by I first played a game called “Lugaru” back in 2005/2006. In Lugaru, you played Turner, a ninja assassin rabbit – the combat was varied and interesting, since you played as a very low-health, high-speed character with an astounding jump (because, you know…rabbit). Later, they announced a sequel (yet to be titled). I pre-purchased it, and waited. Actually, I’m pretty sure I bought it three times – once on their website when it was made available for pre-purchase, once in a Humble Bundle, and once on Steam (because I forgot both the email and the password to my original account). During this time, they came out with hundreds of alpha builds (I played a few) in addition to lore-building comics and concept art. Twelve years after, Overgrowth was released. And people complain about Star Citizen taking a while. THEY DON’T KNOW THE MEANING OF THE WORDS “worth the wait”.
So after all this time, was Overgrowth worth the wait? Well, it’s okay. I’m certainly going to try and finish it – partly because the main campaign isn’t all that long and partly because I feel I should before I play the side campaigns (which the Steam reviews say are far better). It’s also been a decade since I last played Lugaru, so my recollection might be a tad off. The combat in Overgrowth feels similar in tone but lacking in counterplay. There are too many attacks that will just kill you outright and too many attacks you can make that will kill enemies (at least, other rabbits) in one hit. Since this is ostensibly a fighting game, encouraging strategies that involve not fighting is a problem. This might be fixable simply by increasing the health of both players and enemies – allowing you more mistakes and discouraging sniper attacks that could result in reinforcements.
The other problem with Overgrowth are the platforming/freerunning sections. In several places, there was only one way to proceed, but I couldn’t find it. Even when I did, it often involved throwing myself at it 20-30 times before properly launching myself toward certain doom before kicking off a wall at the last second. When I didn’t make it, it could take 5-6 seconds before the message allowing a reset to show up – which is an eternity in a game all about fast-paced running and jumping. Though it wouldn’t solve the problems with not finding the correct path, an instant reset button would make it feel less of a punishment for missing pixel-perfect (well, not quite) jumps or trying new things – DeadCore does this wonderfully.
Finally, Overgrowth lacks a tutorial. The maps are quite large (as they were in Lugaru), but early maps utilize only a small percentage of the available space and have no more than 5-10 enemies. I think padding out the earlier stages would allow you to get the hang of the game and let you try new things on easier enemies before moving on to the more challenging ones.
Nevertheless, I was having fun with a novel concept. This probably won’t be the first game I turn to once I’m done cataloging my library, but I think it’s worth at least a bit more of my time.