Vox Ludicus has reviewed Overfall:

Review: Overfall

Overfall is one of those games: it takes a bundle of genres and puts them together, each with varying depth and intricacy. It’s a game of role-playing, as you create your initial party, recruit followers and do quests for multiple factions; of strategy, as you’ll have to balance managing your supplies and food alongside the grid, turn-based combat; and roguelike, as each procedurally generated run will have different routes and permanent death, should both of your original party members perish. As is often the cases with these types of games, the question to be asked is whether these different genres coalesce into something meaningful or just fall into a convoluted, identity-lacking heap.

[...]

Overfall wears its simplicity on the sleeve, with each of its inspiring genres never being explored too profoundly, and that is both its bane and boon. I found that for short, independent sessions the simplicity of its mechanics meant I could jump in and out without much thought, but chaining multiple runs quickly led to repeated dialogues, events and actions, and, considering that I unexpectedly found the quests and dialogue to be one of the highlights of the game, this meant that the incentive to play it again lowered with each new playthrough.
For those who enjoy the combat sequences and trying out different classes and weapons, the large amount of classes and companions to unlock will give you reason to return.

Here are two more reviews of Overfall.

We Got This Covered, 4/5

Overfall may surprise people by how well the different genres have come together. The visual novel elements are fast paced, with witty writing to keep you entertained. The intercutting combat has a satisfying level of strategy, staying fresh through the different classes to choose from and clever AI. Wrapping everything up is the music, collectables, endings and other such details, that give gamers a solid reason to keep coming back for more.

Cubed3, 7/10

Overfall is a good game - better than most first attempts at game development. It provides simple laughs, but still decent storytelling. Its strength does not lie in its role-playing aspects, though. It would've been a more tactical game if it allowed for mixing and matching through customisation of characters' skills and passive traits, and unique armour would've done much to alleviate the boredom of looking at generic character models. It does have good replay value with a few unlockable weapons, trinkets, and companions, though. If you want to play a simple blend between role-playing and the randomness of roguelikes, give it a try.

TechRaptor's Nate Gray has reviewed the recently released rogue-like Overfall:

Overfall Review – Delightful Masochism

The evolution of video games as an acceptable mainstream pastime isn’t without its negatives, not the least of which is the sacrifice of challenging gameplay as developers fight over the meatiest chunks of the market. On occasion, however, some developers dare to stray from the pack and fill an otherwise forgotten niche clamoring for the challenges that used to be, before the dawn of quicksaves, mindless damage sponge enemies and QTEs. The list is small but elite, including games like Demon Souls, The Binding of Isaac, Darkest Dungeon and now, Pera Game‘s very own Overfall.

Playing Overfall is equal parts addictive and emotional. Gameplay is one part strategy and two parts luck, relying heavily on random events ranging from power-appropriate quests, potentially crippling handicap attributes, consumption of limited food to heal your otherwise permanently bloodied team, and a constantly growing swarm of Nordic, dimension-traveling pillagers, the Vorn. This, of course, is all in addition to typical battle modifiers that can swing even decisive battles in an unexpected direction, such as missed hits and criticals that can destroy mage and rogue-esque companions in a single blow.

[...]

Score: 8.5/10

Summary: An incredibly challenging experience tempered by engaging gameplay and a beautiful, hand-drawn world.

The final Overfall-build is live on Steam now:

Overfall - Build 13/05/2016 - FINAL BUILD for Main Release!

Dear adventurers,

Our final build before the main release is now open for general consumption on Steam! (note: this version will be uploaded to GOG once we’re sure there are no unexpected bugs during the transition).

Highlights for this patch includes:

• All missing power SFX have been added to the game.
• Added several sounds to UI elements.
• Finally fixed the black screen of doom bug.
• The AI will use personal all battle damaging powers correctly. In some cases this caused some AI to not move for several rounds.
• Melee Charge will not protect agains rewind as it was intervening with Monk's special power.

Thanks to everyone who contributed the Early Access to help us find the bugs and see what should be more fun in the game. Happily we have completed every missing part of the game, finished missing animations, art assets and sounds, fine tuned the game UI, balanced the battle and unlocks, added more stories to encounter, and completed our main goal for the EA - The Story Builder!

WE DID THESE TOGETHER!

Our aim is to be in the top ten selling titles on Steam on our launch day. That kind of visibility could make a very meaningful difference to the future of us, so we are massing all of our efforts to get there on 17 May.

You can do a lot to support our goal. If you do even one of the things below we'd be hugely grateful.

