Exploration is in our blood. We want to see what’s “over there” with the hopes that what’s there is better than what’s here. A new land, a new planet, or perhaps simply a new restaurant on the other side of town, we want to discover new things. That’s why we love exploration games. And why we especially love procedurally-generated exploration games, or as I call them, PEGs.
The big upcoming PEG right now is No Man’s Sky. That game will rock, even though the latest trailer disappointed a bit.
And then there’s Pera Games’s Overfall, currently crowd-funding on Kickstarter ($65K goal ending September 18). Doesn’t have the same hype as No Man’s Sky, but still looks pretty awesome.
It’s a PEG all right, but it’s also an RPG. And a complex one at that. Different races, new worlds, different ways to interact with NPCs and the world. A couple of the more interesting selling points:
How you react to a situation will affect who your characters become. For example, save chickens and you become an animal-friend.
Saving chickens is good for your karma.
Complex tactics using each multi-character combos. How complex? Check out this scenario:
- 1-) We use Quickstep to get our Monk into melee range. Quickstep also applies the Rewind buff to him, meaning he’ll return to where he started at the end of the turn.
- 2-) A blast of Hurricane pulls the scattered Orcs towards the Monk and applies the Dazed debuff to every Orc he pulled.
- 3-) After a quick melee attack, the Monk teleports back out of harm’s way thanks to the Rewind buff, leaving the Orcs wide open for the Wizard to attack. The best part? Not only are they all now within range of his area-of-effect Lightning Orb attack, but it does extra damage to targets with the Dazed condition!
Complex tactics, big payoff.
Of course, neither of these are completely new to the RPG genre. And actually, the biggest value proposition of Overfall is the exploration and the world that changes every time you play the game.
How exactly the worlds will change will be interesting to see. There’s a ton of water with islands placed almost equidistant of each other. Will the “change” be simply the placement of these same islands? If you remember the random maps on a game like Age of Empires or Civilization or Tropico, each new map generally has the same resources but placed in different areas. Still fun, but does get repetitive. Will it be like this or will each land within the world be a little different somehow? Will there be surprises each time we play the game?
Regardless, Overfall looks intriguing and fund-worthy. Let’s Kickstart it!