Overgrowth

Overgrowth might be a good game if it weren't under a layer of glitches, vacant characters, and ancient mechanics. It would be a good indie game if it traveled back in time to 2005. Unfortunately, it's just a glorified tech demo instead.

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.

Nine years is a long time to be working on a project, but what Wolfire Games was able to do in developing their own physics and graphics tech is pretty cool. Overgrowth is fun and challenging (sometimes brutally so) and it held my attention for quite some time… which takes some doing! If you like games with rag-doll physics and a beat’em up style, Overgrowth is for you! A word of caution though, it can get a wee bit bloody.

That said, here’s hoping Overgrowth may still yet become something special in the long run. But, as of right now, after all these years, the game was only interesting for me for a few hours and felt like more of a fun novelty, or a tech demo, than an actual video game. While the gameplay and mechanics here are solid and the physics engine is impressive, the campaign on the other hand is extremely disjointed, short, and uninteresting in terms of presentation. By the time I had completed both campaigns, twice over, it just left me wishing they made better use of it all.

The combat of Overgrowth is exhilaratingly fun with everything's working as it should, but that’s not very often. You also have to get used to the wonky and weird way it interprets both combat strikes and landings. It's a shame that everything else about Overgrowth, whether it's the story, the level design, or even the physics system, feels undercooked. It's not hard to find some fun here, but it's fun you'll soon forget.