Tweet about the game on launch day. It takes a few seconds and will help hugely. Your endorsement of the finished product would mean a lot.
Write a review of Overfall on Steam. Help people get to know the finished game. Upload a review after the Early Access box has left the page and help our finished game make a good impression on the public.
Facebook-post. This isn’t for everyone, but if you have friends and family who play games, or are a member of any Facebook groups who would genuinely enjoy the game, we'd love you to share it with them.
Stream the game on launch day, on Twitch, YouTube or Steam. Promote the stream to your friends and followers, we’ll feature our favourites and may even drop in. Even just playing the game on Steam on the 17th will help drive awareness!

The Nerd Stash has reviewed the Early Access version of Overfall and likes it:

On paper Overfall sounds like a dream come true for any fan of role-playing games.  With a feature list that includes permanent hero death, procedural world generation, and challenging and addictive turn-based combat. So you can understand why I was very excited to get my hands on it when Pera Games was kind enough to send us a copy to review.

Overfall is ambitious and daring, not to mention beautiful and spirited. The developers have taken elements from strategy-focused RPGs, Roguelikes, and procedurally generated open world games and thrown them together into one large hand-drawn mixing bowl. With so many different features the game could easily suffer from inconsistency in quality, thankfully that’s mostly not the case.

[...]

My only real complaints with the game so far are a few difficulty balancing issues, and the generic main storyline. I did come across numerous typos and grammatical errors as well, although since the game is still in early access these will inevitably be corrected. At a completely reasonable price of $9.99, there is no reason you shouldn’t pick up this awesome game. If you are looking for a deep, open RPG, with great replay value then I would readily recommend Overfall.

Pros

• Great hand-drawn graphics and atmospheric presentation
• Fun and engaging turn-based battle system
• Deep story building features adds longevity to game

Cons

• Generic main story
• Sometimes difficulty spikes with no warning
• Still some spelling and grammatical errors to work out

Score: 4/5 - Amazing

Chalgyr has previewed the strategy RPG Overfall:

Overfall - PC Preview

Nothing quite beats sailing out and across the open seas in search of adventure. Filled with various factions that either want to hunt you down and steal everything you own to those that would rather befriend you and have you between them and those previously mentioned, welcome to the wondrous water world of Overfall.

Overfall is a Strategy RPG that starts off with a single purpose and no current real way of getting there. At least not the first time anyways. Starting off with two randomly named characters, or self named if you really want to, take to the open seas with your Fighter and your Cleric. What exactly are you supposed to do? Well that's the fun part as it's up to you to figure out after being given the downlow on your current predicament.

Starting off with nothing more than the two base classes as more can be unlocked later on through events, things are generally not quite in your favor as more often than not the deck of fate will be stacked against you. Out on these same waters are Orcs, Undead, Dwarves, Elves, Humans, Goblins, and DAMNED Vikings. Each have their own or shared islands that can be visited with generally one of two things that can happen. The first is telling you to get the hell off their island or they’ll kill you as some people just have no social graces, and the second is either a one part or multi-part event / quest that will lead to some nice rewards at times. Or more death.

[...]

Tokshen shows us some Overfall gameplay:

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Here is an early look at Overfall.

Thanks Eye.

Today is the Early Access release day for Overfall:

Overfall is a fantasy role-playing game of rough diplomacy and tough action. Explore, negotiate, and fight your way across the high seas!

You will lead two heroes on a journey across the high seas in search of their lost king. You will encounter people of all breeds and all creeds; ally with them or crush them without mercy. You will face many dangers; survive them and you may unlock new characters, weapons and skills. In a world where death is permanent, you must return to the beginning and make a fresh start. The heroes you choose, the weapons you unlock and a world that is randomized mean that no two adventures will ever be the same.

Key Features

• A huge, dynamic world to explore, ruled by a number of races in constant conflict - it’s up to you to help or betray them
• Challenging and addictive turn-based combat - careful strategy and cunning skill combinations are the key to victory against your foes!
• Permanent hero death, procedural world generation, and high replay inspired by classic roguelikes
• Interactive story encounters where the choices you make and the allies you recruit ensure no two journeys are quite the same
• Unlock new classes, weapons, trinkets and skills as you progress in the game
• Beautiful hand-drawn art of of 9 player characters, 36 combat companions, 80+ enemies, 80+ NPCs, and 100+ locations

And remember the character design contest!

In Kickstarter update #13 Pera Games announced a character design contest for Overfall:

Design Contest, Wiki and Early Access Price!

Hello adventurers,

As the days draw closer to the launch of Overfall on 1st of March, we are here to announce a Character Design Contest and seek talented contributors from all over the world to have three more characters implemented to Overfall by the winners of the contest.

