Call of Juarez Series (2006)
Western-Themed First-Person Shooter Franchise Developed in Wrocław by Techland on the Chrome Engine
Created in Wrocław by Polish studio Techland on successive iterations of its proprietary Chrome Engine and published internationally with Ubisoft, Call of Juarez is a four-installment Western first-person shooter franchise. Spanning the 2006 DirectX 10 showcase original, the 2009 Civil War prequel Bound in Blood, The Cartel (2011), and the unreliable-narrator arcade shooter Gunslinger (2013), it established Techland's global console presence.
Chrome Engine Benchmarking, Dual-Protagonist Design, and Bound in Blood
Founded in Wrocław in 1991 by Paweł Marchewka, Techland adapted the proprietary rendering technology built for its 2003 science-fiction shooter Chrome to depict the nineteenth-century American-Mexican frontier, releasing Call of Juarez in Europe in September 2006 before Ubisoft published an enhanced North American PC and Xbox 360 edition in June 2007. Addressing a genre rarely explored in mid-2000s first-person shooters, the original campaign alternated chapters between two mechanically contrasting characters: fugitive Billy Candle navigated canyons and ranches through stealth, bow hunting, and bullwhip traversal, while former outlaw turned preacher Reverend Ray McCall engaged in heavy frontal shootouts, quoting Scripture with a Bible in one hand, dual-wielding six-shooters in slow-motion Concentration Mode, and contesting formal quick-draw duels. Its 2007 PC patch served internationally as one of the earliest commercial DirectX 10 hardware benchmarks showcasing geometry shaders, dynamic foliage, and high-dynamic-range lighting. Built on Chrome Engine 4 for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, the 2009 prequel Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood traced brothers Ray and Thomas McCall from Civil War trenches in 1864 to Mexican ruins, adding semi-open frontier hubs and selling roughly one million copies.
The Cartel's Modern Detour, Gunslinger's Unreliable Narrator, and Rights Recovery
Seeking to align the brand with contemporary military and crime shooters, the third installment, Call of Juarez: The Cartel (2011), relocated the franchise to modern-day Los Angeles and Ciudad Juárez around a three-player cooperative law-enforcement squad. The departure drew widespread critical disapproval for technical defects, erratic artificial intelligence, and sensationalized handling of contemporary drug-war violence. Techland responded in May 2013 with the digital-first release Call of Juarez: Gunslinger on Chrome Engine 5, returning to nineteenth-century frontier iconography rendered with cel-shaded comic-book outlines and score-driven arcade gunplay. Framed around aging bounty hunter Silas Greaves recounting his career to skeptical patrons in a 1910 Kansas saloon, Gunslinger turned narrative unreliability into an active level-design system: whenever listeners dispute historical inconsistencies involving figures such as Billy the Kid, Jesse James, or Butch Cassidy, gameplay rewinds mid-firefight, instantaneously reconstructing canyon geometry, weather lighting, or enemy factions around the player. Following positive critical reception and steady digital sales for Gunslinger, Techland reacquired full publishing rights to the intellectual property from Ubisoft in 2018 and released a Nintendo Switch port in 2019.