If you were at PAX East, you would have seen two pretty amazing sights at the Twisted Pixel Variety Hour:

  • - My pasty man chest on a large projection screen in front of hundreds of people
  • - The exclusive reveal of the members of Gunstringer’s posse
Maybe you couldn’t make it to PAX East – say, you were trapped under a car for three days, or maybe you booked a flight with an airline that failed at that whole “having planes that can take off” thing. Well, today is your lucky day! Here’s the first member of the Gunstringer’s posse that we revealed: The Oil Baron.
The Oil Baron

A bit of background on the posse member concept: from the first few days of pre-production, we knew that we wanted to make a revenge story about Gunstringer going through and seeking revenge on a group of people. We all piled into a room and wrote down every cool setting, villain and friend that we’d want to see if we have infinite time, then picked the strongest four of those to be the focus of the Gunstringer’s vengeance.

We came up with whiteboards and whiteboards of names and ideas…

Gunstringer Day 2 Brainstorming

(one small section of boss brainstorming on Day 2 of Gunstringer pre-production. Yes, it’s guaranteed that the majority of this didn’t make the cut.)

…but one of the earliest ideas we locked down on was that of the evil oil tycoon. Mining for oil and gold is a pretty core Western idea, and it’s rich with turn of the century Texas stereotypes that we’re able to exploit for our own gain.

From there, his backstory pretty much wrote itself. He was a swindler when he was with the Gunstringer. After killing the Gunstringer, he started up Big Oil and expanded out across the west rapidly in order to tap the group for oil. He’s now bringing in ridiculous amounts of money, and can pretty much get away with anything by flashing some money at the local law enforcement.

He’s also not shy about showing off his wealth. His belt buckle is literally made of money, and he’s had his arms replaced with long metal robot tube arms. His moustache has like three twists in it, which as anyone into moustache manicuring knows is a sign of some serious money and/or nobility.

Big Oil HQ

The Oil Baron’s play “For A Few Gallons More” is set in the classic west, and a short taste of it was in our playable demo! However, there’s more to see and way more unanswered questions as you go deeper into the play. For example:

  • - How does the Gunstringer defeat a guy who can buy anything, has an army of employees, and controls millions of gallons of flammable oil?
  • - Why is the Oil Baron so fat?
  • - How does a man of such girth travel?
  • - And while we’re at it, what’s his real name?

All good questions that you’ll be able to answer yourself when you play The Gunstringer!