Sharpen your favorite weapons and prepare to fight! Your challenge, adventurers, is to awaken that fantastic character you’ve buried deep inside your mind, make a contest entry to show everyone that character will be sailing the seas of Dys by winning this contest!

A panel of Pera Games staff members will serve as the judges of the contest and select 25 finalists. The winning entries will be announced at a date around March 15, 2016. Prize packages include not only copies of Overfall, but also drawings of the winning characters featured in quest chains in-game, and Steam Wallet Cash, coupled with numerous Kickstarter exclusive rewards!

Be sure to head on over to our contest page for further information. Best of luck to all, and may the most alluring and fascinating designs win!

[...]

Chris Avellone has published the game writing style guide for Overfall - an interesting read.

From the Kickstarter page:

[...] One day - Yagiz introduced us to (as you see them both in our credits now) one of the most prominent game designers and writers of our era, Chris Avellone himself, who you will remember from Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale series, Baldur’s Gate, Fallout: New Vegas, FTL and many others. We came up with the idea of having a Game Writing Style Guide, which would explain the basics of creating a story in Overfall, give some ideas on how to write a good story, and outline Overfall’s writing style with a couple of examples. And we already were in touch with the best person for writing this kind of guide, not only because he’s a great writer with worlds of experience, but also because he’s great mentor material. Thankfully Chris was happy to work on it and thought laying out one might be helpful for both Overfall and for any budding game writers out there. Now our plan is to finish and release the story builder along with the game, and to write more stories in the light of the Game Writing Style Guide.

The closed beta for Overfall has started for all Kickstarter backers who mentioned they wanted to receive a Steam key. For those who want a GOG key, they will have to wait until the devs feel they are ready for a DRM free key.

For those who haven't backed, but still want to play the game: Overfall will be available on Steam Early Access on March 1. They are looking for feedback in the weeks leading up to that date to improve the game further.

Here is an overview of their plans and notes, which has a reference to Chris Avellone in it.

• At the moment, the game is mostly stable and polished with the core game completed; and we are working on balancing current features as well as adding more content to deliver even more fun.
• Note that you may encounter some disembodied voices, teleporting heroes, or paralyzed NPCs. These are perfectly normal breakdowns on the current state of development, and will be resolved shortly. Please start playing the game now if you are OKAY with that. 
• Visit and follow our test Trello - a tool we use to store and fix known issues. 
• Before the main release we plan to polish and test our Story Builder - a tool accessible to anyone with Overfall that allows them to create their own stories and upload them to the Steam Workshop. 
• One of the main strengths of Overfall comes from the stories you encounter during a playthrough, an island-to-island experience where you don’t just sail around trying to save the world - you can just as easily encounter a charming stand-alone story or a self-contained quest progression. The more of these encounters we have, the richer and more fun the overall experience will be. We wanted these encounters to be perfect, and to achieve that, we started searching for ways to improve our storytelling. One day - Yagiz introduced us to (as you see them both in our credits now) one of the most prominent game designers and writers of our era, Chris Avellone himself, who you will remember from Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale series, Baldur’s Gate, Fallout: New Vegas, FTL and many others. We came up with the idea of having a Game Writing Style Guide, which would explain the basics of creating a story in Overfall, give some ideas on how to write a good story, and outline Overfall’s writing style with a couple of examples. And we already were in touch with the best person for writing this kind of guide, not only because he’s a great writer with worlds of experience, but also because he’s great mentor material. Thankfully Chris was happy to work on it and thought laying out one might be helpful for both Overfall and for any budding game writers out there. Now our plan is to finish and release the story builder along with the game, and to write more stories in the light of the Game Writing Style Guide.

And here is another game that will be delayed. Overfall will not be released on Steam in December. It will be released 2 months later. While waiting on the release, you can already become a co-creator of the game.

Think of a tool accessible to anyone with Overfall that allows them to create their own stories and upload them to the Steam Workshop. You’d be able to write your own stories - every bit as funny, dark, epic, weird or action-packed as you’d like - and release them on the Workshop as a story pack under whatever title you like. And then other players would be able to subscribe to it on the Workshop and encounter your stories while playing Overfall!

Imagine how cool that would be! Overfall has a great variety of fantasy elements - fearsome foes, atmospheric environments, quirky NPCs - just ripe for creative players to toy with. And after all, our game is an island-to-island experience where you don’t just sail around trying to save the world - you can just as easily encounter a charming stand-alone story or a self-contained quest progression. The more of these encounters we have, the richer and more fun the overall experience will be.

