Overgrowth, the vaporware bunny homicide simulator - no longer vaporware, too bad it sucks!

[hello friend]

Combat looks tight tho

Lugaru or whatever it's called was p fun

 

[Haba]

The reviews are pretty glorious. Decade well spent?

9 years for a 2 hour story campaign lol

The physics are fun also. This game is a great game to mod. However the story is nonexistant. I beat the campaign in one hour and every time a character was mentioned i was like "who was that again?

You're gonna get one-shot by wolves, stunlocked by enemies with weapons, screwed over by the cutscenes ending with your camera facing the wrong direction and your enemy already bearing down on you, all in gigantic maps with nothing in them.

 

[Metro]

There is no excuse for this game to have the same shitty vignette-like campaign the first game had after all this time. Game is still a proof-of-concept. Fun, yes, but $10-15 fun. For $30 and a decade of development you should at least try to put in some content.

This game is basically taking a great like Gothic 1, removing the entire colony, and reducing things to a few arena fights.

 

[Infinitron]

Oof: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/10/19/overgrowth-review/

Overgrowth doesn’t feel ready to leave Early Access
Fraser Brown on October 19th, 2017 at 9:00 pm.

The most satisfying moments in Overgrowth [official site] take place in mid-air. Rabbits are typically good at jumping, but they’ve got nothing on their anthropomorphic cousin, Turner, the martial arts master and hero of this critter-bashing romp. His leaping ability borders on the power of flight. During those seconds, suspended in the skies above the game’s largely empty battlefields, it feels like anything’s possible. Invariably the landing disappoints. Sometimes fatally. That’s Overgrowth: lots of potential, rarely reached.

Turner’s arrived in a new land, ready to have a nice, relaxing life. But no! There are slavers he has to kill. And that’s about it for the threadbare narrative. It’s little more than an excuse to get into a series of fights, peppered with platforming sections, and it’s basically the same story as in Overgrowth predecessor Lugaru – a remake of which is included here – but without the personal stakes.

Overgrowth’s been cooking away for nine years, and I cannot figure out why it’s suddenly out now. It certainly doesn’t seem finished. Every single element, from the environments to the story, feels like it’s missing something. In some cases, it’s just unpolished, but the overall impression is that this is a game that’s still very much in beta.

The ‘Thick fog’ level is a pretty effective showcase for where the game’s really at. The level is huge, and full of gentle hills and wildflowers; blandly idyllic. But it’s also a spooky forest, complete with gnarled, dead trees and eerie, swampy fog. It’s like two or three different maps layered on top of one another, with no real identity or consistency.

When Turner enters the level, he realises he’s a bit lost. There are no real objectives in the game outside of what you catch in the brief bits of dialogue, and here the implication is pretty clear: find the right way out of this pleasant field of flowers/haunted forest. The scale of most of the maps implies that exploration is a good idea. It never, ever is. It’s maybe the worst thing you can do, leading to wasted journeys and getting stuck in parts of the map that are entirely open to you, but are far from ready for visitation. And this is how I ended up walking across the bed of a lake without dying, even though water is fatal in the rest of the game, before slamming into an invisible wall that spun me around.

I spent at least half an hour exploring this weird location, finding nothing but big, empty, unfinished spaces. Eventually I gave up, restarting the level. It turns out that all I actually needed to do was walk straight ahead for 30 seconds, encounter some aggressive rats, and then kill them, completing the level. There’s no indication that this is the case, however, and nothing suggesting that going in any other direction is pointless.

Most levels are laden with similar issues. Every single map could be a tenth of the size, and nothing would be lost, and nobody would end up wasting their time. It seems like a fundamental misunderstanding about how players act when faced with large, open areas. Ultimately, this is a game mostly made up of arena-style brawls, but that’s not remotely reflected by any of the level design.

Overgrowth is terrible at communicating things, generally. You’ll be wondering plenty, like if you’re going to be able to hit a target with your knife, or why you can die by jumping sometimes, but just as often be completely fine, but the game’s not forthcoming. Not only does it withhold pretty much every piece of information that you might want to know, it’s almost willfully inconsistent, meaning that anything learned might be rendered useless.

The largest source of my confusion is undoubtedly the damage system, which I continue to know nothing about. Wolves are the game’s toughest enemies, so I’ve had plenty of opportunities to die over and over again at their claws. All of those deaths have taught me one thing; that there is no clear logic. In one fight, a wolf managed to kill me with two kicks. In another attempt – same wolf, same conditions – he kicked me twice, but then he had to take another swipe before killing me. After that, he killed me in a single kick, which also saw me launch into the air and fly over the edge of a cliff.

