

Weird Wolves, a musical band established by Colantonio and Ava Gore, composed some of the game's soundtracks. Since the game includes the presence of Native Americans, the team invited the Anishinaabe to ensure that their depiction in the game is authentic, and added Elizabeth LaPensée, who is Anishinaabe and Métis, to the game's writing team. Chris Avellone was originally involved as a coach to the game's writing team.

Unlike most immersive sims, the game was not played from a first-person perspective, and instead adopted a top-down perspective that was inspired by the early Ultima and Fallout games. While the game features supernatural elements, it was not designed to be a horror game. They announced their first game, Weird West, at The Game Awards 2019, to be published by Devolver Digital. Raphaël Colantonio and Julien Roby, Arkane Studios' former Executive Producer, announced in November 2019 they had earlier formed a new studio, WolfEye Studios, a twenty-person studio working distributively. Actual gameplay is similar to that of a twin-stick shooter, with the team describing it as "action-y version of Fallout 1 or 2". The game also features a permadeath mode in which the player character and their companions will die permanently. Actions done by the player in the game are permanent, meaning that they cannot be undone through respawning. For instance, when the player shoots at an ammo box, it will explode. The world is designed to be interactive and responsive to the player's action. The game features the stories of five bounty hunters. The game is based on the Weird West genre it borrows its title from, in which the player takes the role of heroes in the American frontier who encounter supernatural elements. Weird West is a top-down action role-playing game with elements of the immersive sim genre, with randomized elements through each playthrough.
