Outlaw

Overview

A dueling game where two desperadoes try to lay each other flat in a gun battle, similar to the 1975 arcade game, Gun Fight.

Gameplay

There are several types of obstacles in Outlaw; they fall into three basic categories:

• Cacti, the stage coach, and the wall obstacles.
• There is destructible terrain, which disappears a square at a time with each hit, and there's solid terrain that is undamaged by attacks.
• There is moving terrain which continues upward, but retains damage given.

There are several combinations of these different elements, although some of the combinations are left out (a moving cactus is a bit too absurd, a solid wall would prevent both sides from ever hitting each other). Another element is that weapons can have limited ammunition. After six bullets are fired, players may only receive a new six bullets after the other player has expended their ammunition. Finally, there is an option to force a shooting player to remain still until his or her bullet has left the play area, thus leaving them vulnerable once they've made an attempt on the opponent's life.

In addition to two player, there is also a target practice mode, where a moving target rapidly bounces from the top to the bottom of the screen and back. Players have a limited amount of time to hit the target a set number of times.

There is a possibility that the game stagnates, where neither player is willing to expose him or herself to opponent's fire. It's recommended by this contributor that destructible terrain is used to help reduce this tendency.