Faced with dozens of pistol-packing enemies, there’s little incentive to play nice. Instead, I have the option of using clubs to knock suspects out, or knives to slit their throats. Guns are exceedingly rare, which means that I’m not able to afford firearms for all of my troopers when the game starts. Instead, they’re shipped off to “Crazy Steve’s farm,” where they bed down on hay, get clothed in rags, and eat a steady diet of tree bark. Prisoners aren’t even kept under lock and key at the county courthouse. Most of the cash comes from looting crime scenes of valuables, or taking bribes from law-abiding townsfolk. I need to be creative with our funding streams, and pinch a few pennies when I can. When the game begins, the rebel cops are flat broke. Unfortunately, the “suspects” we’re trying to capture or kill are either private security forces - lightly armed civilians, essentially - hardened criminals, or other cops. It’s unclear what his crimes are, but apparently they’re severe enough that we have a green light to kill anyone working alongside him. Rather than submit to his will, we’ve gone rogue and begun to secretly work against him. The town that this police force was originally sworn to protect has been taken over by a crime boss. That setting gives Rebel Cops a few unexpected elements, to say the least. Rather than a laconic sheriff making do on the high prairie, I’m cast as a malnourished Robin Hood living hand to mouth at a secret camp in the woods. But the narrative of Rebel Cops itself is set somewhere in Eastern Europe. With wide-brimmed hats and furred collars, they look like cartoon versions of the cast of Longmire. Videos for Rebel Cops show a hardy bunch of folks who could easily pass for Illinois state troopers, or regional police from any of the 50 states. The hardest pill to swallow is the apparent bait and switch the game makes with its marketing.

Unfortunately, I’m unlikely to come back to finish it due to poor pacing and a lack of depth. The result is a perfectly functional turn-based game with some exciting open-world elements. I’m only about three hours in, but both its mechanics and its setting continue to surprise me, for good and ill. Rebel Cops, a turn-based spinoff from This Is the Police, isn’t the game that I expected it to be.

Steve the sheriff pc game