Law of the West

That night beneath the sagging shelves in my friend's cramped wooden closet we unlocked seemingly-infinite worlds within his Commodore 64 computer (recently rescued from a yard sale) - using that magic command: load"*",8,1. The most memorable of these worlds was Law of the West; A pixely, almost-first-person-shooter set in the 1800's American West. It was more immersive than any game I had seen. Not until I later played Cosmic Osmo on the Macintosh would my fascination with virtual worlds be stirred the way it was by Law of the West. This game was the grandfather of "choose your own moral destiny" games like Dark Forces and Fable.


You play the game as the sheriff in a series of interactions with the citizens of Gold Gulch - one at a time. Your goal is to make it to the end of one very eventful day alive and with the highest score possible. It is up to you to decide whether you will use your position of power to uphold the greater good or abuse it for your own murderous whim. The conversations in the game go back and forth between citizens making statements and you choosing a response from four options of varying attitude. You have the freedom to draw your pistol and shoot people dead at any point during an interaction. However, you will discover that the consequences for your actions and attitude can quickly catch up to you.

Law of the West is a short game, involving just one day's worth of events in the sheriff's life - but there is quite a bit of replayability to be had by going back and exploring all of the conversation nodes. In addition to effecting your final score, the choices you make will also determine which of the multiple endings you'll experience. Surviving to sundown is not necessarily a win. You'll need to defend the town from robbers, capture the fancy of the right girl and do some good deeds. While you're at it - try to avoid offending the town doctor. Sure, he's also the town drunk but his opinion of you can mean the difference between life and death if you get gunned down in the line of duty.



You can still play this game today if you just do a quick search for a commodore 64 emulator and the ROM.