Overfall

Overfall is a fantasy turn-based rpg filled with tons of lite questing as you forge your own destiny by leading two heroes on a path to unite a single race of your choice torn by faction and conflict. Here are some of its most prominent features to give you the gist of it:
PROS:
*High replay value due to ton of unlockables from Classes, to Companions, to Trinkets, to Weapons, to new Skills/Spells.
*Neat turn-based battle featuring the usage of a 3 step action-point system consisting of Movement (Step 1), Utility (Step 2), and Attack (Step 3). This allows tons of combo and synergy between classes and companions!
*A dynamic world where each race is in constant conflict with their arch rivals. Picking sides will further improve relations with one but at the expense of a deteriorating relationship with the other. This will reflect in the World Map (Seafaring) where they will chase each other with their ships, and you for helping their enemies.

*Tons of questing variety based on the different factions you can interact with for further replay value. Numerous dialogue bubbles will emerge during your quest for you to select with differing results based on your hero class composition.
*Tons of variety from how a character looks, with a character aesthetic that grows on you, from the heroes, to companions, to npcs, to enemies.
*Despite the familiarity of the races, many of these have their own backstory and lore, unique to Overfall. These races consist of a nemesis system involving Orcs vs Forsaken, Elves vs Hollows, and Dwarves vs Goblins, with a wild card consisting of the Vorn who is the aggressor, the Undead who populate razed territories, the Everguard who are somewhat neutral, and minor factions like Pirate Ships, Merchant Ships, and Guild Ships.
NEUTRAL:
*A single play-through can be done in a relatively short time (1-3 hours). Quest are lite at best and does not have a strong narrative. This suits multiple playthroughs but does not reward players looking for a long and deep narrative.
*Buffs and Debuffs in turn-based battles are a huge part of Overfall with icons to symbolize them. Tons of strategy can be garnered from it, including combos from the stacking of buffs and debuff effects, offering greater depth. This might or might not be your cup of tea as you will need to diagnose its various status effects very often.
*Enemy AI during turn-based battles are punishing and does not hold back to ensure that the weakest link, health and defense wise comprising of your support heroes or companions are targeted with every opportunity the AI can get. Due to the rather medium to small battle layout combined with relatively high enemy movement, strategies to protect your supporters will be a challenge.
*Healing can be done at the world map by food consumption, at Inns where you can sleep and heal, and during turn-based battles in small portions via timed spells (for the most part) where healing will only commence on the next turn. You will need to plan ahead to ensure your party maintains a feasible health count before and during a battle.
*Personas which have positive or negative traits are a huge part of Overfall. Your heroes will aquire traits when you fulfil a certain requirement in-game which may completely affect your party stats either via benefiting or downright screwing your play-through to a certain degree. There is an option to remove all Personas at the Inn.
*Only two heroes can be selected at the start with extra slots for an additional two companions that will gradually join later on in the game. If both of your heroes die (permadeath) despite your companions being kept alive, the game will be instantly over. There is an option to resurrect a fallen hero, but at a cost.
*Unlockables are done from fulfilling various requirements from a mixture of hero composition, hero traits, and island types which will then trigger a questline where rewards can be unlocked once the game is over.
*The only manual control you will get (apart from combat) is via the world map where you control your very own ship. Upon landing on one of the many islands, a quest will ensue which happens via fade-in and fade-out sequences as it changes scenery from one location to the next. While this is somewhat linear, it will fare well for creators to contribute their questlines to the Steam Workshop.
CONS:
*The map layout consist of randomly generated islands within a simple sea setting. Despite the heavy reliance of seafaring, the boat you are in is non upgradable and is merely used as a vessel for transportation between islands. While this is not its strong suit, it can be understood due to practicality purposes.
*You will constantly be in a race against time as the Vorn (Antagonist) increase in forces while you rally a racial faction under your banner via doing quest. Things will get a little hectic and the world dynamism will be heavily skewed in the Vorns favor if you let the timer run its course.
*Shop offers only basic upgrades in the form of upgradable skills and buffs. There are no buying of equipment. (The only way you will be able to change weapons, trinkets, and skillsets is by unlocking it in your play-through and selecting it from the character creation menu when you begin anew).
*You are unable to customize the way your hero looks. You can however rename them.
