Overland's long and winding road to release ends this autumn
Out this autumn
Beautiful murderbugs vs Americana turn-based strategy vs roguelike Overland is a game I've blown hot and cold on. I dig the theme, I dig the permanence and agonies of a perilous journey in which you make terrible mistakes and terrible sacrifices, and oh boy do I dig the art. But I've grown increasingly unconvinced by its artificial inventory restrictions, said agonies so dependent on the suspension of disbelief that your characters can't carry anything more than a stick in one hand.
Maybe I'll have come around to that again by the time Finji's pretty, pretty procgen road-horror opus finally gets a full release this autumn.
Overland's been available as an increasingly meaty 'first access' build on Itch for three years, but we're looking at a Steam release too. No precise date outside of "fall", as revealed in the below GDC trailer, and no specificity of what'll be added or changed by then.
There's been a slew of updates since the last time I played, most notably rebalancing and hats. I just jumped back in and it's noticeably fancier and maybe slightly less mean than before, though sadly characters still only know how to use one hand and cars can only fit three people/dogs inside.
I do like it a bunch, and its sunburnt colour scheme and ghost-town American road movie stylings remain one of the best-looking TBSes I've ever seen, but I desperately wish it had come up with more elegant and less silly methods of placing challenging limitations upon your raggedy band of petrol-hunting survivors. With at least another six months still to go, who knows what forks in the road it might yet take, however. I'll be playing it come what may, even if it means occasionally muttering bitterly to myself.