A Town Called Despair is a Wild West miniature game set in a small town in the late 1800's. The game comes with six multi-level buildings, wagons, cacti, barrels, crates, gallows, etc. to set up your town on a 3' x 3' neoprene playmat. Miniatures can be placed inside buildings with detailed floor plans and move up/down levels, even onto the roofs.

From 2-4 players construct outlaw gangs armed with a variety of pistols, shotguns, and rifles, name their characters, and assign random skills. After deploying on the edge of town, each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards that are used to determine turn initiative, outdraw opponents in a gun fight, and engage in brawls. Each player takes up to three actions on their turn moving, aiming, shooting, reloading, recovering, or healing.

Hitting and wounding opponents is determined by dice rolls with customized dice and players keep track of their gang members' wounds and rounds expended on specially designed cards.

Gold coins are awarded for wounding and killing opponents, carrying money bags to the edge of town, or completing objectives.

Each game normally ends with a bloody showdown on main street, with gold awarded to the last man standing. The player that has collected the most gold wins the game.

—description from the designer