The last time I performed sunset-hued, post-apocalyptic survival-strategy affair Overland in earnest, again within the pre-apocalypse of 2016, I appreciated it lots. In the mid-apocalypse of 2019, I solely prefer it a bit of. Something’s modified – and it’s not Overland.
It’s not me both, although I’ll admit to a specific amount of frenzied shrieking in regards to the passage the time as soon as I realised how lengthy it’d been. What’s modified is that Into The Breach got here out.
Overland’s seen common updates to its ‘first access’ construct on Itch.io, which as of late is open to anybody with $20 to spare (keys was once restricted). The most up-to-date one arrived just a few weeks again, and introduced a revised UI and a few additional presentation fanciness alongside the standard spit’n’sharpening. It’s a handsome game, with its Kentucky Route Zero-esque Americana-infused low-poly fashions and daring colourisation, whereas ‘procedurally-generated survival XCOM from the people behind Canabalt remains to be a phrase to make me sit up and listen after years of XCOMbuts.
The spell’s relatively damaged for me now, although. Look, whereas evaluating apples to previously-released apples is an inescapable a part of this enterprise, I attempt the place attainable to speak a few game by itself deserves, versus how rosy-cheeked and sparkly-eyed it appears compared to an older love. I’m going to flout that obscure rule within the case of Overland v Into The Breach, for a few causes.
First of these is that, mainly, each I and Adam (RIP) have talked about Overland by itself deserves extensively already – I appreciated it, he wasn’t a fan, and although some issues have modified (and improved) because the final time RPS checked in on it, the important nature of this gorgeous however brutal, turn-based bug-splatting/evading jaunt has not.
(Which is to say, you attempt to drag a handful of random survivors throughout vignette slices of a post-disaster America, scouring for gasoline, meds and weapons as crystalline bugs pursue you. It’s unforgiving, and it’s far more about making tough choices about the place to go, what to take and who to assist than the precise act of twatting monsters).
The second of these is that there are extra eerie similarities between Overland and Into The Breach than there are between sure presidents and sure plates of chilly meat. This is no-one’s fault: it’s merely an Armageddon/Deep Impact scenario. But, nicely, let’s go over it.
Earth is screwed; monstrous bugs which tunnel from beneath the floor are in charge; a handful of survivors search to maintain perma-death at bay through two motion factors per flip every; everybody’s as fragile as a kitten in a tumble drier; success is extra about unit pathing and placement than injury dealt.
Plenty of variations too, notably that Overland is about getting out of dodge relatively than striving to stomp on (or poke with a giant a stick, because the case could also be) each final, chitinous git. But the on-paper prospect turns into: which turn-based, roguelite-infused technique game about huge bugs do you wish to purchase? Or, for me particularly: which turn-based, roguelite-infused technique game about huge bugs do I wish to play once more?
It’s Into The Breach, and not using a shadow of a doubt, and the explanation for that’s magnificence. ITB has trimmed not simply fats, however even pores and skin, hair and fingernails in pursuit of an absolute leanness. Though Overland additionally pursues a sure dream of minimalism, within the gentle of its unintended rival it feels prefer it’s constructed from heavily-chewed Duplo blocks relatively than pure muscle.
Here’s what it comes right down to, for me: so many actions, even complete turns taken in Overland should not significant, whereas each. single. transfer in Breach is. Overland’s strikes are so usually however obscure steps in direction of the bigger purpose of escape, be it shuffling barely throughout the map, selecting up a single, hardly ever thrilling merchandise, pushing a bin out of the way in which, climbing in or out of a automobile and even introducing Mr Bug to Mr Steel Pipe – as a result of, normally, the noise of squishing an enemy summons extra of the blighters, thus making the assault really feel futile. (A beautiful thought on paper, by way of making this survival, not assault – however in apply I now discover myself sighing).
Most of all, although, there’s carrying gadgets forwards and backwards, a consequence of Overland’s much-debated ‘people can only carry one thing at a time, despite the art clearly showing them having two whole hands’ mechanic. (If they’ve a backpack, they’ll carry another factor. A automobile boot, in the meantime, can retailer only one stick, well being pack, bottle or no matter. It’s a small, small world). In 2016, I didn’t notably thoughts that people within the Overlandverse had been apparently incapable of holding two sticks on the identical time, or that vehicles which clearly had a full-width again seat solely had room for 3 folks (thus necessitating some powerfully painful choices about who to go away behind within the occasion your group grows to 4). Hard decisions = pressure.
Now, nicely, it’s not simply that it’s so very arbitrary (possibly there’s a sleeping large turtle on that automobile’s again seat? Maybe the good calamity gave everybody a frozen left hand?), it’s that it means a lot useless air. Dropping your pipe to select up a fuel can, strolling the fuel can to your automobile, filling the tank, strolling again to the pipe – the whole course of takes possibly 4 turns.
Sure, there’s pressure in that you just’re usually doing it whereas side-stepping unearthly horrors or spreading flames, but it surely usually so passive, the moments of feat so comparatively few. The operative verb right here is ‘carry’, and, nicely, finally there’s solely a lot inherent drama in whether or not to select up a bottle or a department.
This is, it needs to be mentioned, intrinsic to Overland’s nature, relatively than any sort of accident. Overland is all about painstaking setup to flee a bit of later, whereas Breach is all about taking the shot, proper right here, proper now. What it does do higher than most of its ilk is heartbreak. A personality dying is one factor, however selecting to go away somebody (or, worse, some canine) to be mandibled to dying as a result of there’s no area within the automobile (rattling you, large turtle) is one thing else completely.
Particularly when your someday good friend then turns up on the subsequent space you cease in, now unreachable of their thirst for vengeance. Because then it’s a must to select whether or not to kill them or not. Choosing between medikit or automobile restore package shouldn’t be chilling and thrilling; selecting between folks’s lives is. That’s the stuff I would like Overland to double down on.
The latest construct makes some strides there outdoors of battle – there at the moment are extra alternatives to listen to your gang converse their minds whereas they lick their wounds, however this doesn’t actually tackle the sense inside a battle that everybody’s actually only a strolling stock slot. It’s upped the prettiness and the approachability, with extra variance in environments, some actually beautiful new pre/post-mission artwork and an interface that makes much more sense than earlier than (although some points with character-switching stay). But any beneficial properties in how current and valuable your folks really feel stay hamstrung by the heavy concentrate on unrewarding item-juggling.
My thoughts turns – one other comparability, I’m afraid – to Below, one other absurdly-long-in-development game born within the half-a-decade-ago ‘indie’ moneyboom that promised a stupendous dream of decently-budgeted creativity, unfettered by standard industrial considerations. Games to promote t-shirts and soundtracks and courier luggage and badges.
In apply, as Alice Bee additionally present in our Below review, there’s a way that its hanging artwork and world remained tethered to early, even rudimentary mechanics with a misjudged sense of exhausting graft vs accomplishment. A way that, maybe, each games have clung doggedly to aggressively punitive concepts that by no means fairly blossomed into some distinctive brilliance, however which they wanted to prop up the attention-grabbing aesthetic.
I like Overland much more than I (sadly) do Below, as a result of at the very least every new journey is a brand new journey relatively than a repetition, however in a post-Into The Breach world, what as soon as felt like noble toil now appears like time-wasting grind.
It’s by no means Overland’s fault that the world modified round it final yr. It’s not too late, both, but when it’s to really feel recent on this courageous new world, it’s acquired some very tough choices of its personal to make.
Overland’s present construct is obtainable now as early first entry, through Itch.io, for $20 (or extra, when you want to).
