I spent a non-zero period of time over the weekend imagining a darkish future the place the unimaginable reputation of Twitter account Can You Pet The Dog? led scores of indie builders to incorporate ill-fitting snozzle-scratching mechanics of their games. Should this darkish time of Very Good Boys come to cross, a game you couldn’t accuse of leaping on the canine wagon is Finji’s Overland, because it’s been letting gamers stuff precise wagons with canine for a few years now.
Overland is a turn-based tactical game, during which every canine (or individual) below your management has two actions to do stuff on a grid, after which issues that need you lifeless get a flip to do stuff on a grid. It’s additionally a survival game, in that you simply want at the least considered one of your canine (or individuals) to outlive with the intention to hold taking part in. It’s a roguelite, in that it presents harsh penalties for failure, and it’s additionally a puzzle game due to the discrete issues it presents so that you can overcome. It’s whimsical, however very robust.
Setting-wise, it’s a sci-fi tinged, hauntological street journey on the finish of the world, with every turn-based puzzle representing one cease on the route. Once you end a cease, you’re proven a brief scene the place your group displays on no matter victories or horrors they’ve simply survived. Then you choose one other vacation spot out of your street map. All locations have a gasoline price, and most are marked with a quick description of what you would possibly anticipate finding there.
You drift alongside like so, taking calculated dangers to amass what you want, stopping to commerce (or homicide merchants), recruiting canine for the best military the world has ever seen, and scavenging fuel and provides. Eventually, you’ll attain a roadblock. These are invariably extra-difficult puzzles, the place you need to clear particles to maneuver your automobile on by way of to the subsequent biome, be that the autumnal streets of an deserted city, or a desert, or one thing altogether stranger.
Your important opposition alongside the best way is a weird menagerie of alien-insect-crabs who hate your face, presumably out of jealousy. There are your primary, ready-salted xeno-monstrosities that may make one transfer (assault or scuttle). There are the fearsome fishcakes that make two strikes (scuttle-scuttle, scuttle-attack, or attack-attack). There are the coral-shelled chonk-maestros who solely make one transfer however can’t be run over by your automobile, not like the primary two. There are the double-big roadblock shithouses, the veiny, iridescent Maltesers that explode once they get hit, and some extra spectral crabsticks that spooked me a lot I drove away from them instantly.
The additional you journey, the odder issues get, however the whole lot you’ll encounter has a particular sample of behaviour, which you’ll usually work out after getting murdered a couple of occasions. The game by no means provides you excellent, Into The Breach ranges of knowledge, however you possibly can faucet a button to see if anybody’s at risk, and you may undo strikes, offered it isn’t nighttime.
Each cease presents the chance to set your individual aims. Get fortunate early in a biome, and also you would possibly occur throughout a cease that permits you to scour it clear of goodies with out a lot danger. Other occasions, you’ll be fortunate to grab a single jerrycan earlier than issues get foolish ranges of harmful. Each cease successfully reconfigures itself into a special puzzle relying on what you need to hand, and what you determine you need to obtain there.
A picket barrier blocking the street, for instance, may be set on fireplace with a lighter, or a flare gun. It’ll take a few turns to burn, however in the event you’re travelling at night time, the glow from the flames will illuminate a couple of tiles to both facet. Or you possibly can smash the barrier with a lead pipe, or throw a bottle at it. Or you possibly can pull or push it away, and also you would possibly even block the trail of a nasty alien when you’re at it. Or, you possibly can ram it together with your automobile. This will injury the automobile, in fact, until you occur to search out and fasten a fender to the entrance. But perhaps you couldn’t discover a fender, only a roof rack so you possibly can carry extra stuff. Or perhaps you’re all undoubtedly going to die, really.
It’s by way of these procedural puzzles that Overland conveys its scrapbook, snapshot tales; doomed vignettes that recount the final hours or weeks within the lives of the individuals (and canine) caught up in the long run of the world.