This lack of consistency works both ways. I might take a rat out with a single kick, but then have to beat the crap out of his otherwise identical buddy before he goes down. When the rules aren’t clear, it makes winning or losing meaningless. The rest of the game is similarly inconsistent, but it’s most disappointing in combat because fighting is one of the few parts of Overgrowth that’s otherwise enjoyable.

Battles are blisteringly fast, and often a bit absurd thanks to the over-the-top physics engine that calls to mind a slightly more sedate Goat Simulator. On the surface, brawling seems like a simple affair. Hold down the left mouse button to attack, hold down the right to block, or press it to grab an enemy and disarm them, while shift makes Turner roll. Pretty straightforward. Doing this while trying to manage multiple enemies, some of whom might be wielding one-hit-kill weapons, is where the challenge lies.

Fights are all high-risk affairs, too, and Turner can’t take much of a beating. Unfortunately, there’s not much impetus for trying to wrap your head around the system in any meaningful way because the optimal choice is almost always to leap into the air, press the attack button, and watch as your foes fall before you. Sometimes they’ll try to throw weapons at you, but not all that often. The only thing stopping these flying kicks from letting you win almost every battle is that there’s no aiming, no lock-on, and no real way to know if you’re going to actually hit something until it’s too late. For all its issues, however, combat is light years ahead of the platforming.

Overgrowth is too floaty and imprecise to make for a competent platformer, yet platforming makes up almost half of the game. I never found it to be anything less than a miserable experience, despite the fact that jumping feels great on its own. Even if the controls were fine-tuned, it’s dull. You’re just jumping from one rock or ledge to the next, with the occasional bit of janky wall-running that only works half the time. There aren’t any obstacles or challenges aside from trying not to overshoot the leap. The only time it’s memorable is when something infuriating happens, like the two times I made a successful jump only for the game to decide I fell to my death. You died, the game told me, while Turner stood safely where he landed.

So yes, Overgrowth is also a bit buggy. I’ve fought enemies who seemed to be standing on invisible rocks, I’ve become stuck in the terrain while platforming, and whether due to a graphical glitch or something else, every wound and stream of blood looks like it’s been created in MS Paint. Performance issues crop up from time to time as well, mostly with the frame rate dropping for no obvious reason. The game looks like it was made a decade ago, which is more or less when development began, so I’m not sure why any modern setups should struggle. It also doesn’t fully support controllers, which can’t navigate menus.

Overgrowth feels like a mod created for a wacky physics sandbox where all the openness and experimentation has been pushed to the side, and everything else has been twisted around a forgettable, barely present story and a series of brief and ugly levels. I’m just glad that, at around two to three hours long, it’s incredibly short.

Overgrowth is out now on Steam and the Humble Store for £22.99/$29.99/€27.99, but there’s also a 30% launch discount that will continue until October 23.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

The Grimoire of bunny combat simulators.

 

[Merlkir]

Yeah, I tried it yesterday. There seem to be a lot of positioned triggers and if you walk around them (which is not hard in these open maps), you're fucked. I fought my way through the level, to the boss on top of a tower...and she just stands there, waiting for some trigger to go off, and I can't even hit her.
Also platforming fails for no reasons I could figure out, you wall jump and 3/5 times, pressing the same exact buttons you break your neck, because you miss the grabbable ledge's collision mesh by a few pixels. (that you can't see)

 

[Merlkir]

I played some more and got further in the campaign. There's a number of frustrating aspects, but it does get better.

+ the missions are varied, you get ambushes, platforming challenges, fort infiltrations
+ the fighting grows on you and it can feel real nice

- the platforming can be frustrating if you maybe chose a less obvious way and while it's possible to get through, it can be wonky and you might miss checkpoints
- there are checkpoints, but not a lot and often you'll die to the very last enemy and get reset to when ALL of them are alive again
- the story is hard to follow, because the characters' designs are not memorable enough with the exception of Turner
- the cut scenes are all static, it feels very gamey. I'd appreciate more pans etc., some more cinematic camera techniques.
- the transition between missions are very hard and kind of break the flow.

+/- the jump kick is OP as fuck and I'm overusing it. It also allows me to win where I wouldn't, so good?

