Last month, Wolfire Games - developers of bunny kung-fu game Overgrowth - filed an antitrust suit against Valve. In the suit, Wolfire Games and two other plaintiffs allege that Valve have employed "anti-competitive practices" to "protect its market dominance."
In a new blog post published May 6th, Wolfire Games co-founder David Rosen writes that he felt he had "no choice" in bringing the suit, after Valve told him "that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere."
]]>September 17th, 2008, nearly a full decade ago. That's when Wolfire Games first announced anthropomorphic animal brawler Overgrowth, and now it's due to receive its final update - version 1.3. While Wolfire would go on to be better known for their Humble Bundles (eventually selling the Humble brand to IGN), I feel that Overgrowth and its decade of development is an important part of independent games history, and following its creation from the beginning taught me much of what I know about the realities of game development today.
]]>The most satisfying moments in Overgrowth [official site] take place in mid-air. Rabbits are typically good at jumping, but they’ve got nothing on their anthropomorphic cousin, Turner, the martial arts master and hero of this critter-bashing romp. His leaping ability borders on the power of flight. During those seconds, suspended in the skies above the game’s largely empty battlefields, it feels like anything’s possible. Invariably the landing disappoints. Sometimes fatally. That’s Overgrowth: lots of potential, rarely reached.
]]>I already told you this, but you weren’t listening. Rabbit kung fu game Overgrowth [official site] is out now for all your animal-punching pleasure. It features the following:
- Rats who stab
- A drop-kicking rabbit
- Wolves with no sense of clemency or grace
Come and see what it looks like below, in smashing GIF form.
]]>The rabbit roughhousing of Overgrowth [official site] is finally complete, say developers Wolfire, and a release date is set for Monday next week. The physics-heavy martial arts adventure has been playable for years and years and year, of course, but by giving it a solid date of October 16, Wolfire are saying: right, that’s your lot. Almost a decade of development is quite enough.
So, if you want to kick rats, or punch large cats in the belly, or throw a sword at a wolf’s head while he’s not looking only to see him catch it with a supernatural grace and come barrelling towards you in a carnivorous rage, then this is probably the game for you.
]]>It's hard to write about Overgrowth [official site] without feeling a little old - this is early access before that was even a thing. According to my email archives, I was first informed of Wolfire Games' ninja rabbit simulator entering development in 2008, and I put down a preorder on it back in 2009. It feels very strange to say this, but as of October 4th, 2017, Overgrowth is now feature-complete and the latest version - Beta 6 - will be the last step before launching in a few weeks, with only minor tweaks, tuning and bug-fixing planned before version 1.0.
]]>Every Monday we send Brendan into the early access fighting pits to face all types of terrifying wildlife. This week, the rabbit kickboxers and ultra strong wolves of Overgrowth [official site].
Overgrowth is a game that has been eight years in the making and still isn’t anywhere near finished. An anthropomorphic fighting game of swift kicks and raw punches to the side of the head, it is beautifully animated, pleasingly ragdoll, and Bruce Lee fast. There also isn’t very much to do. There’s a lot of pleasure to be got from executing the perfect series of kicks and punches against its tough, intelligent opponents, especially when they’re armed with heavy one-hit-kill swords. But unless you reeeeeally like that, the joy of it soon dries up.
]]>The kung fu rabbits of Overgrowth [official site] have been around in a playable form since I was a small and ancient protozoa, so I won’t accept the game’s sudden switch from “alpha” to “beta” as news. But I will take notice when told that the story campaign of its predecessor, Lugaru, has been adapted into the fisticuffs framework of the sequel, meaning there should now be something to do in the game besides biffing anthropomorphic wolves in the skull until they fly across the map in ragdoll pain.
]]>Its rabbit characters are not the interesting thing about this game. Overgrowth is interesting because this indie project from a small team has physics-driven kung-fu, destructive and satisfying swordfighting, environment-hopping wall-running, stealth, RPG mechanics, local multiplayer, and a level editor that allows you to construct your own scenarios.
The game has been in paid-alpha since 2008, a time when "paid-alpha" wasn't really a thing we understood. Now it's available on Steam Early Access. There's more detail and videos below.
]]>Overgrowth is weird. Shamefully, I always forget about it until I watch a video of it, at which point I remark, aloud, to no one in particular/confused housemates/non-sword-wielding rabbits, "Wow, those are probably the best sword-wielding rabbits I've ever seen in a game." Because, I mean, look at them. Those ears are floppy in a way that can only be described as lush. And now there are dogs. They can be somewhat rotund, too - which suddenly reminds me: people, walk your pets.
]]>Ours is a world of strife and chaos. Everything fights: people, seahorses, parasites, plants, and - yes - even adorable fuzzy-wuzzy widdle bunnies. Overgrowth doesn't avert its gaze from this awful truth. It depicts the gruesome realities of lagomortal kombat with oftentimes stomach-lurching precision, putting hare-splitting blades, black-eye-sprouting bunnicuffs, and yes - even that most fearsome and pointlessly brutal of bunny-fu techniques - slow-mo on full display. Craig liked it a lot! Witness a new video of the carnage (with snazzy upgrades and features) after the break.