Like the time when the one approach for Cecilia to make it to the automobile with out getting gored was to ship Ham (who was within the scouts, and was wounded two stops in the past in an explosion) to the nook of the map with the intention to lure the speedy, orange-antenna-ed aliens in direction of him, and virtually actually die within the course of. Ham ‘found a lump last month’, in line with his bio. Maybe that made the choice simpler. Maybe not.
Or when Ellaine, who began six firms earlier than this all occurred, bludgeoned one other survivor to demise for fuel with an iron pipe. He’d siphoned all of the fuel out the pump, you see, they usually wanted that fuel to get away. There have been three of them. There was considered one of him. It was, she advised herself, the precise factor to do. For the subsequent few stops, nonetheless, each time they parked the automobile to relaxation, Ellaine’s companions reminded her what she’d carried out. Every time I checked her traits, a everlasting ‘killed someone’ badge jogged my memory, too.
Dialogue is sparse, delivered with all of the disaffected millennial malaise and good-natured doomsaying of despair memes. “Oh nice. Area 51 has invaded us. That’s cool“. There’s additionally the canine and the hats, in fact, that are extra vital than you would possibly assume, since issues could be virtually unbearably bleak with out them. Between them, the jury-rigged camaraderie, and the snatches of hope imparted by honeyed acoustic guitar between stops, there’s at the least a hint of optimism left on this doomed world. But, if Overland by no means chugs over the state line between desolate eerieness and disdainful sterility, it at the least makes you conscious how skinny a line that’s.
The single save, no-continue mentality of so many roguelites applies right here, too. There’s a single problem setting, which you’ll both make tougher by imposing a time restrict on every flip, or simpler by permitting the choice to restart a map if issues go horribly luminescent-appendages-up.
Gratingly, this selection remains to be not accessible within the two conditions the place you’ll end up needing it probably the most: If you run fully out of gasoline, or in the event you end a stage and not using a automobile for no matter (normally explosion-related) purpose. Either considered one of these states will pressure you right into a dastardly doom cease that has you scrabbling for gasoline or a brand new set of wheels, and during which the ‘restart map’ choice is greyed out. The message is evident: even at its most forgiving, Overland considers harsh penalties essential to the expertise of taking part in. It’s a grim sprinkle of cruelty that I can see being a irritating impediment to gamers drawn in by the floor coat of colourful whimsy.
Here’s an especially cool factor, although: the game has a ‘dyslexic font’ choice. I’m not dyslexic, however I confirmed some comparability screens to a good friend who’s, they usually stated that it made
“each sentence circulate magnificently,” and that they didn’t have to “squint or read a sentence twice to process the information sorta better”. Neither of us may recall seeing the choice a lot, if in any respect, earlier than, both. And it’s a cool font, even in the event you aren’t dyslexic. More of this please.
So, if all of the wistful appeal and horrible alien homicide of a Sufjan Stevens idea album about chestbursters sounds good, go for it. Just bear in mind that the hounds in fetching hats and the bespectacled baristas clutching onto potted succulents obscure what’s, basically, an unforgiving expertise that may result in frustration earlier than you discover your toes. Go in anticipating tales over technique.
Not to say that there isn’t any satisfaction, delight or shock available in experimenting with completely different techniques and interactions. Just that you simply’re going to have to search out some pleasure in heartache, and consider what can often appear to be arbitrary disasters. My favorite moments with Overland have been when likelihood selections I’d made, or gadgets I’d scavenged a couple of biomes again, quite than tactical achievement, have been what noticed my van-load of misfits by way of unimaginable conditions.
Overland isn’t that one good friend on a street journey who has packed emergency provides, and has the itinerary labored out to the hour. It’s the scarred, weather-chafed drifter you picked up alongside the best way, and who’s seen issues, man. The man you’ll find yourself asking for only one extra story, regardless that the final one they advised stung so onerous you swore you’d by no means ask once more.
