Kickstarter seems flooded by so many seemingly great game ideas these days it’s hard to choose where to invest your hard earned dollars. Not to mention the trepidation of parting with that money when there is a real chance you might never see a finished product. Before the internet age, developers would rely on game demos for promotion: small snapshots of the game to entice players. Demos are few and far between these days, but Pera Games has provided a short demo for their new game Overfall and it was a great idea. I’m fairly skeptical about games on Kickstarter these days (I bought into Cubeworld and regret it sorely…), but when a dev team provides a free demo to the public, I feel it shows a lot of good faith about the quality and overall state of the game.
So, on to the actual game. Overfall can be quickly summed up as a rogue-like tactical RPG, but I feel that a simple genre brand doesn’t quite do it justice. Those of you who are familiar with Darkest Dungeon, a recent Kickstarter indie success of the same genre, will sense a fair amount of similarities: perma-death of your party members, procedurally generated maps, unique skill sets for each class, etc. Something that I felt set it apart from other games in the genre, however, was the combat system. Each turn consists of a move, a utility, and then an attack phase. Each class has different abilities for each phase; for instance, the barbarian has an ability to jump to a tile and do AoE damage to surrounding enemies while the rogue type character can blink to a spot and pull enemies closer to him. This opens up some really interesting strategy for follow up attacks or for making some great defensive plays. I’m excited to see what other classes will become available and what moves will come with them.
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“For certain quests, you can choose to fight, sneak, or in some cases a combination of both where you create a distraction by fighting while another character sneaks by to get the quest item.”
The demo doesn’t mention too much of what the main story of the game will be, but it does showcase an element that I’m always happy to see in RPGs: choices have consequences. Meaningful choices are something that not a lot of games do well and honestly it’s too soon to tell how Overfall will fully implement this feature. Yet the small snapshot from the demo does show some examples of what they have in mind. For certain quests, you can choose to fight, sneak, or in some cases a combination of both where you create a distraction by fighting while another character sneaks by to get the quest item. There are also several factions in the world of Overfall and your choices can affect their affinity towards you. Higher acceptance in a faction will grant you more information about them and allow you to recruit allies from that faction. I can only assume that if you betray a faction with your actions, punishment will be exacted.
I feel that I should comment on the art style and the overall aesthetic of the game because it was a huge selling point for me. Every character, every map, every sprite is hand-drawn and animated. Just from the demo I encountered so many unique characters, each with their own charm and appeal (even the hideous goblins). The music is a great accompaniment for your epic travels. I love to see so much focus on the details in games that want to shine through all the others in the same genre.
The Kickstarter campaign ends September 18th, and only today have they hit their goal. I would encourage you to at least check their campaign page and try the demo if you are a fan of this genre. It looks to be promising and full of replayability. I’m looking forward to setting sail and exploring the world Overfall has to offer!