 

[Merlkir]

If you're struggling with the fighting - don't fight, kill. I still can't reliably grapple and throw and can't seem to do it against weapons. So what I do:

1) Kill them one by one. Lure them somewhere you can fight them and then hide the body if possible. (unless you want it as bait)
2) Jump towards them at a low angle from fairly close and jump kick them to death.
3) Knives and swords aren't that great and if they take them from you, you'll lose more than you'll gain. Spears thrown into their backs can one shot dogs, but they'll walk off a sword embedded in their skull.
4) You can't choke dogs and wolves, if you sneak up on them, you'll just throw them. So kick them while they're down, or slash them with weapons before they get up.
5) The sneaky kills take time, but you can't reliably fight two and more dogs. Sometimes even multiple rabbits can be a pain.

General tips:

1) Sometimes there are walls that look like you're supposed to wallrun them and then reach a ledge. That's not always true, some of the ledges can be just jumped to, whereas you fall to your death after wallrunning.
2) install the grass mod! Seriously, do it! The grass model in this game is poorly optimized and will ruin your performance.

 

[Merlkir]

OK, I finished the story. It's shit. There's no structure, no tension, no suspense, no motivation, things just happen. Characters are ass, I didn't remember anyone except for the one rat, who is the only rat, there are no good villains (maybe the cat slaver...) and the story just ends at a random place.

They obviously didn't have a writer on the team.

There are some shit levels and there are some cool ones. Even the jumpy ones are sometimes really cool, like the lava climb and the last climb to the sky temple.

It's incredibly clear they didn't want to make a game, they were making an engine. Shit, now I'll go play the mod campaign, I guess.

 

[Konjad]

Too bad. I liked Lugaru and expected something better this time, but it seems it's worse. I might get it on -75% sale.

 

[Merlkir]

I finished the Lugaru campaign in Overgrowth as well. It's significantly shorter than I remember it being, possibly because the jump kick is broken. Wolves are shit enemies, they just kill you in one or two hits, you can't block them and the final boss takes 6 jump kicks to kill. Ridiculous.

I started playing the Therium mod and already it's far more interesting. It's the usual mod where lore is dumped in your face everywhere, they're so proud of their writing. But at least it's fucking there. And there's a mystery, something to follow as the story progresses. The level design is a bit bland so far and the use of the engine worse - a lot of props have low res textures and it doesn't look as nice as the base game.
But overall it's more fun so far.

 

[Merlkir]

Game finally ships. after 10 years. Arena unfinished, Single Player a massive disappointment Instead of..Idk finishing the arena? polishing the campagin. Lets pull a bethesda and let the community go back through and finish the game for us cause we're too lazy to put in some work and actually finish the fucking thing. Yes let the community make all the actual content for you game because the sheer non-existent storm of mods clearly proves that people care enough about this game to bother making content for it FOR YOU

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Can I play as 'umies yet?

 

[Merlkir]

Can I play as 'umies yet?

There are some mods that replace the main char with Overwatch characters i think...

 

[Mustawd]

Version 1.2 is out.



Changelog:

Spoiler

Changelog for Overgrowth 1.2

Changes are since Overgrowth 1.1.4


Gameplay:

- Added back per-character aggression setting (only applies in hardcore or higher), and made AI a bit more cautious on higher difficulty levels

- Disabled attack “magnet” (pulls you towards enemies) in anything but "casual" mode

- Made AI roll away from jump kicks (scaled by block skill and difficulty level)

- Made AI sometimes try to counter air attacks (if aggression is high enough - rare right now)

- Made non-"leader" characters avoid jump kicks when in hardcore difficulty or higher

- Made it harder to hit large characters as the difficulty increases (scales down to be identical to smaller characters)

- Made shoulder throw require you to be closer at higher difficulty levels

- Improved ragdoll block animation to make it seem more fair (still acts the same - you can active block while on the ground, and so can the AI, but characters now stand up a bit slower)

- Made cats only throw their offhand at you when you jump attack, or when you're fleeing (far enough away, or running away with back turned)

- Made cats more likely to throw offhand weapons at you at higher difficulty levels

- Made characters stop being static when shot with lightning

- Made it so you can’t climb impaling spikes

- Fixed difficulty icons sometimes not showing up correctly

- Fix NPCs not dying when throwing them off waterfall arena cliff


Performance:

- Improved script performance of ragdolled NPCs

- Added ability to disable Depth of Field post-processing pass in graphics settings (for better perf on low end machines)

- Added angelscript profiler, to debug script performance problems (and fixed some leave-profiler-zone calls)


Reliability:

- Added better error message when DXT5 support is absent

- Added error message if write directory cannot be written to

- Added troubleshooting hint about Windows Controlled Folder access if failing to write a file in write directory