]]>Overgrowth's slow-motion button is the Best Thing Ever Of All Time Today. Pressing TAB turns the work-in-progress bunny beat-em-up into a work of art; a dilated dalliance between lagomorphs. You can see all the systems clicking into place: the gamey legs stretching out, the lucky rabbit's foot crunching the unlucky rabbit's larynx, the crumple as the body is broken beneath that big, flat hoof. Who'd have thought rabbit-on-rabbit violence would be so satisfying? Not me, bucko.
]]>I'll be honest and say I had a slight prejudice against Wolfire's bunny Overgrowth. Everytime I've looked in on it, I felt like the Arthur and his knights at the Cave of Caerbannog. But this morning the mists cleared, and Overgrowth tossed a Holy Hand Grenade of a video, tearing my cynical innards with the glorious sharpnel of truth. The video below of Alpha 166's knife work is amazing.
]]>Overgrowth is a game about anthropomorphic animals fighting each other. It looks awesome. When things look awesome I tend to like to talk to the people who made them, and that's what happened here. I talked to David Rosen, Overgrowth developer Wolfire's lead programmer. You can read our question and answer session below. It is highly informative.
]]>Breathtaking indie furry fighting gaming Overgrowth is still growing to full size in the warm, fleshy pouch of pre-order funded development, but the videos released by the team are beginning to really show where all that time and effort are going. Honestly, this is the best video of anthropomorphic rabbits kicking the living shit out of each other that you are going to see today. Watch it.
(Thanks to everyone who sent this in.)
]]>We've been following the development of Wolfire's Overgrowth with some interest. And rather crucially, it's now a playable game. The rabbit-laden strangeness in a remarkable self-made engine is pretty intriguing, and a new collection of videos show that off. Well, two of them do. One of them shows what happens when it goes wrong.
]]>But it's ultimately more interesting than that sounds. There's a video of Overgrowth's ragdoll combat posted below. It's some serious anthropomorphic rabbit violence. The game itself is a 3D action adventure which is being meticulously blogged by its creators. There's a second video below decks that shows some of what the Wolfire team have accomplished so far in their game creation process. What's fun about that is that they talk about almost every aspect of it, constantly asking for feedback along the way, and opening up aspects of the game to community fiddling. Even if you're not particularly interested in roaming rabbit ruckus this is worth following just to keep an eye on their design ruminations.
]]>It's a Thursday afternoon, and that means it's time to talk about cute animals kicking each other to death. We haven't covered upcoming indie action game Overgrowth much on RPS, which is a sad side-effect of its much-adored precursor Lugaru arriving before the Hivemind had coalesced into being. Let's correct that now, as it's hard to imagine you lot wouldn't be interested in a videogame about a rabbit roundhouse-kicking wolves. I had a quick natter with Aubrey Serr, Wolfire's lead artist and John Graham, Wolfire's self-proclaimed coffee operations officer, about what Overgrowth is, where it's at and the highs and low of self-funded development. It's entirely possible that some, all or none of these were dressed as kung-fu rabbits at the time.
]]>Once we get past early summer things get a little hazy. We enter a nether-realm of shifting dates and unclear prophecies. By then we'll also have a whole bunch of games I haven't previously mentioned show up in the intervening months, stuff that we didn't have release dates for to place them in our line-up. This final post in our preview attempts to survey them all. To the future! (And check out part one and two if you haven't seen them already.)
]]>Goo did it. Radiohead did it. Even educated independent PC videogames do it. This time, it's Petri Purho's Crayon Physics deluxe - yours for however much you care to pay for it. 10p or 10 pentasquilliongillion Venusian sex-dollars, whatever you feel it deserves/are comfortable with. It's a strategy that worked out pretty well for 2D Boy when they did the same thing with World of Goo last year, despite the vast majority of folk offering insultingly but inevitably low tithes. Be interesting to see if it plays out as profitably for Sir Purho; while his game certainly isn't the out and out triumph that Goo was, it's a fun and inventive science'n'creation puzzler that's certainly worth a punt in this mega-deal. Which lasts only until January 15th, so hurry.
In other Super Indie Game Deal news, if you preorder both Natural Selection 2 and Overgrowth at once, you get 'em both for pretty much the price of one. More on that in tomorrow's Bargain Bucket, and videos of all three games I've whiffled about here are below the cut.
]]>Lugaru was an independently-developed third-person fighting game in which the central character was an anthropomorphic rabbit. That's actually a bit better than that it sounds, and the fighting itself was actually relatively convincing. It's one of those indie games that you don't expect to be any good, but you install anyway, only to discover that it's, y'know, okay. Why not download the demo (top of the page there) to see what I mean?
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