It is pivotal to take note that I heartily enjoyed Overfall, including those under "Neutral" and would definitely recommend it. However, I do feel it is important to list these prominent features down so one could make an informed purchasing decision based on their sole preferences.

Overfall almost passed under my radar due to the underwhelming store page, the screenshots and videos do not do justice to the games true strengths. I think the art style doesn't present well in static screenshots, the style used for the characters in particular looked amateurish and I was worried that Overfall was another cash grab indie title. However, in-game they came to life with nicely drawn animations for all actions, in fact, the deeper into a playthrough I travelled the more diverse the characters became and the better the art style seemed to fit.
Overfall's true strengths are a trifactor of: Gameplay, Replayability & Storytelling and let me say, it has them in spades.
Accolades Overfall can boast are:
Some of the best creative writing I have experienced, awash with many movie/game/media references.
Challenging & strategic hex/turn based combat with emphasis on buffs/debuffs and skill synergies.
A fair risk verus reward rogue-lite with hundreds of random scenarios, encounters and quests.
Many of the scenarios have multiple branches, endings & rewards for maximum replayability
Easy to use yet powerful scenario editor, in which you can make anything from a tiny encounter to a multiple island hopping questline in which the only limitation is your imagination.
Steam Workshop support with loads of player made encounters you can easily add to your game.
In summary, Overfall is a hidden gem of a game which is somewhat let down by its ambiguous name and "amateurish at a glance" art design. It worries me that a significant percentage of gamers may give this game a miss based on these factors, which would be a real shame as Overfall is definately a book you should not judge by its cover.
Score: 9/10 - Highly reccomended.

Very, very good game. Reminds me a lot of classic JRPGs Saga Frontier (PS1) and Unlimited Saga (PS2) in art style and the treatment of plot scenarios. For the price, I think it is well worth it. I'll be keeping an eye out for this promising indie game developer.
PROS
+ Great replayability because of the randomness in scenarios.
+ Great variety of companions (hired mercenaries).
+ Complex turn based, grid tactical combat.
+ Lovely character art, quaint and lots of variety.
+ Music is above average.
+ Moddable though the current selection seems small.
CONS
- Dialogue is awkward and poorly written at times.
- Ambient sound effects were very annoying.
- The plot seems thrown out there haphazardly (Everking)
- Environment / background art - some good, some very bad.

Another Human/Orc settlement needs your assistance!
Overfall is a story-driven rogue-like with turn-based combat from developers, Pera Games. You play as two adventurers who have been stuck in a mysterious portal for three centuries. A lot has changed in three centuries and you now face a world being ravaged by a faction called the Vorn. This group of experienced and ruthless raiders are not only incredibly dangerous, they are expanding incredibly quickly and it is up to you stop them!
Full Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the developer.
As you can see from the store page, Overfall is a good looking game (and it’ll only ever look that good since the game’s graphics settings are limited to resolution). The combat animations are all very good as well, sometimes they felt a little over-the-top but nothing too bad. However, Overfall’s audio is currently a bit hit and miss. This is because, while the sound effects are great, there quite a few actions which do not have sound effects. Again, it’s not a huge issue and I imagine they’ll be added in later since it is an Early Access game but I did find it a little jarring when some characters/actions made sounds and others didn’t in combat.
Your goal in Overfall is to stop the Vorn. As you’d imagine, you’re not going to be able to stop a huge faction of raiders on your own, you’re going to have to help the game’s other factions to gain their support. The other factions are:
Humans
Orcs
Everguards
Goblins
Elves
Dwarves
Forsaken
Hollow
Improving your relationship with these factions high enough will make them view you as a friend/ally and so they’ll help you with your mission by giving you any resources you need when you visit their homeland. These missions generally entail helping the factions with issues in their settlements. Since most islands are home to two factions, such as Human/Orc, many of these missions have something to do with decreasing the tension between the two factions. You travel between the islands on your boat and as you travel, time passes. As time passes the game’s ‘doomsday clock’ progresses, meaning the Vorn grow in strength until they eventually win, unless you stop them of course.
