El Hijo - A Wild West Tale

Stealth mechanics is simplistic, instructions are sometimes unclear. Considering the game’s price $19.99 for just 3.5-4 hours of gameplay with a handful of slide-show cutscenes, it feels expensive. I finished the Monastery area, about 1/3 of the full game before I stopped. Normally I prefer to complete a game, but here the sneaking methods are repetitive and limited. The boy can throw rocks to distract guards at first, later swapping to a noise-making toy, but it functions identically aside from the range. Hiding spots (vases, bookshelves, coffins) are just change of skins of the same mechanic. Puzzles often boil down to pulling or pushing boxes and ladders in various locations (library, garden, tomb), again with nothing but skin changes. Later levels just add enemies to slow you down, but don’t change the experience. The mother character uses a sling to break barrels and locks, but the game doesn’t explain this upfront. When I first encountered a glowing lock, I assumed I needed a key, only to discover later that the sling breaks it. Similarly, crucial objectives like activating bombs lack clear instructions. If you miss the one at the start, too bad you have to backtrack all th…

A very charming and entertaining game. Not overly complex and more mechanics to combine would be great, but overall I had a lot of fun with it. The style looks very good and the stealth is satisfying. The story is also simple, but good. There are a couple of levels that are just a pain to play, like The Farm with the dogs or The Escape with the lorry race. The controls are really not tight enough for the dog's mechanics and the lorry is also not fun to drive. Both of these almost made me rage-quit the game. Overall, it was fun and worth the time.

Wonky controls, especially when aiming. Bad Stealth and AI. The biggest culprits are the coyotes with a large line of sight and detection radius. Overall just feels like a chore when playing.

El Hijo – A Wild West Tale is an isometric-view, real-time tactics stealth game, especially suited for kids, where you have to help a little boy to find his mother unseen by various opponents/villains. Find some more details and screenshots at https://sascha.mehlhase.info/hobbies/computer-games/el-hijo/

El Hijo — developed by Honig Studios and Quantumfrog and published by HandyGames — is a beautifully crafted stealth adventure that reimagines the Wild West through the eyes of a six-year-old boy. Rather than gunslinging duels or dusty shootouts, the game presents a quieter, more intimate story about resilience, resourcefulness, and hope. After bandits destroy his home and separate him from his mother, the young protagonist is taken to a remote monastery for safety. But refusing to accept separation as his fate, he escapes and begins a determined journey across deserts, frontier towns, and outlaw hideouts to find her. This simple emotional premise shapes the entire experience, grounding its mechanics and tone in a way that feels refreshing within a genre often driven by violence. El Hijo unfolds through an isometric perspective, allowing players a broad and tactical view of each environment. Every area functions as a stealth puzzle: guards, monks, deserters, and bandits patrol predictable routes, and you must slip between their lines of sight while remaining unseen. The young hero cannot fight — and the game never tempts you to do so — instead giving you clever tools that emphasize…

No real story or instruction? It wasn't really shown why we were doing things.... I finished the game in 13 hours.... and don't feel it is replayable. Controls were really janky, really cumbersome tbh. I 100% prefer Shadow Gambit and Shadow Tactics instead.