- Implemented a file backup system while while saving a map, so modders don't lose all their work if things break, backups can be found in the working dir at “../Overgrowth/Data/Levels/backup/”

- Fixed some crashes when saving collision data, and backup the file before overwriting it as well

- Now prints progress on loading screen when nav mesh is generating if there is no loading screen image (should only ever be seen by modders, if they package nav meshes correctly along with their levels, or people using internal_testing)

 

[Haba]

- Made AI roll away from jump kicks

top of keks

 

[Merlkir]

Might get back to my Therium2 playthrough now that it's integrated into the base game. The jumpkick exploit was really what made the combat boring to me.

 

[Infinitron]

So it ends:



http://blog.wolfire.com/2018/07/Overgrowth-1-3---Controller-and-Language-Support

The 1.3 update for Overgrowth is now available. This will be the final update of Overgrowth for now, and we will be pausing development on the game.

Be sure to watch it in HD!

In this update, we added better controller support, and support for language mods.

Controllers now work in menus, and can be rebound inside the game instead of having to hand edit the config file. You can also rebind controls for each of the players, when using the local multiplayer or split screen support.

To show off the new language localization support, we've added a mod that uses Google Translate to add support for a few different languages.

We've also made many bug fixes, some performance optimizations, and a bunch of improvements to the editor and to mod scripting.

We added a lot of modding features to hotspots, which should allow modders to make modding tools that are much easier to use. Hotspots now support linking through the editor, and support custom GUIs.

Here's a summary of all the changes in the 1.3 release. You can find the full change log in this document.

Spoiler

Gameplay

• Added walking and bound it to left control by default
• AI increases aggression a bit, while they are the group leader

Input

• Made it possible to navigate the main menu and pause menu with game controllers
• Added ability to rebind game controller inputs in game
• Added per-controller rebinding support
• Improved key binding and controller binding text in tutorials
• Made "Controller" settings menu appear/disappear when unplugging or plugging in gamepad

Localization

• Added a "Wolfire machine translations" mod. Contains examples of translations - no promise of quality!
• Added settings in-game to select the current language
• Made it possible to define arbitrary languages via mod.xml in Languages tag
• Moved existing Overgrowth, Lugaru, and Therium 2 dialogues into separate files to make them easier to localize

Performance

• Added check box in settings menu to quickly enable/disable frame rate display (without having to enable debug UI)
• Turned off full-quality shadows in levels where they aren’t actually visible (better performance)

Editor

• Added quick item loader UI (CTRL + L). Hit CTRL + [Number] in that menu to quick-pick item
• Added the ability to add connections to and from hotspots, and to launch a hotspot's custom editor (if they're built for it)
• Made removing character also remove attached objects (but not inventory)
• Added ability to connect and disconnect objects in the object inspector
• Added button to open dialogue editor from object inspector
• Moved collision paint visualization to "view" menu

Overgrowth story

• Overgrowth Story → Canyon Ambush: Removed one of the 4 enemies in the first wave

Therium 2 story

• Therium 2 Story → e/a (Collinpeak): Improved navigation jump node placement

Bugfixes

• Attempted fix for crash when launching the game on old AMD GPUs
• Changed "Could not open GameController" error into a log message instead of a dialog
• Fixed crash when trying to launch game if game is set to now-unplugged monitor

 

[deama]

Any reviews of this 1.3 update? I played it when it was at 1.0 and thought it was meh but had potential.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

To show off the new language localization support, we've added a mod that uses Google Translate to add support for a few different languages.

Oh my fucking god, really? Google Translate?

 

[Merlkir]

It's just proof of concept, they're relying on fans to do translations. (honestly, like many other games)

I'm (pleasantly) surprised they even kept updating this after release.

 

[laclongquan]

The problem of Overgrowth is its lack of titties and bulging crotch for the furries. Seriously, they just plainly miss exploiting the shit out of that particular niche.

Sure, that might sound too mercenary. But. with that at least they can attract a few of those kind of players. Instead of nearly zero like now.

When you are clearly a game made for furries: Made it to the end, gawdamnit!

 

[Venser]

I remember watching development progress videos on gametrailers because youtube wasn't quite there yet gaming content wise.

 

[LESS T_T]

The game and engine (excluding assets) are now open source under permissive Apache License:



https://github.com/WolfireGames/overgrowth

 

[Jasede]

I read in a magazine that the developer was a genius.

*Checks source code*
6 files of unit tests...