Posse Pursuit

Every outlaw is a deputy waiting to happen.

▶ Play in browser Playable in browser — no coins required

Every town on this stretch has the same problem. Outlaws camp outside the limits, wait for a payroll wagon or a fool with a full purse, and ride off before anybody can rally a posse. So I quit waiting for a posse. I deputize on the ride.

Knock a man down and he doesn't always stay down. Give him five seconds sitting in the dirt looking dazed, and if I circle back through that window he stands up wearing a badge instead of a grudge. Skip it and he dusts himself off and goes back to being a problem for the next town.

Line keeps growing behind me, which is good, because the line is also the only thing standing between my back and whatever's coming up on it. Lose the Sheriff and the ride's over for everybody. So far, it hasn't been.

— The Sheriff

You steer, they shoot

Posse Pursuit is a single-screen arcade brawler about leading a line of lawmen that never stops moving. You don’t aim and you don’t shoot. Every rider behind you picks their own target and fires on their own, so your entire job is deciding where the line goes. Ride too close and you take a hit. Ride too far and your recruits walk away.

Beat them, then deputise them

Shoot an outlaw down to nothing and he doesn’t die, he’s dazed, sitting in the dirt for five seconds with a green ring ticking down over his head. Ride the Sheriff over him inside that window and he stands up on your side, gun drawn, and falls in behind you. Miss it and he dusts himself off and slips away. A dazed outlaw is treasure with a timer on it, and it’s almost always lying in the middle of the trouble you just rode out of. Every one is the same question: go back in, or let him walk?

Who you chase is who you get

Bandits become Deputies — quick, close-range, cheap. Gunslingers become Sharpshooters, one heart each but the longest reach in the game. Dynamiters become Blasters, who lob dynamite that turns a crowd into confetti. Your posse tops out at eight riders including the Sheriff, and deputies can fall, the line just closes up behind them. If the Sheriff goes down, the ride’s over.

Nothing hits you without warning

Spawns are announced by a swirl of dust a beat before anyone appears, and every stick of dynamite draws its blast radius on the ground the whole way down. If you got hit, you were out of position. Ignore a gunman long enough, though, and he gets bold and comes to you.

Fits whatever screen you’ve got

The arena reshapes itself — a tall field on a phone, a wide one on a laptop, both filling the screen properly instead of stranding the game in a letterboxed strip. Touch and keyboard do exactly the same things. Everything you see is drawn in code and every sound is synthesised in the browser: no downloads, no plugins, no accounts.

Owing a debt to Nimble Quest

Posse Pursuit is an original game built in open admiration of Nimble Quest (NimbleBit, 2013), which invented the conga line we’re riding in. Where the two part company is recruitment. In Nimble Quest new heroes arrive as drops; here they arrive as the enemy. Every rider behind you is someone you beat and then chose to go back for.