Hello, Steam community! This is Ben Ruiz, the director and combat designer of Bounty Star, a 3D action game that blends customizable mech combat with some light base building and homesteading. I am pleased to share that Bounty Star: The Morose Tale Of Graveyard Clem is being released on October 23rd 2025 here on Steam.
I’m here to provide an advanced overview of the Bounty Star combat system that can hopefully serve as a guide for anyone really diving into Bounty Star’s combat.
Bounty Star Combat In A Nutshell
The way Bounty Star works is that you select an available bounty and then pursue it. Before pursuing, you may customize your mech, and you may pursue the bounty in either the morning, afternoon, or evening.
Succeeding in the bounty nets you payout, and capturing a mark nets you a bonus. Every bounty also has substasks you can execute on for a final bonus.
Loadout
You want to bring a well-suited mech to any bounty. Take good stock of all the equipment you own to make a loadout that does good by you in the upcoming bounty.
Every loadout must have a melee weapon and a firearm. There are a variety of both to obtain.
There are 3 different slots for support systems that each allow a combat mechanic like dashing, blocking, healing, temporary power states, and more.
Inside the mech is an engine with 7 exposed properties: Hit Points, Movement Speed, Melee Damage, Firearm Damage, Thermal Regulation, and Fortune. Depending on your engine upgrade, there are 2-4 slots for augmentations that turn up these different properties.
Additionally, eating meals before bounties also turns up engine properties for the duration of one bounty. Which engine properties get turned up depends on the meal.
Thermal
A crucial reality of the mech’s engine is that it has a base temperature that it seeks to maintain, just like a modern combustion vehicle. Performing most actions either raises or lowers the temperature momentarily to some degree before returning to its base temperature. The changes in temperature are a result of the specific system used, and the speed at which the engine returns to its base temperature is based on your Thermal Regulation engine property.
The Red Expanse is a harsh desert world that can get both very hot and very cold. If you pursue a bounty in the afternoon, your mech’s base temperature will be higher than normal. If you pursue a bounty in the evening, it will be lower than normal. Finally, morning pursuit means a neutral base temperature.
The reason this is all important is because our brilliant and somewhat reckless protagonist Clem has modified her mech to get the most of each and every one of her actions, resulting in a singularly powerful machine. But pushing it too hard and too quickly towards hot or cold will result in a shutdown that leaves her vulnerable for a moment while the mech resets itself.
When customizing your mech, we suggest targeting a time of day for your pursuit, and then building accordingly. Some systems are very powerful and inflict dramatic temperate changes in your engine!
Ultimately, our customization system is meant to help you build the type of action game character you’ve enjoyed in various forms throughout time, while sometimes minding the thermal constraints of Bounty Star’s world.
Enemies
Each enemy is a unique combatant with its own set of attacks and behaviors. Each enemy also has 1 of 3 hit point types: Skin, Plate, or Scale. All damage dealing systems you can equip have 1 of 3 damage types: Boom, Bludgeon, or Blade. Certain damage types do a little more or less damage into certain hit point types.
This schema is all over the in-game garage in both visual and readable forms for easy reference.
When selecting a bounty, it will show you a list of expected enemies and call out their hit point types. Pay attention to that enemy list and customize accordingly for a little extra damage.
Melee Weapon Technicals
Every melee weapon has a unique set of damage dealing mechanics:
A standing combo. Executed by attacking while standing.
An air attack. Executed by attacking while airborne.
A dash attack. Executed by attacking while dancing or boosting.
Many of these attacks have liberal cancel windows so that you may very freely cancel attacks with dashes, blocks, jumps, repairs, and more.
Trick Systems
You may equip one of a handful of trick systems on your mech. When you have a trick system equipped, you may execute a trick at the end of any melee attack by waiting for the pink lanterns on the back of the mech to flash and providing attack input - but you must do this before the end of the attack animation. This is a short window, but the tricks are powerful. They are very fast and beneficial mechanics such as a small heal, or a rapid change in temperature.
Note that you may resume a standing combo where you left it after executing a trick, and can execute trick after any and all attacks in a combo!
Gun Cancels
You may execute a gun cancel anytime during a melee attack by providing firearm input. Not aiming, just your firearm input. These unique and powerful mechanics are specific to the equipped firearm, and have a large variety of uses that are often mobile, damage dealing, and all of them have the added benefit of reloading the firearm.
In Conclusion
Play with the different systems to get a feel for what they all do and how they work together. Bounty Star’s enemies are pretty high pressure combatants, but there’s no wrong way to win! Explore and experiment.
And remember that when in doubt, consult Clem’s library and make use of the safe practice space at the garage whiteboard. Enjoy!