Developed by Edgar Covarel and Guillaume Kerivel, Hats and Guns has officially been listed on Steam ahead of its planned 2026 release, and a free demo is already live for anyone who wants to try it before launch. Underneath the Wild West dressing, this is one of the more deliberately built roguelike deckbuilders launching this year.
A Grid, a Gun, and No Room for Luck
You’re a cardslinger with a score to settle, and Hats and Guns wastes no time sending you into the desert after the man responsible. Combat plays out on a grid, and accuracy sits at the center of everything you do, not as a chance to hit, but as the thing that determines how much damage a shot actually deals.
There’s nothing to blame a bad outcome on except positioning and a deck that wasn’t built for the fight. The game leans fully into that, building its combat around five core stats, accuracy, speed, dexterity, reflex, and strength, each pulling a run in a different tactical direction depending on how far you commit to them.
Three Gunslingers, Three Very Different Starts
Your character isn’t a blank slate here. Hats and Guns ships with three playable gunslingers, each arriving with a passive skill, a starting weapon, and a starting deck built entirely around them, so the first hour of a run looks nothing alike depending on who you’ve picked.
Combat leans into deckbuilding from there, and the game gives players over 100 card upgrades to draw from across those five core stats. Two players running the same character can walk away with completely different decks by the time they reach the gang leader waiting at the end, depending on which upgrades and combinations they chase along the way.
A Desert That Keeps Score of What You Did to Cross It
What separates Hats and Guns from a straightforward shootout is the procedurally generated desert standing between you and revenge. It isn’t just scenery, the path is scattered with moral choices, and it pays attention to whether you become as cruel as the man you’re hunting in order to beat him.
Perma-death sits underneath all of it too, so one bad string of decisions can end a run outright. However, between the character variety, the card pool, and a desert that never crosses the same way twice, even a failed run tends to leave you with a new idea worth trying on the next attempt.
Why We’re Watching This One
The tactical combat has real depth to it, but it’s the accuracy system that makes Hats and Guns worth keeping an eye on. Building damage entirely around precision rather than randomness is a distinct choice for the genre, and the sheer number of card upgrades means no two runs are likely to end up looking the same.
It’s also a game that seems to know exactly what it’s building toward, a Wild West revenge story willing to ask what that revenge actually costs. Hats and Guns is currently targeting a 2026 release on Steam, and between its considered combat system and morally weighted world, it’s one worth wishlisting now.