When it comes out, Overthrown will be the next big game to hit Steam, I’m happy for this to be a quote on the box. All it has to do is stick the landing.
In the build-up to Steam Next Fest, a lot of sites and content creators are given access to demos early. These early copies are not special in any way, more a way to make a game stand out before Next Fest drops. With over 3000 games in the 2024 Next Fest, it’s simply not possible for a small team to even think about looking at that list, let alone play them all. So, here at ESTNN we tend to pick one game per team member early.
Diana, the site’s resident player of horror titles, picked, well, a horror title: Karma The Dark World. I do not like horror; it scares me, and I don’t like being scared. I do, however, like cosy farming simulator games, and even more specifically, games developed in the wonderful town of Skövde, Sweden.
Overthrown, but Still in Play
Overthrown is the next game from the team at Brimstone Games. While the team is fully remote, the founding members are all from Sweden and based in Skövde. The team has a simple goal with the games it makes: “We’re not interested in realism or linear storytelling – we want to create deep sandbox experiences where there’s room for players to surprise us with things the game can do that we never thought of”
If you go into Overthrown blind, only knowing that it’s a city/colony building third-person farming and town simulator, you’ll be surprised in the first few minutes. So by all means, stop reading and go play the game if you still can.
You get to throw stuff around. Simple, but by gosh is it a lot of fun. Want a worker to work in the mill? Throw them at it; want to move your mill to a new location, just pick it up and “place” it nicely in a new location. Sure, you can do this in other games, but there’s something unique about your little King or Queen just picking up a build and yeeting it to a new location. You can also do the same thing for trees and other resources, just throw at the lumber mill, and they’ll figure it out.
Standing out
One of the hardest things for any video game to do is stand out or get noticed. I think for myself, content creators, and the like, it’s our job to push games we enjoy out into the world. Not all games are for everyone, but sometimes that one signal boost can help get a game into the eyes of someone who wants to see it. Maybe this article will do that, maybe us writing about the game early will have a positive effect for us, that’s the game we play.
Overthrown does what it needs to do to stand out from a crowd. With people getting a chance to play the game, it’s also an important way for a developer to get feedback.
The Things we Loved
People like to talk about things having “a vibe” in 2024. Often I don’t think they know what it means, but when I say Overthrown just has “that vibe” I mean that it just hits a certain cord in my brain that makes me want to mess around more. I’ve put a fair bit of time in Overthrown, but I also want to come back when it’s had a little more time to cook and had some custard put over the top of it — if you catch my drift.
Right now, Overthrown feels fun to play, and you can even do so with friends, which I think is going to be a really important aspect of this game when it comes to it standing out whenever it launches. It also feels like the sort of game that, assuming it goes to Early Access first will thrive in that space if the Dev team listens to their community and act on feedback well. The core idea is solid, and it’s a perfect launching point to throw the game into an EA release.
Room to Improve
No game is perfect, and especially one that isn’t even out yet. We won’t go too deep on this first look, but one thing that felt like a mechanic was getting in the way was how the Sprint works. The game features a charge Sprint feature which activates when you press and hold Shift. This lets you run at high speed and even drift around the world. This is cool, we like this, it’s fun. However, to just “run fast” or what spring would be in a normal game, you have to press left CTRL to dodge, which then lets you spring. I get it, when you have super spring, normal spring is lame… but it makes some early control of the game funky. Right now you cannot change any controls, which I’m sure would help a little, it’s just a minor gripe we had early that caused a minor pain point.
Otherwise, I really don’t have much else to say right now. Go play Overthrown while you can on Steam Next Fest.