Your relationships with the game’s factions are improved by completing missions which help someone from one of the factions. Completing missions will also increase your worldwide recognition. As well as the Vorn, you are also unable to improve your relationship with Humans or the Everguards. Humans are always friendly and will still give you missions whereas the Everguards are more of an enemy faction, you can choose dialogue options to avoid fighting them but they aren’t the most likeable faction going so you’re probably going to want to kill them all! Once you’ve completed enough missions you’ll have high enough recognition to recruit up to two adventurers to help you in combat. Adventurers can be found all over the world and will ask to travel with you once you complete the missions associated with them. If you have a slot available, you can recruit them then but if you don’t, don’t worry! You can find adventurer ships travelling around which will allow you to recruit any of the adventurers you’ve found before (even from previous runs).
Staying with unlocks, there are also main character classes, weapons, utility skills and trinkets to unlock. New classes are unlocked in a similar way to adventurers, you’ll come across a special mission where (from my experience) you will fight alongside the character with the class and when you win the fight they will be unlocked for any subsequent runs. As for weapons, skills and trinkets, I haven’t found any myself just yet but they are unlocked through completing special missions with very specific unlock requirements. New weapons come with new offensive skills, utility skills should be self-explanatory and new trinkets grant you certain bonuses such as “Weapon attacks have a 15% chance to heal self by 3”.
Combat has three different phases: the movement phase; the utility phase and the combat phase (in that order). As it stands, once you end a phase you cannot return to the previous phase, however the developers are working on adding a way to return to the previous phase if you end it accidentally. In the movement phase, you can either move normally or use your character’s special move ability (with a two turn cooldown). These vary from character to character but they range from a massive leap dealing damage to adjacent enemies to leaving a healing aura on adjacent tiles while you walk to heal allies. The utility phase lets you use your class-specific skills. These skills are mainly focused on applying buffs to allies/yourself or applying debuffs to enemies but there are some skills that do other things too. The combat phase is where the real action happens, you can use your weapon-specific attacks to deal damage to your enemies. Melee focused classes can generally only attack targets adjacent to them but magic/ranged focused classes can attack from afar. One thing I will say, combat is tough as nails to begin with. Early on in a run you’ll want to avoid combat for the most part as pretty much anything can kill you, don’t pick fights you can’t win because believe me, you will die.
As I mentioned earlier, Overfall is actually a story-driven game, surprising for a rogue-like. You’d think this would have an impact on replay value but the game has two key features which, when considered with the game’s unlocks, mean the game does have a fair amount of replayability. First of all, your two main characters have special dialogue options during some conversations. Choosing one of these will make a difference to how the story plays out, even choosing different ‘normal’ dialogue will change how the story plays out. While these options aren’t enough to create an entirely new story, there’s enough variation (especially once you start playing with new classes) to prevent them from being tedious when you encounter them again. The stories themselves are generally very good though I did notice quite a few grammatical/spelling errors in the writing, not a huge issue but something worth mentioning. The other feature which helps keep things fresh is a built-in Story Builder with workshop support. This allows players to create and share their own quests which can be added to the game to supplement the quests already there. I haven’t played around with it too much but it does have a tutorial to help you get started and it does look reasonably straightforward to use.
Verdict
With interesting stories, excellent turn-based combat, lots to unlock and great aesthetics, Overfall is a thoroughly enjoyable story-driven rogue-like.
Lone Ranger Reviews.
El K.

Open world fantasy RPG
Overfall is an open world fantasy RPG that was successfully funded on Kickstarter. It has a turn-based combat with a focus on party encounters. The game features over a hundred different locations and dozens of NPCs, party companions and enemies.
The game starts off with a small introduction and after creating your two starting characters you are tossed back into the world. The story is pretty simple, you were sent on a quest to another world by your king and while you were there, centuries passed on your homeworld, while to you it was only a few days. Now, on your return, you find out that your king has gone missing and that your world is in chaos with various factions fighting for control and supremacy.
On your quest you’ll be traveling by boat from island to island and you can board any ship you find at sea, and they will react to you depending on your reputation with said faction. During dialogue you can choose to either trade, attack or persuade the enemy.
Combat will feel pretty familiar to anyone who has played any turn based tactical RPG. However, instead of having a certain number of moves per unit, Overfall arranges the combat in an interesting way. Each turn is divided into different phases: movement, utility and attack. During the Movement phase you can either move your character or use a special move ability such as leaping to get closer to your foes. On the Utility phase you can use abilities that don’t directly damage your enemies but still affect them in some way such as stunning or bleeding. On the last phase you get your chance to use offensive abilities to actually make some real damage to your enemies. I find this combat scheme to work rather well and it opens up many tactical opportunities.