Watchers I got this message from cibram (Pera Games):

Recruits for Overfall Beta

Soon we will start a playtest sprint for Overfall on Steam and we are going to need a couple of people for that.

I have an idea of recruiting these players from RPGWatch community, 20 would be a great number.

We're gonna need honest feedback, ideas and feelings about the game's current state and improvement suggestions, a good amount of playtime investment and patience against current bugs, issues and missing features/parts from the recruits.

Also we will need:

Real Name (for credits)
Steam ID and profile link
Email address (to share the Steam Code)

If you want to help cibram send him a PM and reply to this thread, please. But don't post any private data here!

Some gameplay:

Development news for Overfall can now be found on Steam:

Kickstarter update #10:

Hello Steam

Ahoy, Adventurers!

We’d like to invite you to join the fun on Overfall’s Steam Community Hub!

From now on, we will use discussions on the Hub as our main information center. You can ask questions on forums, enjoy the artwork, screenshots, and guides, and follow the game’s development news directly towards this perfect platform.

The Overfall Store Page is ready as well for you to add the game to your wishlists and follow!

Surveys 

Today we’re also sending out surveys asking you to choose how you would like your backer rewards. Make sure to answer the survey as soon as you can!

MicBeMac has previewed Overfall that was recently funded on Kickstarter:

Welcome to a gorgeous, stylistic adventure RPG for the explorer in you.  Brought to us by indie developers Pera Games, Overfall is staged to be an open world exploration RPG set on the high seas in a beautifully hand drawn environment.  They have recently completed their Kickstarter campaign and full development is under way.

I got a chance recently to play through the demo for Overfall.  You quickly set sale into the hand drawn environments with a couple of characters in tow.  A brave fighter is accompanied by a very useful cleric as the starting classes available in the demo.

Though the current available archetypes for each character are relatively straightforward, the fighter deals massive melee damage, and the cleric works on healing and buffs, there is still a lot of potential for unique characters within the fantasy setting.  The world is filled with interesting characters and creatures, from giant pig men, to goblins, to pirates and of course elves.  These characters are set aside from other games by the cartoonish, but extremely detailed artwork.

This artwork expands into the environment as the backgrounds are gorgeous, and filled with color and life.  The high seas are also filled with activity and dozens of islands to explore, though only a few were available in the demo.

The other thing that will grab you in this game is the witty dialogue.  It happened more than once through my play through that I would think something quite witty and funny to myself, just as my character on screen would almost read my mind and say something similar.  The developers obviously know how to make fun of both themselves and the general tropes of similar games and take advantage of that to instill a great deal of humor into the game.

Combat takes place in turned base format on a hexagonal map.  A unique twist added here is the use of various combat stages for each turn.  All characters can take multiple actions each turn this way, with a variety of different abilities available depending on what stage they are in.  Rather than using magic points or something similar, these skills are all on cool downs and can’t be used two turns in a row, meaning you will have to carefully plan how to use your skills each turn or be potentially stuck in a prickly position.

If they continue on this path, Pera Games should have a winner for themselves.  Though the Kickstarter is over with, you can certainly support the development by following the developers on Twitter where they have shown to be active and supportive of their community.

Steven Ritz of Canadian Online Gamers has previewed the already funded Kickstarter game Overfall:

Kickstarter seems flooded by so many seemingly great game ideas these days it’s hard to choose where to invest your hard earned dollars. Not to mention the trepidation of parting with that money when there is a real chance you might never see a finished product. Before the internet age, developers would rely on game demos for promotion: small snapshots of the game to entice players. Demos are few and far between these days, but Pera Games has provided a short demo for their new game Overfall and it was a great idea. [...]

So, on to the actual game. Overfall can be quickly summed up as a rogue-like tactical RPG, but I feel that a simple genre brand doesn’t quite do it justice. Those of you who are familiar with Darkest Dungeon, a recent Kickstarter indie success of the same genre, will sense a fair amount of similarities: perma-death of your party members, procedurally generated maps, unique skill sets for each class, etc. Something that I felt set it apart from other games in the genre, however, was the combat system. Each turn consists of a move, a utility, and then an attack phase. Each class has different abilities for each phase; for instance, the barbarian has an ability to jump to a tile and do AoE damage to surrounding enemies while the rogue type character can blink to a spot and pull enemies closer to him. This opens up some really interesting strategy for follow up attacks or for making some great defensive plays. I’m excited to see what other classes will become available and what moves will come with them. [...]

