You play Turner, a kung-fu rabbit who is as dangerous as he is gullible, following a nonstop quest for revenge that has him alternating between smashing his enemies’ skulls and mercy-killing his friends. Life is a brutal fight for survival in an amoral world filled with carnivores who have the ability to talk to you before eating you alive. Overgrowth takes place in a world of anthropomorphic animals with a distinctly Watership Down tone. So after all these years of experimentation, is the final game as fantastic as everyone hoped? In fact, one of their marketing experiments ended up becoming the massively successful Humble Bundle. Overgrowth was a pioneer in the “early access” concept of doing alpha testing through preorder customers. It’s a sequel to Lugaru: The Rabbit’s foot, one of my favorite games years ago that I included in my (now out of date) top 100 indie game list. The story hooked me from the start, and the gameplay sold me the rest of the way.Nine years in the making, Overgrowth is one of the all-time most hotly anticipated games of the PC indie scene. Overall, Overgrowth was a fun experience, with fun platforming, dizzyingly high jumps, and pretty good combat. If the story content doesn't sell you on the game, the Workshop content might. Overgrowth also has a thriving Steam Workshop community, with players making all sorts of fun maps to play around in, from giant arenas to Mirror's Edge-style parkour cityscapes. If there was more than one opponent in the fight, getting knocked down in Overgrowth was like getting stunlocked in a fighting game. The only frustration (aside from that damn cat) that I had was that getting knocked down is very nearly a restart-worthy offense. This combo was so good, in fact, that I only had to switch up my tactics once, against a cat with a rapier who killed me a couple dozen times in a row. I can see where a more patient and adept player would excel at using the knives, swords, rapiers, and spears that Overgrowth has to offer, but I always seemed to lean back on Turner's jump + kick move that knocked enemies senseless and threw me out and away, ready to reset for another jump + kick until my opponent was down for good. Other than those two gripes, though, platforming was really fun - moreso than in some other games in recent memory.Ĭombat in Overgrowth is pretty interesting. Collision detection is sometimes off, and I kept slipping off ledges I should have been able to stand on or mantle up to. Turner consistently feels like he's floating when trying to jump around, and while it feels pretty amazing to be able to jump as high as he does, the hang time he has while he's up there becomes a little ponderous when you're trying to reach a certain ledge for the fifth time. The fight sequences are broken up by fun, tough platforming missions, but even those get repetitive after a while. You get a cutscene with dialogue, and the next mission loads. The downside to these small, bite-size missions is that they tend to become formulaic: go here, fight some rabbits or rats or dogs, and once you kill or knock out the last one, music plays, and the mission ends. They're also short enough that even a gamer dad like me can slip in some ass-kicking before having to rush off to put out a fire (usually not literally). The story is compelling enough that I kept playing through the missions despite myself, and the missions themselves are short enough that you don't notice the time slipping away. Turner makes attempts to reason with people other animals, but talking never seems to work, and he has to resort to fists, weapons, and super-strong bunny legs to defeat his enemies. One of the central questions in Overgrowth's campaign is whether or not Turner actually wants peace or if he's actually enjoying all the ninja ass-kicking he's doing throughout the story. Being a fighter and one of the strongest rabbits in the world means that Turner will never find the peace he says he wants. Overgrowth's story focuses on Turner, a rabbit who just wants to live his life after coming home from a terrible bunny war (don't laugh!) and losing his family. I made the mistake of playing Lugaru second, and I feel the Overgrowth campaign would have been that much better with some background. The Lugaru campaign is shorter, and admittedly slightly less polished, but it gives some great story beats and background on Turner, the main rabbit for both campaigns. Before I begin in earnest, I highly recommend 1) you get this game, and 2) you play its predecessor, Lugaru's, campaign before the longer Overgrowth campaign.
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