Some characters that you find on islands or ships will let you know about certain events, such as humans that require assistance on an island. Completing tasks such as these will raise or lower your reputation with the various factions. The thing about these random quests is that they are not linear, you can either attack the other party straight up or you can try talking your way out of a fight.
Completing these random events will reward with either reputation or one of the four resources that are in the game. You have Food which is used to heal party members, Dust which is used to upgrade Utility Skills or increase the speed of your ship, Rune that is used to ressurrect or hire new companions and Frag which is the currency in the game. Completing quests is necessary to upgrade your weapons and make your party stronger.
Pros:
Simple yet challenging combat
Story creator, which creates the possibility of infinite replayability
Gorgeous art style with beautiful backgrounds and some neat particle effects
Great and moody soundtrack
9 different classes with full customization of skills, trinkets and weapons. You only start with a few, and it is fun to unlock more along the way
Feels pretty complete for an early access game
Reputation system with six different factions: Orcs, Elvest, Dwarves, Goblins, Hollows and Forsaken
Neutral:
Permanent death, once you lose a character they are gone for good. If you lose all characters you have to restart into a new world. While I think that this will appeal to a lot of people, I feel like having the option to continue a previous world would be nice for players that don’t like permadeath
Cons:
I feel like there are some balancing issues. You might end up running into a combat scene early on the game which you can’t beat but still, I guess this is reminiscent of the “roguelike genre”
Some attacks/abilities have no sound effect but I figure this will be “fixed” on the final release version
No way to check what a certain buff or debuff actually does before using a specific skill. You’re only able to tell what each buff or debuff actually does after applying it, which will show a small icon above the character and if you move the mouse cursor over it you can see a small description of that status.
Overall thoughts:
Overfall is a great game and I was really surprised by it. The game by itself has a story mode with random encounters and several different classes and skills to choose from which makes the game perfect for multiple playthroughs. Not only that but the Story Creator only adds up to the replayability, even if you don’t fancy writing your own story to play, you can still check other peoples stories and download them on the Steam workshop. The combat is simple and easy to understand but yet, it requires thinking. Overfall plays great, feels great and runs great! Other than what I mentioned above, I believe I have no other complaints to make at the moment and I highly recommend this game to any fans of turn based combat RPGs or to people who are looking for a very replayable game.

Cute little game that'll keep your attention for a dozen hours or so before getting old.
PROS
- Really nice, cute artwork
- Fairly simple and strightforward controls / gameplay
- Nice mix of turn based grid combat and rogue like elements
- Feels different from other games, which is a big point for me because originality is what i like in games
CONS
- I find it pretty tedious unless you play on easy. Because for one skill-dependant balance is not right, but also because the rate of unlocks on normal is very steep and you don't get enough to stay motivated to play... balance is not right on that point, espcially at the very beginning of a run. I recommend you play on easy until you get some decent unlocks and understanding of the game, else you might get frustrated too fast.
- Ridiculously hard and tedious achievements which basically make you give up on even trying to go after them... example really huge grindy number of kills to get, and surviving with 1hp after a squad wipe, things that you would not normally get through playing and that are super grindy and luck based. I would estimate that to get all achievements you need about 500+ hours, which is ridiculous for a game of this size.
- Most collectible (unlocking classes, weapons, skills) sound mysterious and riddle-like at first which is fun figuring out how to get them, then you play and you realize there is nothing to figure out they are all luck based... you just have to stumble on the right events, so too RNG based. NOTE: After playing the game more, there is a logic to these events, but you will NEVER guess them without using the Wiki or a guide... which is a sin in game design, why should you need a wiki to understand basic game mechanics.
- Another major sin against the rogue-type, there are no skills, no items to pick up, no real depth to the combat... the only progression is getting 4 party members instead of the starting 2, and the personna system which is basically you getting random effects (good and bad) as you play, but you have little control over these so it doesn't feel like you're getting stronger or more powerful... there is no RPG-like character management per say except for eating food to heal. The game is really shallow on that front.
