After being impressed recently by a few of the 3DS eShop offerings, most notably Mighty Push Force and Pushmo/Pullblox, I decided to spend some more money and give the newest release, Dillon’s Rolling Western, a go. The game costs quite a lot, £9 in England (and apparently a similar number in Euros, strangely), but my initial impressions are good.

To explain the game itself, it quite unsurprisingly takes place in a Western setting. You play the role of Dillon, an anthropomorphic armadillo. He’s the silent type, you know the drill. Wears a cowboy hat, has a neckerchief, loves all that Clint Eastwood shit. However, unlike Clint Eastwood, he can roll around the deserts and destroy stuff (which is why Clint Eastwood is rubbish).

The gameplay has two parts to it: one part tower defense and one part actual combat. The game has you go from town to town protecting the townspeople (and their livestock) from grocks, these strange little triangular rock monsters. Like all good monsters - and Batman - they only come out at night so during the day you can roll around the surrounding areas collecting food for the animals, going into small caves and collecting ore, and completing various side quests for money. You can use the money to upgrade towers, either creating watchtowers or stocking them up with guns ranging from (initially) shotguns to cannons. The ore can be used to strengthen the town’s walls just in case any enemies get past you and there’s a buy/sell system where you can upgrade Dillon’s equipment, buy health tonics and all that stuff.

When night comes the game changes a bit. Enemies come out of their dens and the mini-map on the lower screen is crucial. When you come into contact with an enemy you’ll enter a “battle mode” where you have to defeat maybe half a dozen basic enemies, all while time continues to pass in the background so you have to be quick. Speed is crucial in general at night and early on I found myself catching up with the final enemy just as he was about to reach the town. In short, things can become quite intense, if rarely difficult. There are a number of different enemies as you progress through the worlds that add some nice variety and require you to mix up your combat instead of just rolling into enemies (although that is most of the combat).

The thing that’s really struck me about this game early on is how stylus-heavy it is. It’s absolutely essential; the face buttons play absolutely no purpose in this game. You hold the 3DS in your left hand to use the left trigger and stick while the right hand’s all stylus. The controls take some time to get used to as Dillon requires a “wind up” with the stylus to get rolling and maintain his motion, but once you get used to it it’s fine. I was also very impressed with the art style of this game, particularly in the few actual cut scenes you get. It’s not outright cell-shaded but it’s appropriately cartoonish, something I think works really well on the 3DS.

I’m only a few worlds into the game but judging by the mini-map to jump between towns it seems like there’s quite a few in here. However, these worlds consist of just a few days and don’t take that long to complete. That works in the game’s favour on a portable device because you can just pick the game up, complete a day in a particular town and be done for a while. It might take about 10 minutes in total.

The game seems to be made to digest in bite-sized chunks, not a marathon session, adding longevity and hopefully giving you your money’s worth. Because that is quite a lot of money for an eShop game.