You had me at “ruined continent.”
Overland is an upcoming 3D survival tactics game from the creator of Canabalt, Adam Saltzman. Its beautiful, chillingly-chromatic art style has me itching to play it, as does the cool way the team has created an approachable rogue-like set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland without dumbing it down.
Check out the video below, with Saltzman’s narration.
https://youtu.be/NM5Vm7x4PEg
To survive your trip through the wasteland, you’ll need to scavenge for fuel, weapons, and other supplies while you fight off strange creatures who can hear you in the dark. Yikes.
There’ll be two main components to the game: Encounters (which take place on a tactical grid) and Interludes (which happen around a campfire. You’ll move around the grid, scavenge, light torches, or drive your car during Encounters. There’ll be combat there, too.
Interludes will see you making higher-level strategy choices, like whether to save up fuel or get farther on the map. You’ll have to decide what resources you need most and what level to try next — all important to the outcome of your game.
“Should you save up fuel for that long detour up ahead?” says Saltzman in the video above. “You can find solid upgrades there, but stockpiling gasoline is a risky maneuver. What do you do when there’s only one seat left in the vehicle? Do you take a healthy passenger with no particularly useful profession? Or do you try to save the wounded specialist? Maybe there’s a medkit at the next stop. Maybe there isn’t.”
Yikes, again.
The art is super adorable, too, right? The color palette, the wee little people, the cute little deadly monsters. So sweet, I want to click all over it.
Overland is slated to come out for Mac and PC next year. There’s a mailing list you can sign up for to get details as they arrive; you know I signed up for it. This game looks amazing.
