Published 14 minutes ago

Bounty Star is the mecha game you didn’t know you needed

Image: Dinogod/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

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Balance is key in life: Adding a bit of everything can actually lead to a dull experience. You don’t want every topping from the menu on your burger. Otherwise, the meat’s savory taste might get lost in a torrent of flavors that you imposed onto yourself. But the developers at Bounty Star developer Dinogod don’t seem to agree with me.

The studio’s new title is a story-driven game with farming and base-building elements, where you pilot a robot to hunt bounties. The developers are all-in kind of eaters. And thank God they are, because they made an unexpectedly great — and emotional — mecha game.

Instead of giving the genre a twist by adding a single different element, it feels like Dinogod just put together everything its developers thought would be fun in an game. Bounty Star: The Morose Tale of Graveyard Clem — available now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC, and included in the Game Pass library — tells the emotional story of Clementine McKinney as she finds her place in the world in a retro-futuristic Western setting.

Bounty Star follows basic design concepts of all the genres that constitute it. The farm where she lives now is an arid and sunny place, given life by the folk songs playing in the background. As in any good farming game, you can only perform a certain number of actions during each period of the day (morning, afternoon, and evening). Cooking, reading, and harvesting do not advance time, but others do, like hunting bounties.

Image: Dinogod/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

The main hangar is not only her home, but also the player’s activity hub. Your base! There, you will start a new mission by interacting with the recently built raptor mecha hanging on the corner. At the center of the cozy garage, you find a workbench where you will build many batteries, new tools, and whatnot. The kitchen gives you a good view of the mecha, with a small table where Clem reminisces about life, but every meal is a buff you’ll want to prepare for the next mission.

When hunting a bounty, you pilot Clem’s raptor while managing its temperature and cooldowns. Despite it being a simple game, it’s clear that Dinogod cared about its robot. The physicality of the mecha is a nice touch because, although it is not as complex as in other games of the genre, piloting a raptor involves considering its weight and energy to make decisions. For each mission, you can prepare a simple but effective loadout. There are various guns to take, along with support parts that will help you control the raptor’s temperature.

Image: Dinogod/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

The fights in Bounty Star are as straightforward as the desert where Clem lives. Each movement is slow, letting you feel the weight of the machine moving. You can’t make quick turnarounds using boosters or flashy moves. You can repair the raptor only a few times per mission, so any mistake is a hard punishment. At the end of the day, all that matters is to conclude the bounty and get your reward. Not every victory will be pretty, but in the world of Bounty Star, every win is a win.

All these activities are followed by moments showing Clem interacting with other characters or talking to herself. She’s funny, witty, and ready to work hard to earn people’s respect. She’s a fascinating character to learn more about, and, despite all the mechanics and systems this game offers, she is the actual star. It’s her journey — described by the game’s subtitle as “The Morose Tale of Graveyard Clem” —- that the farming, base-building, and even the mecha are representing.

In Bounty Star, the raptor is not a symbol of power, but of Clem’s inner self, who needs to forgive herself for the past. Like its pilot, the mecha is fragmented, a set of parts that are still individually distinguishable. Together, they form a functional body, but one that is still coming to terms with its identity. The state of the mecha mirrors Clem’s own condition beautifully. The woman who was once known as Clementine is now simply Clem. She’s a bounty hunter, a farmer, a cook, a friend, a former protector. An odd-looking puzzle that day after day slowly completes itself.

Image: Dinogod/Annapurna Interactive via Polygon

I love mechas, but I love them even more when they so clearly communicate something about the world and the characters around them. Bounty Star’s raptor and all the other elements might look incongruous at first, but in the end they operate smoothly together, like the different instruments in an orchestra — to tell an impactful story.