Westward Dash

About the Game

Quit While You're Ahead or Push Your Luck?

Every turn, after your movement roll, the road holds out a second die. Settle for what you have, or risk it and dash! Clear the safe numbers to soar ahead. Bust and pay the toll. The final climb to Thunderclap Summit is filled with high-risk, high-reward scenarios for whoever is trailing behind!

Eight Pilgrims, Each With Unique Talents

Sun Wukong makes demons give way; grunts scatter on sight. Sandy absorbs blows that flatten others. Pigsy feasts for extra steps, while the White Dragon Horse gallops with extra dice. Find your favorite pilgrim and master their unique playstyle!

Demon Kings & Boss Gate Duels

Three perilous gates bar the road, guarded by ten random Demon Kings who warp the dice rules in cunning ways. Strike down the White Bone Demon through her triple disguises. If you fall, regroup and charge again!

Five Modes, One Road West

Classic is the pure race: no dash rounds, just events, items and the spaces you land on. One-shot gives you a single push per turn, safe in the early zones and a fortune in the late ones. Streak chains dash after dash into a growing pot, and one bust wipes the whole thing out. Charge turns your pushes into Qi that banks between turns until you unleash a mighty technique. Custom hands you the rulebook itself: nineteen dials, three slots to save your own house rules, and ready-made flavors like Hell Road West, Blitz Run and Draw a Lot.

One Table, Eighteen Languages

Play solo against the CPU, take up to eight pilgrims online with your Steam friends, or pass the keyboard around the couch. Every player reads the game in their own language at the same table, and all eighteen are fully translated: menus, tutorials, items, achievements and every Demon King's rulebook.

Living Ink-Wash & Achievements

The game is full of classical Chinese motifs: ink-wash painting laid down with brush, ink, paper and inkstone, dragon patterns, hanging scrolls and the pipa. The visual assets were generated using Google Flow. Claude assisted with programming. Lingrujiang, my wife, played the pipa and arranged the accompanying instruments with Suno AI. A few tracks are traditional melodies; the rest are original.

Features

• 5 game modes: Classic, One-shot, Streak, Charge and Custom
  
• 8 playable pilgrims, each with a signature technique and a passive of their own
  
• 10 Demon Kings across 3 boss gates, every one of them bending the dice rules a different way
  
• 12 roaming sprites and 15 items to spring, steal, hoard and misfire
  
• 19 custom dials, ready-made rule sets, and 3 slots to save the house rules you build
  
• 1 to 8 players: solo against the CPU, online with Steam friends, or hot-seat on one machine
  
• 81 achievements: the pilgrims of the novel pass exactly 81 trials on the road west, so there are exactly 81 medals, displayed in the Compendium beside the Scenes and Victories you unlock
  
• 18 languages, all of them complete
  
• The pipa music was played by my wife Lingrujiang, who arranged the accompanying instruments with Suno AI
  
• Keyboard and mouse or full controller support, on Windows, macOS and Steam Deck

The Story Behind the Game

This is a board game I played as a kid.

I bought a Journey to the West board game at a corner shop for one yuan: a paper board, four pieces, and a single die. I'd round up one to three friends, we'd sit around it and roll our way from space 1 to space 100. That board was lost long ago, but the tension, the cheering and the laughter around that table never left me.

I have always loved games. Years later that old board came back to me, and I rebuilt it as a hobby: apart from work and sleep, nearly every hour went into it, and I loved every minute. My wife has been learning the pipa for two years, and every pipa note in the game is hers. A modern take on qin se he ming, two instruments in harmony: I write the game, she plays the pipa.

Westward Dash is an indie game made by one person. I hope you enjoy it.

Dedicated to the friends who once threw dice with me, back when we were young.

Xiaoyaozi