- Story doesn't make much sens after beating the game, doesn't give closure to the story and crisis. Not to forget that the final boss fight is much weaker than most regular battles. The game doesn't end with a bang at all, it just fizzles away.
- Some things don't make sens either such as being only able to upgrade 2 characters instead of all 4 in the squad, some bad english writing that makes some sentences and descriptions unclear, inability to avoid opening ships that are moving nearby, and some other small details that distract from the experience
- There are many classes to play, but tiny amount of healers, combined with many classes having tiny pool of health... not to forget that the combat is a mess of status effects that you will need to clear, so you need classes that have sufficient effect clearing abilities... this makes the number of viable builds very small... You're most likely to pick the cleric in every playthrough and some "squishy" classes like the rogue don't really compensate for their squishiness with enough damage output, so the high risk high reward gameplay is not there... the game needs some fine tuning to make all classes viable (and fun) and diversify the builds, right now it's again, very shallow in gameplay diversity. NOTE: After playing more, there are other viable builds especially after you unlock some very specific items and skills, but since the unlock system is really hard to manage without wiki spoilers, most players will not move past the first-impression of the game.
- Replaying the game with other races (you can beat it with 6 different races) is too similar to each other, same dialogues, situations, islands... with very tiny difference. I don't see much reason to replay, the only motivator are the unlocks but since they are too RNG based it's 1) not motivating to keep going because you don't feel in control of the progress. 2) Getting unlocks is mainly for becoming more powerful, but since you beat the game in a couple of runs and the story is very short and shallow, there is no real incentive to keep grinding for more items to grow in power. There is no endgame. I think what this game really needs is more depth to the story each time you beat it, including some difficulty-level dependant endings.
CONCLUSION
A cute little game that'll give you some fun times, but keep in mind it is a very flawed gem and it has limited longevity before it becomes boring. The main issues are lack of balance, lack of "feeling of progression", and lack of depth in the gameplay. But pick it up on a sale and it will have enough value to be a good purchase.

A game more than worth it's money
I've owned overfall since it has released in early access and it hooked me straight away, Be under no illusions, the game is tough, You will die and you will have to start over, this is a rogue-like after all, but a very rewarding one at that.
With little introdution you are thrown into a world full of fantasy and myth, rich in different stories. On every island you go to you will encounter a little bit of a story, sometimes just a few lines of dialogue, sometimes a whole murder mystery. Most of these encounters are little self-contained stories, sometimes funny, sometimes serious. And often ending in a fight. What's even better, many of them will only unfold the second, third or even fifth time you encounter them, as with playing other characters, your choices and options change.
For those of you, who are looking for cohesive story lines and lore, don't wory. There is a main plot and each of the different races has a major questline, each of which portrayes the races in a different light, depending of who you decide to side with.
Of course, you can only side with one faction in each play-through, but that gives extra reason to play the game over and over again. As you can see, I have nearly a hundred hours in the game and I'm looking to crack them soon.
The reason being the amazing re-playability. A full play-through might only last two or three hours (if you manage to win at all), but there is something that makes you come back: The unlocks. This game has a lot of unlocks (don't ask how many, way over a hundred), ranging from weapons, trinkets to playable starting characters and companions to join you on your journey. And these weapons aren't (only) cosmetic, they can change the whole role of a hero on the battlefield, making a normally melee focussed monk suddenly a ranged critter or giving a healer suddenly surprising offensive capabilities.
Due to the amount of choice you will have as you progress in the game, you will be able to change party and weapon compositions to use a sheer endless amount of combos.
Speaking of combos: The games buff and de-buff system offers increadibly good ways to combine heroes' powers to dish out lots of damage, as well as avoiding a lot of it. Juggling with these buffs can be crucial and enable weird attacks like the druid's, which deals 6 damage, but also heals 6, to do massive amounts of damage or healing your guys by considerable amounts, if used correctly. I dare say the combat system as a whole offers a lot more than your initial impression might show and contributes to the game's great replayability.
EDIT: Forgot to mention the story editor! This is a very cool tool, which allows players to create their own adventures, may they be complex or short, dark or light-hearted. I have already posted two items to the workshop (easily done with one click) and it is even easier to download them and have them use them in game. Did I mention the re-playability? The workshop makes this even more important of an aspect.
I know this is getty quite lengthy by now, so I will end here.
Bottom line: I would not hesitate to buy this again.