Despite being very, very bad at its turn-based tactical survival, I quite enjoy Overland. I always welcome a reason to jump back in and utterly fail at surviving an apocalyptic road trip across the country. Finji have given me another fantastic reason to get back behind the wheel. In its newest update, Overland adds an "all dogs" setting that guarantees your squad will only be made up of furry friends. Also there are pugs now.
]]>You're supposed to stay detached from people in the apocalypse because caring about other humans gets in the way of looking out for number one. Overland, the strategic survival game about road-tripping West during an alien infestation, makes it tough to stop caring about them because each one (dogs included) has a randomly chosen name and backstory. Apparently I'll be getting emotionally attached to my cars soon too because Overland wants to name them as well.
]]>I spent a non-zero amount of time over the weekend imagining a dark future where the incredible popularity of Twitter account Can You Pet The Dog? led scores of indie developers to include ill-fitting snozzle-scratching mechanics in their games. Should this dark time of Very Good Boys come to pass, a game you couldn’t accuse of jumping on the dog wagon is Finji’s Overland, since it’s been letting players stuff actual wagons with dogs for a couple of years now.
Overland is a turn-based tactical game, in which each dog (or person) under your control has two actions to do stuff on a grid, after which things that want you dead get a turn to do stuff on a grid. It’s also a survival game, in that you need at least one of your dogs (or people) to survive in order to keep playing. It’s a roguelite, in that it offers harsh penalties for failure, and it’s also a puzzle game thanks to the discrete problems it presents for you to overcome. It's whimsical, but very tough.
]]>Are road trips even fun? It's certainly a nice thought, tearing down a sunlit road with your mates, chugging brews in the back and tunes on the CD player. But I can't think of any I've been on that aren't outright misery, crammed in the back on a family jaunt across the country, parents arguing over a map while the sausage rolls start stinking up the cab. Still, could be worse. Unlike Overland's unfortunate nomads, I don't recall ever fending off wild dogs with a 2x4 every time we stopped for petrol.
But Finji are finally ready to make the trip. Fill 'er up and pack your bags, Overland hits the road.
]]>I quite like dogs, me. Kicking off a trailer with a sad ol' Shiba is probably unfair, but oh - they've pepped right up! Oh gosh, there's more of them! They're a little more crabby, but a pooch is a pooch. You can't fool me. Oh, christ, there's a few of them now... wait, why are they swarming? Good dogs, nice boys, please don't bite my arm-- ouch!
Overland, the proper stylish disaster road trip from Finji, is hitting the road for real. The roguelike survival strategy has been driving around quaint little low-poly dioramas for a few years now, but every journey needs a destination. Overland will reach its on September 19th.
]]>Beautiful murderbugs vs Americana turn-based strategy vs roguelike Overland is a game I've blown hot and cold on. I dig the theme, I dig the permanence and agonies of a perilous journey in which you make terrible mistakes and terrible sacrifices, and oh boy do I dig the art. But I've grown increasingly unconvinced by its artificial inventory restrictions, said agonies so dependent on the suspension of disbelief that your characters can't carry anything more than a stick in one hand.
Maybe I'll have come around to that again by the time Finji's pretty, pretty procgen road-horror opus finally gets a full release this autumn.
]]>The last time I played sunset-hued, post-apocalyptic survival-strategy affair Overland in earnest, back in the pre-apocalypse of 2016, I liked it a lot. In the mid-apocalypse of 2019, I only like it a little. Something's changed - and it's not Overland.
It's not me either, though I'll admit to a certain amount of frenzied shrieking about the passage the time once I realised how long it'd been. What's changed is that Into The Breach came out.
]]>As Old Father Time grabs his sickle and prepares to take ailing 2016 around the back of the barn for a big sleep, we're looking to the future. The mewling pup that goes by the name 2017 will come into the world soon and we must prepare ourselves for its arrival. Here at RPS, our preparations come in the form of this enormous preview feature, which contains details on more than a hundred of the exciting games that are coming our way over the next twelve months. 2016 was a good one - in the world of games at least - but, ever the optimists, we're hoping next year will be even better.
]]>I've played a few games about roadtrips recently. It wasn't intentional, though I do love the idea of games about journeys, they all just happened to land in my lap at the same time. First up was Overland, a turn-based tactical post-apocalyptic game about travelling across a bug-infested America. Then there was The Crew, in which I competed with Brendan in a race. That also took me across the US. If you'd rather escape the US, check out the excellent Death Road to Canada, which is funny, short and sweet...with lots of guts and headshots.
And there's Jalopy, a game about car maintenance and travelling across the former Eastern bloc. Finally, I spun the Wheels of Aurelia, the most interesting of the three in many ways. That's a game about the conversations you have with people as you drive, rather than the driving itself.
]]>Overland [official site] is a turn-based post-apocalyptic road trip simulator. You drive a car across America, beset by hideous bugs that emerge from the ground and eat your gang of survivors, while everything burns around you, and you try to survive against overwhelming odds. On paper, it's precisely the kind of game that should be taking up all of my free time but the reality isn't quite what I hoped for or expected.
]]>Our Alec was quite taken with post-apocalyptic road trip Overland [official site] when he played the first early access version in April. You might have been out of luck if you fancied a go yourself, though. At the time, developers Finji were only selling keys in limited quantities, a new wave every now and then. Well, now everyone's welcome. If you want into early access, $20 will see you right.
]]>E3 is almost over and there has been plenty of hype for all the new projects. Of course, not all games can showcase a 10 minute gameplay demo of the main character failing to love his own son. So here's a trio of games from independent developers you should look forward to.
]]>Overland [official site] is a sorta-turn-based strategy meets sorta-roguelite, and comes from the folks behind the deathless Canabalt, progenitor of the endless runner as we know it. I shouldn't draw too many comparisons, as that was a long time and several games ago for Adam and Rebekah Saltsman, but it does share a strong sense of style, a refreshingly exposition-free approach to the end of the world and a constant sense of encroaching doom with Canabalt. I've been keeping half an eye on it for a while now, intrigued by how it seemed to pair XCOM tactics with a survival theme and creepy rocks-monsters, so I signed right up when its 'first access' build appeared on itch.io a few days back.
]]>Adam Saltsman is probably known to you as the creator of Canabalt, the infinite runner with the fabulous glass-smashing sound. He and fellow developer Rebekah Saltsman are now setting up a studio, Finji, to bring together their many game projects under a single name. That includes Overland, a collaboration with Shay Pierce; Portico, a turn-based sorta-tower-defence-ish game previously called Grave; Capsule, a really neat, extremely difficult space game about asphyxiation which you can buy right now; and Night in the Woods, the Kickstarter funded adventure game from Alec Holowka, which Finji are helping publish.
Pssht. Lazy.
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