In 2023, Strange Scaffold had a breakthrough moment thanks to El Paso, Elsewhere. The Max Payne-inspired vampire shooter launched as an indie darling, helping an eclectic studio find the right audience for its games. It was even successful enough to pique the interest of LaKeith Stanfield, who was tapped to star in a movie adaptation announced in 2024.
So it’s no surprise that Strange Scaffold is returning to that world next year with El Paso, Elsewhere 2. Currently scheduled to launch in 2027 on Windows PC and Xbox Series X, El Paso, Elsewhere 2 looks to stick close to the original while shaking it up in some key ways. You can see that for yourself starting today in a free PC demo available ahead of Steam Next Fest.
If you loved the first one, the good news is that the sequel is filled with more guns, monsters, and slo-mo. Set a few years after the first game, El Paso, Elsewhere 2 continues the story of James Savage, a vampire hunter who set out on a quest to stop his ex-girlfriend from performing an evil ritual. Savage has reckoned with an addiction problem since the first game and no longer needs to take pills to heal.
Unfortunately, Savage is faced with a new betrayal when a confidant sells him out to an Eldritch God by burying him alive and sending him to the monster-infested Void. In a hands-off preview with press ahead of the demo’s launch, director Xalavier Nelson Jr. explained exactly what’s different this time around — and what’s still the same. First off, Strange Scaffold isn’t ditching the low-poly aesthetic of the original.
The goal was to still pay tribute to the PlayStation 2 era, where game developers would iterate on games by remixing existing assets rather than starting from scratch. The only thing that’s gone for good is Savage’s trench coat, which Nelson said was a technical necessity because of how buggy it was in the first game. (“May it rest in hell where it belongs,” he said.) The sequel is still similar enough on its surface, with players shooting monsters and activating slow-mo bullet time to perform diving kills. The difference, though, is that it no longer takes place entirely in the claustrophobic halls of a cheap motel.
The demo throws Savage into a dingy swamp with lots of space to move around. There’s more verticality to fights as Savage can perform a sort of vampire double jump, a handy move for taking down flying gargoyles. Nelson describes it as “the Quake to El Paso, Elsewhere’s Doom.” The Quake inspiration is apparent in the twitchy shootouts, but there’s even more DNA from other classic games packed into the sequel.
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