Overfall Preview

I feel like I spend most of my time writing about procedurally-generated roguelike games at the moment, Overfall is no exception to this rule. The game was successfully funded last August, upon which the developers, Petra Games got to work on creating the game they had pitched to the world. I recently got to play the closed beta, giving us a glimpse at what the game could very well be in a few months.

The game plays similarly to other procedural roguelikes, letting players keep skills, spells and characters unlocked during playthroughs, but story progression is lost upon death; think of FTL, but with boats and elves. Using a boat, players will travel the world in order to find their lost king. During each journey players will face elves, witches, and humans alongside other countless allies and enemies.

Landing on each island will initiate a quest, these quests are random and often involve having to fight people; although fights can be avoided at times, instead offering a peaceful resolution. The quests are often comical, featuring obvious nods to pop culture, the most recent one to happen during a quest was an obvious homage to Team Rocket; I couldn’t help but chuckle. With the game being in Early Access these quests are currently quite limited, so you often end up repeating a few. It’s ultimately a minor complaint given the likelihood of more content being added in the future, which brings me onto my next point.

One of Overfall’s most impressive features is its story creator, the game offers players the chance to create their own encounters in game. I was given a guide on how to create quests, although 34 pages of reading later and I was still pretty confused. I then spent an hour or two trying to create a story about an argument between my character and a traveller, revolving around who is the better twerker- I’m not great at creative storytelling. The system is a little daunting and could do with some work, but there is real potential in the level of detail available. Its success will boil down to community integration, if players get on board with Steam Workshop then the amount of available encounters in game could be impressive. There are already a few quests available via the Steam Workshop that have been created by the developer.

As I previously mentioned, most of these encounters will result in combat. The combat is turn-based and revolves around a mix of support and attack options. Players are able to move around in the battle arena, with characters having a mix of long and short range attacks depending on their class. The battle system is really, really hard. I’ve not got that far into the game’s overarching story, due to the difficulty of the battles. I’m hoping it slowly gets easier as I unlock more characters and improve their abilities.

I really need to talk about the difficulty. This game is punishingly hard, it feels like everything is constantly out to kill you. A run of bad luck at the beginning of the game can lead to instant death quite often. A large amount of the difficulty comes down to the healing system, players must buy food to heal their characters; the food actually doesn’t do a whole lot of healing though, whilst also being quite expensive. It’s a flawed system that makes recovering from a particularly difficult battle frustrating. I have faith that these kinds of things will be balanced in the future, as I imagine other players had trouble with it as well.

There is a reputation system in the game that affects your overall standing with each of the different races. This in turn enables you to perform certain quests with a the different factions and gives players the chance to visit the home islands of specific races. I have the feeling that it may affect something endgame as well, but I haven’t got far enough to find out yet!

The game has an art style suited to its gameplay, giving players a stylistic world with touches of realism in its blood and violence. The game is presented well and looks great for something that is in Early Access and the soundtrack along with the graphics create a great atmosphere. The hand-drawn elements of each character really bring out their individual traits and personalities, perfectly setting them apart from the NPCs of the world.

Overfall is a game with excellent potential, the developers have took the established roguelike template and re-invigorated it. The story creation tool is a little daunting at first, but the level of creativity available is staggering. This paired with the solid battle system could lead to some great content in the future. Bottom line, watch this space.