With a little more than two days to go, Overfall has reached its pledge goal on Kickstarter. They have set a stretch goal at $85K, which is quite a bit to cover, given they are now at $65K. This stretch goal adds even more possible companions on top of the 36 you can already play with, but then from other races.

You will now be able to call on the aid of an elegant Elf, a wrathful Orc, a cunning Dwarf, an inventive Goblin, an enigmatic Forsaken, and a wild Hollow!

At a rough estimate, we believe we can hire enough help to add one or two companions from each race to the initial launch of the game.

The Overfall team let us know that their Kickstarter campaign is only $7K short of reaching their $65K goal, for which they have less than 3 days to go.

With still 9 days to go and at 2/3 of their goal, the Overfall devs decied to do a post-mortem already in order to analyze what went good and less good with the Kickstarter.

What Went Wrong So Far

1. Visibility 

As mentioned above, our main issue so far has been visibility. We weren’t entirely surprised by this, because we didn’t have much awareness in larger gaming communities, big-ticket items in our development resume, or well-known figures on the team....

2. Early Bird Discounts 

We’ve learned that these kinds of discounts only really work for big projects. You need hundreds, even thousands of people waiting for you to launch the game. It’s a little unfair to dangle a discount in front of someone’s nose and then take it away when they couldn’t have reasonably known the game existed in the first place!

3. Not giving reasons to start discussions 

We could have been more creative about giving our backers and followers topics to discuss about Overfall. To be honest, we were expecting more negative feedback - but we haven’t really received it! Perhaps we explained everything there was to be explained in the Kickstarter material - as of yet, there aren’t really many questions people would think to ask until more information about the game’s design is made public. 

4. We should have released the Pre-Alpha Demo at the beginning 

This one is definitely on us. We were nervous about the idea of releasing a demo because, well, the game’s a roguelike! Roguelikes live or die on the balancing of their procedurally-generated elements - but we haven’t done extensive playtesting of the game in its current form, so we didn’t want to give players an unbalanced or empty roguelike experience. Demos ought to be fun, right?

Fortunately, we did find a middle road there. Presenting a single, self-contained quest progression separate from the main story was a pretty good way of getting across the general feel of the game for the audience, and it gave a good initial taste of the game and a lot of opportunities for feedback regarding gameplay.

With 15 days left in the Kickstarter campaign for Overfall Pera Games has released a special pre-alpha demo, so you can try the game now:

Kickstarter Special Pre-Alpha Demo is LIVE!

Hello Seafarers!

As promised, we are ready to release our first public playable build! This Kickstarter special pre-alpha demo features: one of many quests that will be available in the full game, as well as:

• 38 visitable locations 
• 20 ships to encounter 
• 40 NPCs to meet 
• Fully-implemented combat with 2 heroes, 1 companion, 3 allies, and 14 enemies. 
• Available for PC and Mac.

Instead of giving the player a potentially unbalanced or incomplete roguelike experience, the we’ve decided to have the demo focus on a single quest to give you the general feel of gameplay.

As you will see on the disclaimer, please keep that in mind this is a pre-alpha build of Overfall. You will find that most of the world is either empty or bizarrely obsessed with getting you to a particular island. Don’t worry! This is only one of many stories you will be able to experience on Overfall. There are many, many more to come. Also, please do not be alarmed by any disembodied voices, teleporting heroes, or paralyzed NPCs. These are perfectly normal breakdowns of the fabric of reality and will be resolved shortly.

-> Download link

Pera Games has launched an interesting new Kickstarter: Overfall.

Overfall

A fantasy roleplaying game of rough diplomacy and tough action. Explore, negotiate, and fight your way across the high seas!

Sail the seas. Turn the tide. Save the world.

Explore the shifting seas of a strange realm. Fend off starvation. Fight terrible foes…or befriend them. Recruit lost souls and learn their histories. Recover lost artifacts and rediscover lost knowledge. Take part in stories of the absurd and the tragic, the magical and the mundane - intimate, epic, and never the same twice.

Ready to embark?

Core-Features:

• A huge, dynamic world to explore, ruled by a number of races in constant conflict - it’s up to you to help or betray them
• Challenging and addictive turn-based combat - careful strategy and cunning skill combinations are the key to victory against your foes!
• Permanent hero death, procedural world generation, and high replay inspired by classic roguelikes

• Interactive story encounters where the choices you make and the allies you recruit ensure no two journeys are quite the same
• Unlock new classes, weapons, trinkets and skills as you progress in the game
• Beautiful hand-drawn art of of 9 player characters, 36 combat companions, 80+ enemies, 80+ NPCs, and 100+ locations

[...]