sessions. It’s scheduled to be released later this month and we already have the list of critical issues that it will certainly address. We want to take the time to communicate how this patch will improve the game, so we created the image below which outlines the patch highlights:

This is of course just the highlights though and we want to hear from you what else we can do to improve the game. So tell us what other fixes and improvements you would like to see in the near future for Hard West 2? Let us know in the comments or Steam discussions HERE!

So far we have only talked about the upcoming patch and game issues, but we know that some of you are experiencing problems which exist beyond just the game. Here are the main two that we wanted to call out

• Deadman’s Gun Delay: We know that most of you want the Deadman's Gun and we can’t wait to get this in your hands. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for Steam to deliver the keys for this item so that we can start distributing it, but we’re in constant communication with them. So we can guarantee that it’s coming, but it just took a bit more time to arrange than we would have liked. But rest assured that it will be with you shortly and thanks so much for your patience! Sign up HERE.[forms.gle]
  
  
• Demo Save Issues: We have already posted this in the forum, but we wanted to go out of our way to communicate this again. Please DO NOT play from your Demo save. We don't recommend using the old saves at the moment, even if the game recognizes them. We have some users reporting that it might cause problems later on and have reported that the game goes back to the beginning in some cases. This is true for all demos as games update upon launch and we’re limited to how we can address this. So to ensure that you enjoy the best experience with the game, do not use your demo saves.

Once again, all of this is just the beginning though, so please don’t hesitate to tell us what you would like to see improved and where you would like to see the future of Hard West 2 to go. We want to make sure you’re happy with the game and it becomes one of your favorites.

Thanks again for your support and let’s talk!

Howdy Community.

Today we’re thrilled to share that Hard West 2 is now available for $29.99/€24.99, with a 10% off launch week discount available until August 11. Welcome to the Wild West and thanks for playing the Demo and for all your feedback. We hope you hop on that Ghost Train and enjoy the ride.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1282410/Hard_West_2/
Today on August 4th we have some streams planned that should tickle your fancy. Catch them here right after you see this announcement and on Twitch.[www.twitch.tv]

In the meantime, enjoy our fancy new artwork and trailer.

Now for some business. You may recall back when we ran our betas, we'd promised that participants would automatically receive an in-game item called "The Dead Man's Gun." We're still doing that. Due to a LIGHT technical snafu, we won't be able to get those out based on who played the betas. That's on us, and we're sorry for the inconvenience.

To ameliorate this situation, we kindly ask that you fill out this handy Google Form[forms.gle] so we can send you a code to unlock the aforementioned exclusive weapon. That's whether you played the beta or not. We're sorry, you're welcome, thank you, and we're sorry. Happy Hard West 2 day!

Hiya Friends!

A quick reminder that today Hard West 2 is available to play until August 1st! Of course, very soon after that Hard West 2 is landing on Steam on August the 4th! so there’s a lot to celebrate (we know you wishlisted already right?)

For a little extra fun while you wait, Hard West 1 is also having a free weekend.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/307670/Hard_West/
We’re also planning a livestream over on the Hard West 1 page and Twitch livestream[www.twitch.tv] where some of our …less tactical…team members are going to try to play with community assistance. Help us out and have a few laughs on Friday at 1PM ET/ 7PM CET.